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IEEE Building Automotive Black-Box Standard
An anonymous submitter writes: "According to EE Times, the IEEE is working to develop an automotive black-box standard similar to what airplanes have. Forget Acme Rent-A-Car in Connecticut - get ready to have your insurance company jack your rates for going over 65mph."
Why on the internet? Even airplane black boxes don't appear to be hooked up for communication of any kind, otherwise people wouldn't be so concerned with finding them after a crash.
Why can't this be a similarly autonomous data-gathering device? If there's any need for it outisde of crash data recovery, clearly there's a different purpose involved.
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
You could break in and hack people you don't like's boxes so that if they do get in a wreck or get it polled by their insurance their rates could skyrocket based on how crappy you make them look as a driver.
They can install one in my car...
...when they pry the steering wheel from my cold, dead hands.
Seriously, though, in my state (and most others) insurance is mandatory. Now, suppose that in order to get insurance one needs to install this box. Suddenly, the box is mandatory, if not explicitly so...
Once again, perhaps the best solution is a pair of wire cutters... until the state makes it illegal to tamper with these, like it is with odometers.
Forget Acme Rent-A-Car in Connecticut - get ready to have your insurance company jack your rates for going over 65mph
I can't see this being the case. I assume the black box wouldn't report data to anyone, and nobody would be checking it.. just working as it does on a plane -- getting checked when it goes down. Now, if you got in a wreck going over 65mph, they might have some clause in their license agreement or something allowing them to refuse to cover anything..
-DrkShadow
Ah, what the hell... I've the karma to burn.
This level of rampant paranoia cracks me up. To hell with the positive benefits of making cars safer in the long run... no, let's strap on our tinfoil hats and find the black lining. Watch out, michael! Casio has made a deal with the porno industry! They've put a chip in your wristwatch so they can measure your pulse rate and report back on what particular twisted fetishes get you off the most! Watch out! Booga booga booga!
Freak.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
this is just another case of the man trying to get the lowdown on my driving habits so he can give me speeding tickets to fund his rich white man racist policies, such as planned parenthood, head start, schools, hot lunch program, vaccinations that turn our children into zombies, postal services, secret military installations and weapons programs. Enough of the tyranny! I will drive whatever speed I deem safe for the conditions! I'm tired of insurance compaines conspiring with the government to take away our rights and turns us all into do-gooder fairies!
mass mounds of mctasty manchowder
now, If insurance companies want to monitor these boxes before and after crashes to adjust rates, what is to stop them from checking up on you every couple of months? I wouldn't want an insurance company seeing that I drive my Honda Civic at 90 mph at 2AM on saturday mornings. That type of tracking would be a bad idea. If memory is only limited to what is needed to store crash and pre-crash info, then yes, let us have these boxes. We can also use them as a post consumer market method of quality control.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
I dont know about any of the other implications of this device but I would be extatic to replace the whole, 5-to-10-miles-over-is-sortof-accepted-by-the-cops- so-long-as-their-in-a-good-mood look at speed limits. If speeds cars were monitored every minute that you were driving the assholes that think they can handle their car going 90 down the turnpike would either stop or be arrested. and the rest of us could travel safely at 70-75 without worrying about getting a ticket for going 4 miles over teh speed limit.
--aiee
Man... I don't know if this is what I want America to become.
Are the police gonna tap into this? Wirelessly be able to find speeders? Everything's becoming so technical. "Well, the hot coffee was TOO hot, I want $200 million." "Well, my parents were segregated by racist whites... but I still call that this kid I see sometimes a 'white boy' or a 'cracker.' But I'm just kiddin' around, I'm sure it doesn't really bother him."
I guess I'm just ranting about the details of society in general.
But I really believe at some time we're going to have to ask outselves... how far is TOO far in what we do, and can we ever just let certain things go, even if it does giving up some profits?
Nahhhhh...
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Are the blockboxes on airplanes to infringe upon the pilot's rights? Of course not, they're to analyze in the case of an accident, to help understand the problem, and improve safety for all. There are many undoubtedly many, many, many car accidents that could be prevented, by better crash analysis.
If folks are so paranoid about being recorded, they should go live in a cabin on a mountaintop. Keeping a record of goings on is an aspect of society which is a good thing, and more of it is better, providing more safety and security. If you don't like it, go join another society. If you're *really* got that much to hide, the cabin on the mountaintop is probably best.
Anybody who does use any such data for other uses will be "outed" so quick it will make your head spin; look at the rent-a-car fiasco.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Buy car. Buy Taser. Unplug unit. Apply 120,000 volts. Plug unit back in. Drive in privacy. (Ignore warning light optional.)
