One or more presence sensors of a vehicle are used to detect the presence of one or more people outside the vehicle. When the presence of the one or more people outside the vehicle is detected, one or more external microphones of the vehicle are used to capture any speech by people. A speech recognizer of the vehicle is used to determine whether the captured speech includes a verbal request for emergency services. And, upon determining that the captured speech includes the verbal request for emergency services, a network access device of the vehicle is used to automatically request emergency services.