By Garry Sowerby, The Chronicle-Herald - "Are you OK?" Hearing that question coming from the speakers of your vehicle means you've been in a car crash. Hearing it also means you're conscious. And alive.
Your vehicle has crashed and its airbags have deployed. If you drive a Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick or GMC vehicle and subscribe to OnStar, GM's unique vehicle-integrated provider of safety, security and connectivity services, a signal has been sent to an OnStar Call Centre.
That voice asking 'Are you OK?' is one of OnStar's 2500 advisors and if he or she gets no response to that question, emergency vehicles are deployed to your exact location.
Catherine Bishop, OnStar's passionate Manager of Global Emergency Services Outreach and Strategy, tells us that upwards of 185,000 daily calls from all over North America are overseen here at the OnStar Command Center.
My visit here was the final stop on a busy two-day tour last week. As part of National Teen Driver Safety Week, General Motors Company had invited a group of media to Detroit to show what the company does to keep vehicle occupants safe, with a particular focus this week on teen drivers, before, during and after a crash.
The U.S. National Safety Council released a list of the top 10 things most parents don't know about their teen driving. Here are a few: Car crashes are the leading cause of death for teens. Teen passengers pose one of the biggest distractions. Just one teen passenger raises a teen driver's fatal crash risk by 44 per cent. More than half of teens killed in car crashes were not restrained by a seatbelt!
Our group discussed these sobering statistics with a panel of speakers which included Torine Creppy, Chief Program Officer for Safe Kids Worldwide and John Capp, Director Global Safety Strategy and Vehicle Programs for General Motors.
Safe Kids Worldwide and its partner Parachute Canada are organizations dedicated to preventing injuries in children. Safe kids has been working with The GM Foundation for 17 years to support safe teen driving through education, promoting seat belt use and teaching ways to avoid driving distractions.
The best accident is one that doesn't happen. John Capp talked to us extensively about the Active Safety Crash Avoidance systems that General Motors builds into their vehicles to keep eyes on the road, hands on the steering wheel and prevent a crash.
We saw some of these 'before' systems at GM's storied Proving Grounds in Milford, Michigan. GM has been purposely crashing and collecting data on their vehicles here for 90 years.
Last week we got a sneak peak at their almost-completed Active Safety Test Area. There are 130 miles of roads at the Proving Grounds, including a highway with eight lanes of varying widths and markings that represent countries around the world, like the blue lines used in Korea.
The new 16-acre test pad is where we tried out crash avoidance systems like Lane Departure Warning, Side Blind Zone alert, Adaptive Cruise Control (which adjusts your set speed if a vehicle appears in the lane in front of you), Rear Cross Traffic Alert, Forward Collision Alert and Automatic braking.
This last one was the most dramatic. As an oncoming obstacle gets closer, the vehicle will stridently beep, flash red LED lights on the instrument panel and insistently vibrate the GM-exclusive haptic seat beneath you. If there is no driver response, the vehicle will apply hard braking and bring itself to a complete stop.
Obviously, teens need to learn to drive the 'old-fashioned way', without all of these systems, and, like all drivers, should never rely solely on them but to know that your vehicle has these systems to help them avoid a collision can be reassuring to a parent.
After seeing these safety technologies in action, developed by GM's very smart engineers, we moved to the Vehicle Safety and Crash Worthiness Lab where we met some pretty amazing dummies.
The official name of this unsung hero, the crash test dummy, is Anthropomorphic Test Device, or ATD. The original Hybrid III crash dummy, used all over the world, was designed by GM.
This lab is where crashes are executed and the 'during' of a crash is evaluated. Because a crash happens so fast (150 milliseconds, approximately 1/7 of a second), every crash is photographed and filmed in order to collect data. Each dummy records data through all the instrumentation they have installed in the 'bodies." GM conducts over 2,000 dummy impact tests annually.
During a crash, the main goal is to maintain the integrity of the passenger department. The energy of the crash needs to be absorbed by the engine compartment. Airbags and seatbelts must work together. When an airbag deploys, it's similar to the lift-off of a rocket. Airbags need to deploy in the right instances and they must not harm the occupants.
The dummies that represent teenagers brought us back to the reason we were there: National Teen Driver Safety Week and the hope that the 'during' and 'after' of a crash will become less and less frequent as education and technology work together to make teenagers aware of the dangers behind the wheel.
Studies show that teens involved in a visual or manual task are eight times more likely to be involved in a crash. Put down that device. Parents, we are our children's biggest influence in how they end up behaving in the driver's seat.