Of course, if you hack it, even better.
Personally, I'll stick to upgraded older cars. I prefer 5-points to airbags anyway.
get ready to have your insurance company jack your rates for going over 65mph
The article didn't mention anything about information gathering for non-crash puposes, that I saw.
Anyhow, if insurance rates do go up for speeders, they should correspondingly go down for those who abide the speed limit. Wouldn't that be the kind of rewards system we'd want to build into the process?
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
I doubt that they'll settle just for hiking your rates for driving too fast.
Heck, they might even go as far as to limit their liability if black box indicates that you were driving too fast at the time of accident - or prior to it. Or deny further coverage based on this etc..
Imagine sensors tracking your head or the usage of radio buttons or wether you used the turn signal. What about that stop sign before the intersection..
Yes it sounds like insurance company's heaven and a regular driver's nightmare.. Especially if it goes to that failure to follow traffic regulations limits insurance companies liability.
Around here if you're only doing 65 you're likely to get ticketed for impeding traffic.
Well, not quite, but the legal limit is 75 on the interstates here (Colorado) outside the city. And there was some discussion about getting tough with drivers who drive under the limit in the left lane.
-- Alastair
I heard about this about 6 months ago being experimented with in Europe. It's a wonderful idea, especially in New Jersey which has the highest car insurance rate of probably anywhere.
The way it worked in this test program was a small monitor would gauge your speed (now that I think about it, another monitor guaging breaking habits could also be useful) such that if you were obeying the speed limits, you would get a discount on your insurance.
Insurance companies want to base rates on potential of accidents, and therefore, currently use statistics to determine rates. This means that I have an extrordinarily high insurance rate even though I'm a good driver simply because of my age and gender.
The idea isn't to fine people automatically (like in Demolition Man) but to reward people for good driving habits. The real piece of technology that needed improvement was GPS -> speed limit mapping, once that is perfected, I personally can't wait to sign up for this type of program.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
What's the next? Will cars fly?
These boxes are in fact orange!
Its just not a standard yet.
Why can't planes have satellite links, so that the pilot/on board computers can begin uploading black box data to a central system if the plane looks like it's in trouble. Then there would be no need to "hunt the black box". All data would already be safe in a central black box system on the ground! You could encode voice in mp3 to cut down on the amount of data.
BUT SERIOSULY: I think that most of you here have chubby cocks.
Impeding traffic in ANY lane should be ticketed just as heavily as speeding should. Think about it, if I am going 65 in a 55 and you are in front of me, I am coming up on you at 10mph faster. If I am going 55 in a 55 and you are in front of me going 45, I am STILL coming up on you 10mph faster. The situation is just as dangerous.
More dangerous if you want to get picky because there is a slightly smaller percentage difference between 55 and 65 than there is between 55 and 45.
I just wish the cops would realize this and either leave the speeders along or pick on the idiots running 40 in a 55!
This idea of putting something similar to black boxes in cars is nothing new. CART has started putting crash analyzers in cars. CART has been doing it for a couple of years (They call them "Blue Boxes" because they're made of blue aluminum and are from Ford), and NASCAR has been talking about them since the accident with Dale Earnhardt. They use it to make our passenger cars safer. If this does come to the consumer market, I can assume that this is the only reason it would be used for. The only thing I can see that would screw this up is the amount of time it takes to analyze the data. If they can make the time it takes really fast, then it could be used to put the blame on accidents and disperse tickets accordingly.
No TiVo and no caffeine make me something something...
Well, according to your black box, your lights were on, and you had come to a complete stop. The accident was clearly not your fault.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Just what we need: one more piece of crap to add cost, weight, and take up space. Benefits for insurers, law enforcement, just about everyone except the poor fool who has to pay for it.
The information might be useful for analyzing the survivability of some crashes and using that information in later design, but as far as establishing cause or liability, it is less useful.
Oh sure, the speed and braking info helps some, but without some sort of record of the external environment, you don't get the whole picture. Consider a collision resulting from somebody running a red light -- with no reliable third party witnesses. Data would likely show both vehicles at normal speed -- which driver didn't see the light?
Or a multi-car pileup in sudden white-out conditions -- which happened to me on an otherwise clear, sunny day when a sudden gust of wind blew snow from a field beside the road across the highway, reducing visibility instantly to zero (and unfortunately, somebody decided to slow down at a rate faster than those behind him). By the time the cops showed up, it was a clear, sunny day again.
Or driving at or below the legal limit, but "too fast for conditions" (fog, slick roads, etc) where the conditions are transient (as the above scenario).
