Patent ID: 8626208

Claim:
A method for sending traffic information to a call center using a telematics unit of a vehicle, the method comprising: (a) transmitting data measured by vehicle system modules to the telematics unit; (b) identifying a portion of the data transmitted to the telematics unit in step (a) as traffic related data; (c) detecting that vehicle deceleration occurs more than a predefined number of times within a certain time period; (d) determining, based on the vehicle deceleration occurring more than a predefined number of times within a certain time period, that the portion of the data that has been identified as traffic related data will be transmitted to the call center; and (e) creating a message string containing the traffic related data; (f) generating a short message system (SMS) message; (g) automatically determining if there is any non-traffic related data at the vehicle to be sent to the call center using the telematics unit in response to generating the SMS message and, if so: (g1) receiving the non-traffic related data at the telematics unit; and (g2) automatically embedding the message string containing the traffic related data into a portion of the SMS message that is unused by a short message service and including non-traffic related data obtained at the vehicle in a payload section of the SMS message; and (h) transmitting the message to the call center using the telematics unit.