Black boxes for vehicles to be compulsory by next month

[endomorph]

By next month, every driver in the U.S. will be required to have a black box in their vehicle.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will declare that all automobiles are required to contain the event data recorder - similar to those found in aircraft - in order to monitor driving habits and provide a snapshot of the final moment of impact if the car crashes.

The snapshot will be able to be viewed by law enforcement, insurance companies and automakers and the owner of the vehicle will not be able to turn it on or off.

Critics of the mandate see it as another Big Brother-style invasion of privacy by the government while others believe it is a way to keep tabs on drivers.

It will also make it easier for insurance companies to settle claims and have access to circumstances surrounding car crashes.

Wired cites an example, in 2002, of a car which had a black box - many who have airbags already have one - being used to implicate a driver who went on to be convicted for manslaughter.

Two teenage girls in Pembroke Pines, Florida, died when their car - which was backing out of their driveway - was struck by a Pontiac Firebird Firehawk driven by Edwin Matos.

Investigators accessed the vehicle’s data recorder and discovered Matos had been travelling 114 mph in a residential area moments before impact.

He was convicted on two counts of manslaughter, but his lawyer appealed the admission of the data recorder evidence, arguing it may have malfunctioned because the car had been extensively modified.

The attorney also argued the evidence was based on an evolving technology. The Florida Supreme Court upheld the conviction, however, establishing precedent in that state that data gleaned from event data recorders is admissible in court.

According to Wired, standards proposed in 2008 would ensure that data once available only to automakers is publicly accessible in order to prevent any form of data tampering.

They also propose specific guidelines and technology to prevent the modification, removal or deactivation of an event data recorder.

The standards are put in place in order to make that data collected more reliable and prevent the drivers from having any control over the collection of information.

A lot of cars already contain black boxes of course and General Motoes have been installing them in almost all of its vehicles with airbags since the early 1990s.

GM's senior manager of field incidents Brian Everest told Wired: 'In the early nineties we could get diagnostic data, seatbelt use and crash severity.

'Currently, we can get crash severity, buckle status, precrash data related to how many events the vehicle may have been in and brake application.

'It’s about trying to understand what a particular system’s performance did before a crash. In a great many cases, we can use data to understand whether it had any merit to it or not.'

The newest vehicles also can determine steering input and whether lane departure warning systems were turned on.

Mr Everest added: 'We’re definitely supportive of additional data. The drawback on parameters is that you want to understand how it would affect the system.'

[Bailes1992]

Don't belive that for a second.
This is America we're talking about. There would be upraw!

[DiscoPol]

Firstly, Sam it's "uproar"
secondly, I thought all cars with an ECU had this sort of thing, in a simpler form, anyway. It is simply a case of the US court system now allowing such data to be used in a legal case.

[sirwiggum]

It's for the totalitarian governments such as the US and UK to monitor the movement of their populations.

The government should be scared of it's people, not the other way round.

V for Vendetta - recommended viewing....

[lozz]

sFun_xboxsmash.gif

[steve_earwig]

They've been talking about this sort of thing for a long time now, cars recording "flight" data then uploading it via one of those loops let into the road as they pass over them (what did you think they were for?). I would agree that excessive speed is still a problem, but then so is people driving like thoughtless chimpanzees, which I doubt this would pick up.

So, 114mph? And they needed the computer to tell them this?

[sirwiggum]

Will it integrate with these radars that cars are getting, so it will log when the BMW or Audi is tailgating?

[steve_earwig]

So, 114mph? And they needed the computer to tell them this?

Not really - http://www.4dca.org/Mar%202005/03-30-05/4D03-2043.pdf

[Welly]

As far as I know, the ECU that controls the Airbag release needs to know your speed to effect a perfectly-timed deployment (faster when faster, slower when slower etc.).

Your speed is logged then in any case by various in-car devices but taking this all one step further we're not that far away from 'big brother' style latent speeding convictions, accident or no accident

[Doggy]

They've been talking about this sort of thing for a long time now, cars recording "flight" data then uploading it via one of those loops let into the road as they pass over them (what did you think they were for?).

I'll be re-fitting the undertray, then. (The foil laminated one with the really powerful magnets).

[FarmerPug]

imagine that on a peugeot it would just say you were doing EEEEEEEmph and had 20 seatbelts on in Reverse.

[Welly]

Or, *long line of cars pass over reader in road*...... 45mph, 36mph, 41mph, 43mph, ANTI POLLUTION FAULT

[Doggy]

[FarmerPug]

They would be about to read the black box but an even bigger message would suddenly appear with a loud bleep
AIRBAG FAULT