Buckle up. Every ride, every time. Device down. Speak up.
Your vehicle has crashed and its airbags have deployed. If you drive a Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick or GMC vehicle and subscribe to OnStar, GM's unique vehicle-integrated provider of safety, security and connectivity services, a signal has been sent to an OnStar Call Centre.
That voice asking 'Are you OK?' is one of OnStar's 2500 advisors and if he or she gets no response to that question, emergency vehicles are deployed to your exact location.
Catherine Bishop, OnStar's passionate Manager of Global Emergency Services Outreach and Strategy, tells us that upwards of 185,000 daily calls from all over North America are overseen here at the OnStar Command Center.
My visit here was the final stop on a busy two-day tour last week. As part of National Teen Driver Safety Week, General Motors Company had invited a group of media to Detroit to show what the company does to keep vehicle occupants safe, with a particular focus this week on teen drivers, before, during and after a crash.
The U.S. National Safety Council released a list of the top 10 things most parents don't know about their teen driving. Here are a few: Car crashes are the leading cause of death for teens. Teen passengers pose one of the biggest distractions. Just one teen passenger raises a teen driver's fatal crash risk by 44 per cent. More than half of teens killed in car crashes were not restrained by a seatbelt!
Our group discussed these sobering statistics with a panel of speakers which included Torine Creppy, Chief Program Officer for Safe Kids Worldwide and John Capp, Director Global Safety Strategy and Vehicle Programs for General Motors.
Safe Kids Worldwide and its partner Parachute Canada are organizations dedicated to preventing injuries in children. Safe kids has been working with The GM Foundation for 17 years to support safe teen driving through education, promoting seat belt use and teaching ways to avoid driving distractions.
The best accident is one that doesn't happen. John Capp talked to us extensively about the Active Safety Crash Avoidance systems that General Motors builds into their vehicles to keep eyes on the road, hands on the steering wheel and prevent a crash.
We saw some of these 'before' systems at GM's storied Proving Grounds in Milford, Michigan. GM has been purposely crashing and collecting data on their vehicles here for 90 years.
Last week we got a sneak peak at their almost-completed Active Safety Test Area. There are 130 miles of roads at the Proving Grounds, including a highway with eight lanes of varying widths and markings that represent countries around the world, like the blue lines used in Korea.
The new 16-acre test pad is where we tried out crash avoidance systems like Lane Departure Warning, Side Blind Zone alert, Adaptive Cruise Control (which adjusts your set speed if a vehicle appears in the lane in front of you), Rear Cross Traffic Alert, Forward Collision Alert and Automatic braking.
This last one was the most dramatic. As an oncoming obstacle gets closer, the vehicle will stridently beep, flash red LED lights on the instrument panel and insistently vibrate the GM-exclusive haptic seat beneath you. If there is no driver response, the vehicle will apply hard braking and bring itself to a complete stop.
Obviously, teens need to learn to drive the 'old-fashioned way', without all of these systems, and, like all drivers, should never rely solely on them but to know that your vehicle has these systems to help them avoid a collision can be reassuring to a parent.
After seeing these safety technologies in action, developed by GM's very smart engineers, we moved to the Vehicle Safety and Crash Worthiness Lab where we met some pretty amazing dummies.
The official name of this unsung hero, the crash test dummy, is Anthropomorphic Test Device, or ATD. The original Hybrid III crash dummy, used all over the world, was designed by GM.
This lab is where crashes are executed and the 'during' of a crash is evaluated. Because a crash happens so fast (150 milliseconds, approximately 1/7 of a second), every crash is photographed and filmed in order to collect data. Each dummy records data through all the instrumentation they have installed in the 'bodies." GM conducts over 2,000 dummy impact tests annually.
During a crash, the main goal is to maintain the integrity of the passenger department. The energy of the crash needs to be absorbed by the engine compartment. Airbags and seatbelts must work together. When an airbag deploys, it's similar to the lift-off of a rocket. Airbags need to deploy in the right instances and they must not harm the occupants.
The dummies that represent teenagers brought us back to the reason we were there: National Teen Driver Safety Week and the hope that the 'during' and 'after' of a crash will become less and less frequent as education and technology work together to make teenagers aware of the dangers behind the wheel.
Studies show that teens involved in a visual or manual task are eight times more likely to be involved in a crash. Put down that device. Parents, we are our children's biggest influence in how they end up behaving in the driver's seat.
Buckle up. Every ride, every time. Device down. Speak up.
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