OnStar is on track: It amazes me what technology can do to make us safer, even in our vehicles    

by Donald Dodd

Folks who spend a lot of days and nights yearning to be technologically savvy probably aren't in awe of OnStar. As for me, wake me up from this science fiction movie.
    Saturday morning I sat in the driver's seat of a new Chevy Cobalt purchased for Salem Publishing Company from Sturgeon Chevrolet. In the passenger seat was Terry Gorman, the guy who sold the car. He was giving me the rundown on how everything works.
    Windshield wipers. Lights. Sound system. Air conditioner. Yeah, I knew about all the stuff. Then we got to OnStar, and my mouth dropped open.
    Please don't think this is a free ad for OnStar. This is just a column from a guy who never realized how far some of this technology has come. Besides being incredibly fascinating, the safety aspects of OnStar are too good to turn down.
    Say, for instance, you are traveling on a dark night down a curvy, hilly Ozark lettered highway, swerve to miss a 10-point buck and take a half dozen six-inch diameter white oaks with you down a steep embankment. You're in semi-shock and banged up, not really knowing exactly where you are and unable to get out of your equally banged up truck.
    You push the OnStar red button with the cross in the middle of it, and no matter where you are, someone on the other end answers. I am not sure if they are located in Toledo or outsourced in Taiwan, but they answer.
    You tell the OnStar folks what's going on, and by using the GPS technology buried away somewhere on your vehicle, a minute or two later an ambulance is headed your way.
    Let's say you were knocked out during the crash. Well, OnStar knows you had a wreck because they have techno gizmos I don't understand all over your truck. They call you, you don't answer, they send an ambulance to your GPS coordinates.
    Amazing.
    I know what some of you are thinking. Big brother is watching you. You don't want someone in Toledo or Taiwan knowing you are sitting at the Dairy Queen sucking down a strawberry milk shake when you are supposed to be finishing up your shift at the plant.
    Anyway, do you remember Big Brother? He was a fictional character in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Big Brother helped the totalitarian state keep an eye on every move the citizens made using telescreens for complete surveillance.
    I thought about Big Brother is watching you as Terry told me all the things OnStar could know about me and my new car. OnStar could tell me if my tire pressure was low, let me make a hands-free phone call, let me know if I can drive with the warning light on or pull over immediately, give me directions or let a tow truck know where I am because my radiator overheated.
    Some of you might think the technology is a little too much invasion of privacy, with all those OnStar people - and who knows who else - knowing our whereabouts. Imagine the boss sitting at his computer and seeing that your GPS coordinates look more like the parking lot of your favorite fishing hole than, say, the customer you are supposed to be visiting.
    Maybe so. But the benefits outweigh the negatives when you think about your 17-year-old daughter unconscious in a vehicle down that embankment. Instead of hours of searching to find her, OnStar has an ambulance on the way when minutes could mean life and death.
   
    Donald Dodd is president and publisher of Salem Publishing Company. He can be reached at newsdodd@earthlink.net or 729-4126.