Why not just mandate installing video cameras looking over the driver's shoulder?
-- Alastair
This was done secretly a while back by the NTSB. While studying the data they noticed something intersting. In almost all states an average of 86.7% of the driver's last words before an accident were "OH SHIT". The only exception was Tennessee where in 63.2% of the accidents the last words were "Hey Bubba, watch this" ;)
Sorry, couldn't resist.
The only athletic sport I ever mastered was backgammon - Douglas William Jerrold
"safer in the long run"
Where the hell did you see that? You didn't even read the article, did you?
No argument from me about that.
Actually if I recall correctly, there was actually a proposal to have the cops ticket people going the speed limit in the left lane if the flow of traffic overall was at a higher (and technically illegal) speed. That suggestion was shot down, but did get some popular support.
-- Alastair
Hey, I've found a neat way to avoid getting speeding tickets. Here's how it works. It turns out that on almost any public road there will occassionally be little white signs on the side that have a number on them. There's also this little indicator behind the steering wheel that has its own number that goes up or down depending on how hard you push the gas pedal.
Now here's the trick: If you make sure the number on this "speedometer" doesn't exceed the numbers on these "speed limit" signs, you can cruise right on past the cops and they don't even seem to notice you! Just leave a few minutes earlier and you can get to where you're going on time without anybody stopping you to harass you about your velocity. Works like a charm!
Psst, don't tell too many people. The cops might start to catch on that we've found a way to avoid them. Heh, those suckers.
/attempt at humor>
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
I didn't see anything in the article that implied that these things could be installed in older vehicles. Since the black boxes could "transmit (crash) data instantly", I see far more potential for Big Brother abuse than the possible benefits of after-crash analysis. Police forensic experts are damn good at their jobs already.
I'll just keep my old '80s car, thank you. Don't need to have a cop in my lap all the time, thank you.
A Beowulf cluster of these?
I admit it. I speed every day. Yes, that's *every* single day that I use the roads. 99% of other road users do exactly the same and you know what?
The roads are safer than houses. In the UK, you have more chance of being killed by an accident in your home than you have on the roads. Don't believe me? 4000 people killed in accidents in the home in 2000 and 3,500 killed on the roads.
Speeding is only targeted because speed is easy to measure. That's it. It's a cop out. The fastest roads (the motorways) are also by far the safest roads.
The vast majority of accidents occur in urban roads with a 30 limit at a junction and *don't* involve speeding. They are caused by lack of observation. "Sorry Mate I Didn't See You".
Putting black boxes into vehicles isn't in any way going to improve driver observation.
What just might improve road safety? Compulsory driving tests after an accident or compulsory advanced motorist training might just make a difference.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
"The hope is that, by enabling vehicles to transmit crash data instantly and by creating a central repository for the collection of that data, the system can improve experts' understanding of auto crashes and reduce accident-related fatalities."
Did you even read the article?
I was in line waiting to go on the ride into the big golfball and then he pulled me out of lina and he touched my in my special not touch spot and he took me behind some bushes and raped me bum! Oh, the degradation! I feel so used! At least the bleeding has stopped though.
mass mounds of mctasty manchowder
Today I just got my license back after a two month suspension for the graduated drivers license in Iowa. One ticket, 65 mph in a 55. How anal retentive. Yet I know of a 25 year old who got his first drunk driving last week, a mere $500 fine, which I would have paid to keep my license for the last two months. With yet another monitoring 'feature' There will be more 18 year olds without their license....I'm not too fond of this idea............if I didn't live on campus, I would have had a lot more trouble, for one flipping speeding ticket
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
Some cars already have them.
Here is a picture of one in the Corvette. It is silver.
Personally, I would be more in favor of a standardized system that would allow Police to pull data off a wrecked car to find out more about the crash. Since, as other people have mentioned, it would be hard put to use such a device to determine LIABILITY, Police (and Insurance) will still need to be satisfied with witness testimony. Being required to actively "pull" data from such a system, the potential for abuse will be greatly diminished.
-Bob
I agree the technology is neutral. The question is whether or not the implementation is designed to help the individual people or to empower an institution. In this article it appears as though the technology is weighted toward the institution and not the individual.
A group scientist and insurance execs want to install a black box in every car, so they can judge against individuals in accidents. This is like the ultimate in scientific arrogance.
Better monitoring technology is not bad. Why not design a car monitor so it provides good information to the driver. A monitor could give inidividuals information their driving patterns with clues on how to make the car last longer and improve gas mileage. A well design monitoring program could help people save money.
