Poor Directions Makes Couple Injured In Car Accident Wait
By: Katherine Lane
Updated: January 21, 2009
"It's funny, when people call in and say, 'You know, I never use my OnStar, I think I need to cancel,'" said Terri with OnStar. "Well, you know what? I'm thankful they've never had to use OnStar."
Last night, a rollover accident took response teams over 30 minutes to find. That's because the couple in the car was unfamiliar, said Lt. Greg Goettsch with the Abilene Fire Department.
"When the directions that we get comes in on a cell phone call, normally, it's a person that's not familiar with the area so they're trying to pick out landmarks and it can be quite some time before we get to the area," said Lt. Goettsch.
Thanks to technology like OnStar, the Abilene Fire Department can locate a crushed car in a flash.
A heat-sensor, called a Thermal Imager, helps the fire department seek out a hot car or a human being.
"This will show everything up to 1/10th of a degree difference than its surrounding, so it really stands out," Lt. Goettsch said. "If you have a car that maybe went off the roadway in a wooded are, something that's not easy to see into, this will see right through it and it would be very easy to pick up a person or a car."
Lt. Goettsch says that tools like the Thermal Imager and OnStar not only save time, but could possibly say lives.
"It's going to be extremely time consuming without something like this," said Lt. Goettsch. "You're going to have probably have to call more units to the scene to help spread out and cover more area."
