I recently saw a reportage about emergency call-takers. As you watch them work you'll notice they get an automatic call from the crashed car long before any human calls them, presumably from that modem.

I'm not arguing that the modem should be mandatory, or that you shouldn't be able to control what it does. But forcing car vendors who want to built in a modem to make this modem do an automatic emergency call by default, that seems quite sensible. Even more sensible would be if the modem did nothing unless you allow it, except when it detects that crash, but... profits.