Bob Gritzinger on Orwell’s 1984 paranoia made real in our cars:

Someday it?ll happen, probably when you least expect it. Just as you countersteer while drifting out of a tight corner, or after you punch the brakes hard, you?ll hear the mechanically animated female voice emanating from your car?s audio system:
?Collision detected. Calling OnStar.?
You need not be anywhere close to a collision, really. For our road test team this summer, it was just a matter of running a routine slalom in a Chevy Malibu Maxx?without so much as hitting a rubber cone?when OnStar called to check up on our driver?s health.
If you?re anything like us, it won?t be until after you?ve explained to the distant helper that you didn?t have an accident, the airbags did not deploy, and you don?t need assistance, that you?ll begin to experience an uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach.
How?d they know that you were driving like that? What else do they know? And who else knows?