#100 On-scar

I hear this ad and it’s describing how this person who was locked out her car was saved by calling Onstar and Onstar control center pushed some button and let her in. Seems like a great deal on the face of it. I mean really, for a mere 20 bucks a month or so, you can have the piece of mind of knowing that if something should go wrong, some prisoner at the other end of the phone can push a little button and unlock your car or give you directions to a difficult location. That prisoner thing is just a guess by the way. Based on a sardonic response one of the attendants made one night to a person I know who was lost. “Sorry to bother you so late,” my friend said. “Oh I got lots of time to kill,” the attendant replied.
I’m just little worried by that. What’s to keep prisoners from randomly or intentionally opening door locks for their friends on the outside. I would think a well-equipped Cadillac Escalade might be fine pickins for a clandestine car burglary ring. Sure, the Onstar system would find the car if it was stolen, but what about if you just steal something out of the car?
So aside from hiring prisoners, how has Onstar benefitted humanity? I don’t know. Remember what they first said about the cellphone? How it was a great technological innovation because if you had a crash on the freeway you could call home and get rescued? Now everybody and the yaya yaya sisterhood are out on the freeways gabbing with each other when they should be paying attention to the road. Yackety yack, don’t slam into my back. Hell, now cellphones cause more freeway crashes then they were originally meant to help with. It’s lucky your brand new shock-resistant crash-proof cellphone survives so you can call about the crash that you had because you were talking on your crash-proof cellphone.
And what about the poor emergency locksmiths? There were quite a few mom and pop roadside assistance shops out there whose sole livelihood was helping people who locked themselves out of their car. Anyone with a pocket full of keys and a slim jim could make a passable living getting pre-Alzheimer folks back into their vehicles. By the way, is the opposite of an Alzheimer a wisenheimer?
See, I think it’s just another opportunity for lazy Americans to not take responsibility for their actions. If you always get a second chance why make any effort on the first chance? If I know I can always call to get into my car, why bother to carry a key? And if I’m paying for the service anyhow, I might as well use it, right? I mean, how often do you change your sheets at home? Every night?
But you expect your hotel to. If this thing catches on, our prisoners are going to be pretty damn busy. I mean, how many people do you know that only use their cellphones when they break down on the freeway any more? Soon people are going to be forgetting their keys on purpose just so they can impress their friends by calling Onstar.
America, ya gotta love it.