This is very true....but thats a whole other issue regarding the difficulty (or lack there of) of obtaining a lisence. Not to mention where I live, there seems to be a better good driver to obscenely bad driver ratio than other parts of the country I've been to. Maybe due to driving experiences in snow.

 

You really think GM is going to ticket its own customers? Yeah, that's a sure-fire way to draw customers into the showroom. Even GM isn't that stupid.

And FWIW, OnStar would have nothing to do with tracking your speed. Black boxes already can and do do that regardless of whether or not OnStar is installed.

 

Ahh, they can record your speed, etc but OnStar has the ablility to TRANSMIT such data. FWIW, any new car (OBD II) stores a host of info about what your car was doing when your SES light comes on. It helps out quite a bit when trying to trouble shoot a customer's car (I work at a dealership).


My personal feelings on OnStar: just leave it off my car thank you very much. If I lock my keys in my car thats my own stupidity, and a quick call to either the police or your local locksmith can fix that.

Old cars are cool, they don't spy on you

 

Bingo That concept and OBD3 are a complete invasion of privacy . OBD3 is far to involved to discuss here , but If thats the way its gonna be in the future , I wont ever be getting a new car again .

 

Maybe it's splitting hairs, but any car with a built-in cell phone can do that; the car would not have to have the complete OnStar setup to squeal on you.

 

it's about the south rising agian and their path to take over the white house.

look at the map. no midwest states, no northern states... interesting.

 

Exactly what they said. OnStar has the ability to feed your speed in real time using GPS. Im surprised there wont be a printer in your car that will just shoot out a ticket.
What has me worried is there ability to shut down or even gain control of a car while driving.

 

NYC, Philly, Washington D.C., San Fran, and LA are not part of the south.

 

Maybe would should have a discussion, in a new thread, about ODBIII.

 

I've read the OnStar legalese. Why would they use GPS to figure out a vehicle's speed when they have the much more accurate feed from the ECM to do that? It makes no sense.

You do realize that GPS is a passive technology, right? That is, the GPS computer in the car can receive satellite signals and determine where it is and roughly its speed, but the satellites have no way of receiving any information back from the car. The only way OnStar can give speed or location information to someone else is to phone it in via the cell phone. GPS is pretty much irrelevant if all they wanted to do bust you for speeding.

 

I have always thought the whole concept of OnStar read like something from George Orwell's 1984. Car and Driver were doing a slalom test of a new Malibu when somebody from OnStar rang them and asked if they were okay, because they were afraid they had been in an accident. If it were in my Camaro, I'm sure they would have bugged me every time I did a donut or powerslide u-turn.

I can see eventually that if OnStar were connected to police computers, police would monitor your car from afar to see if you were speeding or taking corners too fast on back roads, etc. Then they'd be looking for you and bust you with radar. Just curious, does OnStar come standard on the GTO and Corvette?

 

Not avalible on the GTO. $695 option on the Corvette. For almost $700 Onstar is way too expensive for me. I'd rather but that money toward a NAV/DVD system

 

Chances are that if you have a Nav system, that On Star will packaged with it and will make a package much like the Acura RL has. On Star could download a new map or directions right to your Nav and help you avoid traffic.