If the defined users of the technology are insurance executives, crash investigators, or other state agencies, then I don't want one of those things in my car. If it is designed to provide benefits to me, then I will sign up. (Please don't just repond back by saying that if scientists have more power then we are benefit from their inherent goodness.)
Of course, anyone who doesn't want a monitoring device is probably a criminal with something to hide.
Here they'll give any nimrod who walks in the door a license. I used to live down in Florida and they always had horror stories like the one about the 86 year old lady who was legally blind and failed her driving test 26 times before finally managing to do well enough to get a license. You can't go flying down I95 at 90mph because someone like that will cut you off doing 45mph. Of course, that doesn't stop people from flying down I95 at 90mph...
There are sections of interstate near my house where the average speed of traffic is 90-100 mph and those speeds are not intimidating as long as you've got a mile or so of visibility to see what traffic's doing ahead of you. Most of the drivers on the road here don't pay enough attention to be able to maintain such speeds safely. I don't think the ever-popular SUV will ever be safe at those speeds. Especially with the driver yacking on a cell phone.
It would be easily possible to actually monitor and ticket every car on the road going over the speed limit but if that happened here in the states, the speed limits would be quickly raised or eliminated on the highways, since it'd piss off literally every driver in the country, and almost all those drivers are eligable to vote. Selective enforcement, while technically illegal, works fine for keeping most drivers to within 10-20 mph over the posted speed limits.
The arbitrary nature of the speed limits are a pain in the ass though. I've been dinged for going 20 over the speed limit at 2 in the morning with no other cars on the road. And you can't argue that, even though road conditions were perfect for it. And I've seen people doing the posted speed limit in conditions where that was extremely dangerous. I'd like to see road conditions play more of a part, but I guess you can't trust many of the drivers on the road here to be able to judge them correctly.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I attended an conference a while back dealing with the mandate of cell phones to report their position with 911 calls. One of the presentations was by Ford (?) which outlined how the data in these black boxes can be a huge boon to medical/emergency response in the event of an accident.
:^)
Here's the scenario. A car is struck in an accident. The black box recognizes this fact. Automatically calls 911. It also detects that there were 3 passengers, and that all had their seatbelts on (good). However it also knows that the passenger side was struck at a speed of 45 MPH, and there is a passenger in the back seat. Statistically, 90% of these type of impacts with a passenger in that location sustain neck injuries. EM personell are notifed to be alert for possible neck injuries.
Kinda like the way Mozilla reports crash info back, but it can save your life
Insurance firms in the UK now can use genetic test results. IIRC, this is not close to being required as of now, but you get a "discount" if your genes check out okay and you don't have the possibility for cancer, genetically.
The problem is, they want to turn this thing into a requirement, and why not? For an insurance comany, having the genetic makeup of your potential costomers at your fingertips is like having root on the box that will pick the numbers for the next powerball lotto; there is virtually no risk (for certain things, like heart disease and other flaws, not accidents, I know). Can we say "perfect scam"? I thought so.
They made the black box in charge of some
critical function needed for the car to work..
oh, say regulation of the engine, transmission,
and ignition systems:)
*Zaps black box*
Hey, why won't it start anymore?
of new cars today the chance of me having to worry about this is about as good as the "FIX YOUR CREDIT" spam actually fixing my credit!
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
I seem to recall a story about two guys who drove down the Don Valley Parkway (4 lane highway connecting Downtown Toronto to the suburbs) side-by-side at the speed limit (90km/h). They were ticketed for obstructing traffic. I guess you just can't win.
Reality has a liberal bias
GM black box
Putting a lot of expensive high-tech electronics into cars to collect crash data is stupid. First, you pay for a lot of gadgetry. Then, insurance companies will have a field day holding people responsible and refusing to pay out.
Well, well, so we get into an interesting point: over the past years, the quantity of survey equipments has been diminished or dramatically increased? How many survey apparatus belong to the Institutions? And how many of those tinker toys are belong to us?
There was a case in Ontario a year or two ago where a University Professer and his wife (I think) drove side-by side on a 2-lane highway at the posted limit. They were pulled over by the police after there were 2km of angry motorists behind them. They were charged and found guilty of impeeding the flow of traffic.
Apparently they were trying to prove that the speed limit needs to be increased.
Desperation is a stinky cologne
I'm not really sure it's so paranoid to be concerned...
Here's a scenario that is really off the way and probably totally unlikely, I present it just to stoke the fire of paranoia even further.
Your car gets stolen because you were stupid and left your keys inside. The thief then proceeds to read the data from your black box, noting all the places you stopped... then goes to each place and ransacks what he can using your own keys to get in without trouble.
