Patent ID: 7099835

Claim:
A method of providing an emergency contact information of a customer using a telematics device embedded in a customer vehicle during an emergency associated with the customer vehicle, the method comprising: accessing the telematics device embedded in the customer vehicle during the emergency associated with the customer vehicle; establishing a communication link between the telematics device and a virtual garage, wherein the virtual garage comprises at least one server on the Internet and wherein the virtual garage stores the emergency contact information of the customer; providing a site on the Internet that communicates with the server and that can be accessed by the customer independently from the telematics device so that the customer can specify the emergency contact information stored by the virtual garage and to be transmitted to the telematics device during the emergency; retrieving the emergency contact information of the customer from the virtual garage using the telematics device; and transmitting the retrieved emergency contact information of the customer from the telematics device embedded in the customer vehicle to the Public Safety Answering Point so that the Public Safety Answering Point will have the customer's emergency contact information that was specified by the customer via the Internet site and retrieved from the virtual garage by the telematics device during the emergency.