GM, CDC Partner for Faster Accident Response

Traffic safety and emergency medical experts say data from vehicle telematic systems like AACN may be especially important in rural or isolated areas where there may not be a passerby to report a crash and resources of a level I trauma center are too far away to treat the kind of injuries sustained in severe crashes. For example, 60 percent of the nation's fatalities are in rural areas, even though rural areas account for only 20 percent of total annual crashes. AACN, first introduced on the 2004 Chevy Malibu, evolved from airbag deployment notification systems, which alert OnStar Advisors if a subscriber's airbag has deployed. Airbag deployment notification systems have been on OnStar-equipped vehicles since 1997.


OnStar is available on more than 50 of the 2007 GM models and includes one year of service. It will become standard on nearly all GM vehicles by the end of 2007. There are more than 4.5 million subscribers in the U.S. and OnStar retains two-thirds of its subscribers after the first year. Since its inception, OnStar has worked with emergency medical groups to refine its technology. "They gave us leadership on where to apply our technology to get the best benefit for emergency medicine and we have been guided by that." Chet Huber, OnStar president said. OnStar logs 1,100 airbag deployment notifications a month and 700 of those come from the AACN system. Over the last 10 years, OnStar has logged 50,000 crash responses and 620,000 emergency calls.