Personally I’d call that a safety issue. A few years ago my wife and I were driving a rental car that was rear ended on the highway by a drunk driver. The impact caved in the left rear wheel and spun us 360 degrees across 3 lanes of the highway. Within a few seconds of coming to a stop an OnStar person was talking to us, asking if we were ok and confirming our location.
We had no clue ahead of time that the rental car had one of these services, but at that moment we were very happy it did. I honestly have no idea about the privacy ramifications, etc. but having been through that experience I’d think long and hard about disabling it outright. I do take my privacy seriously, but I’d have to weigh that against the safety of me & my family in that kind of situation and disable it only as an absolutely last resort… Just my own personal $0.02 on the matter.
I think my car only came with a free trial for that service, I think you needed to pay after a certain amount of time. Cell phone works well enough for me.
Playing devil’s advocate, in a crazy accident you may not be able to get to/reach your phone, or even be responsive. If you use the personal assistant function on your phone, it’s no different than using OnStar, in terms of privacy.
All of this said, last I heard OnStar was pretty expensive for the average household income. I don’t have it, and I don’t worry too much about it.
Pulling the fuse that includes OnStar at least keeps it from calling home. But there’s usually some collateral damage.
What kind of damage?
Personally I’d call that a safety issue. A few years ago my wife and I were driving a rental car that was rear ended on the highway by a drunk driver. The impact caved in the left rear wheel and spun us 360 degrees across 3 lanes of the highway. Within a few seconds of coming to a stop an OnStar person was talking to us, asking if we were ok and confirming our location.
We had no clue ahead of time that the rental car had one of these services, but at that moment we were very happy it did. I honestly have no idea about the privacy ramifications, etc. but having been through that experience I’d think long and hard about disabling it outright. I do take my privacy seriously, but I’d have to weigh that against the safety of me & my family in that kind of situation and disable it only as an absolutely last resort… Just my own personal $0.02 on the matter.
I think my car only came with a free trial for that service, I think you needed to pay after a certain amount of time. Cell phone works well enough for me.
Playing devil’s advocate, in a crazy accident you may not be able to get to/reach your phone, or even be responsive. If you use the personal assistant function on your phone, it’s no different than using OnStar, in terms of privacy.
All of this said, last I heard OnStar was pretty expensive for the average household income. I don’t have it, and I don’t worry too much about it.
With how everybody and their mother have smartphones in their pockets, I wouldn’t be too worried.
Depending on the crash you could be unable to reach for the phone.
No! I mean everybody else! Someone else is going to call for help.
Don’t make life choices based on outliers
A hammer is great for hammering nails… and heads.
Humans, eh?
OnStar never knows where you are. It only knows where YOUR CAR is.
Think about it and decide whether your car’s privacy is worth the cost.
Oh, true. Luckily I never go anywhere in my car so none of my positional data will correlate with the car’s.
My car microphone stopped working