Presumably the vehicle manufacturers are paying the mobile networks for the ability to call emergency services. I doubt it falls under the same rules that allow for mobile phones to always call 911.

Not least of all because the vehicles _don't_ call emergency services. They call a service center that can dispatch emergency services if they determine it's necessary.

I assume they do that so they can skirt the law about charging for 911 service.

If the car decides to call 911, and the driver is not coherent enough to say “We’re OK, and there is no need to file an accident report; don’t send anyone.” (or press a “cancel” button within 10 seconds, before 911 is dialed), then the only responsible thing for the dispatch center to do is forward the call to 911.

It would strictly be better to just call 911 directly. The current system just delays dispatch of the first responders.

Since airbag deployments are rare and expensive, and imply significant risks of injuries or third party property damage, there’s no way the false positive rate on this will cause significant trouble for the police or 911 dispatchers.

Adding a extra human to the loop can only delay the dispatch of emergency services, leading to loss of life, even for paying customers.

I can’t think of any realistic scenarios that serve as a counter argument. Can you?

The service center may have access to GPS location which offset any delay by a large margin.

911 can’t get that from an unconscious or disoriented driver.

Besides the service centers exist for other purposes such as breakdown recovery, not just for corralling 911 calls.

I would guess the human in the loop helps to confirm first responders are dispatched. There was recently some trouble with 911 in Dallas. I would expect the human to have resources to call alternate numbers or nearby agencies in case the normal public service answering point doesn't work.

That pre-supposes that CarPlay's call center will have higher availability than 911's, otherwise, you not only moved the problem, you made it worse.

I don't know how to handicap the wager that CarPlay's center is better than 911's, but I tend to doubt it.

There are techniques and services to provide for availability on 800 number routing. You would still be subject to the selected carrier's ability to route your calls out of the local area. Otoh, the car could fallback to 911 if the commercial routing didn't provide positive confirmation.

That said, I don't know if they do fallback, and I don't know if there's any public reporting of availability incidents of these types of service centers like there is for 911 failures.

> I can’t think of any realistic scenarios that serve as a counter argument. Can you?

Based on what I know about PSAPs (industry term for a 911 call center) and how stale their technology is and how poorly e911 (the tech which started rolling out in the early 2000s to give your “location” to 911) works in reality, they are offering an added value over “just calling 911”. I’m happy to provide additional details if you’d like, but there’s tons of reading material if you google “911 location accuracy”.

Onstar will call emergency services if you are in a wreck, provided you have a subscription. I was really surprised that if such a safety feature exist that I would have to pay to continue that part. You cannot just buy that portion of Onstar, you have to buy a package which can average twenty a month and go higher fast