Think of the fuss that would be raised if they made a movie showing some spy downloading data from the exisitng OnStar system in a car to determine where a secret hideout was!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
great the insurance companies will now have long protracted battles over whether the black box was working properly. What happens if the cars give conflicting results? The end result will be higher insurance costs.
Oh, come on. On any given day, there are far more people in homes than on the roads (since not every can or has to drive, but everyone lives somewhere). And on any given day, the typical person spends far more time in his/her home than in his/her car. Yet the difference in numbers is only 500? Why are the cars so fratzen dangerous, is what I want to know.
I recognize the privacy issues and goodness knows, they should be addressed. But isn't it time for us to recognize that the only part of the driving system that has not improved in a century is the driver? Why the heck don't we have cars driving themselves and using state-of-the-art sensors -- many markedly superior to eyes and ears -- to avoid danger?
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
The cops in Arlington. VA ARE using GPS and "other" technologies to in a "bait cars" catch car thieves.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
This type of tracking is already implemented for over-the-road truckers. Think semi on the interstate. Motorola, and others, have a radio system where every input of the semi is relayed to the dispatcher, in real time. Every shift, acceleration, brake, turn of the wheel, the boss sees it as you do it.
It was originally implemented to help truckers improve fuel economy and reduce repair bills by improving driving habits. The drivers of some companies NEVER speed, because the company will fire them at the next refueling stop. OTOH, other companies don't give a rip.
Every large trucking company uses it. Now it's just a matter of scaling it up to the quantities of cars on the road. It'll happen within five years.
The situation might be as dangerous but they are not equivalent. In the first, you are breaking the law as you approach someone obeying it. Why should that person be held responsible for your breaking the law? If "impeding traffic" were enough by itself, then that allows the most aggressive idiot -- the guy who needs to go 90 mph in a school zone -- to set the limit for everyone else, since eventually he'll overtake (= be impeded by) anyone going slower.
Now, the guy doing 45 on a 55 road is also causing trouble, even for the people going the speed limit. Which points out that "speed limit" is a dumb concept. There should be a "speed range" (50 to 60 mph, for example).
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
So far all the comments that are +3 or higher are either, "The cops are just gonna use this to hand out tickets to me. Quick narc'ing my rights!"
Blah. Okay, assuming for a minute that these devices even would be used by the police to monitor speeding and hand out tickets (that hasn't been stated, an in fact has been ruled against in CT already), IF YOU'RE SPEEDING AND YOU GET A TICKET, TOO BAD!!
Here's a little-remembered fact: speed limit (emphasis mine) means the maximum speed at which one can drive. Now you may whine and gripe six ways to Sunday if you get pulled over for doing 32 in a 30, but guess what? You broke the law. It's a black-and-white issue to the courts. You can come up with 10,000 reasons why you're a good driver, the speed you were travelling at was safe, ad infinitum typical American tomfoolery, but the fact is that you BROKE THE LAW.
I can't stand the speed limits in certain areas either (by the way, I'm an American) but whining about it doesn't do a thing except make you look pedantic. Grow up. IF this technology is used to monitor driving, and that's a big IF, then it might actually force you to follow the law. What a concept.
And yes, I know in Germany or Switzerland or Cochabamba or whatever they have higher speed limits, fewer fatalities, etc. Newsflash: this isn't Germany.
Now, back to the original point, consider the "crazy" idea that maybe, just maybe this idea was started by decent people who aren't a Gestapo and have a legitamate interest in improving vehicle safety. My, what a silly idea!
When are you libertarians going to figure out that the biggest threat to your freedom is not the government, but corporations?
Those little white signs are the suggest min. speed. You see, if you go the posted speed you will be smushed like a bug by the other drivers...
I didn't mean to imply that the guy going 55 in a 55 should get in trouble because I am going 65. Merely that the guy going 45 in a 55 should get in just as much trouble as a guy going 65. Both of them are 10mph off the speed limit. As such both of them are putting the other drivers in a situation that is going to cause one driver to come up on another driver at 10mph faster.
I highly doubt they will put those into consumer autos when they first hit the market. Too much of a waste of resources because the ratio of cars on the road to the ones that get in accidents is low. I see them going into commercial and public service vehicles. I would love to see those tractor-trailer truckers slow down!
x/0=x
...feel like a slap in the face here in America. Other countries, such as Germany, have high speed limits. Think autobahn. And you don't hear about out-of-control highway fatality numbers, either.
Highway speeds, in America, have become nothing more than a money-generation trap.
Furthermore, so has the drinking age. They've (thoughtfully?) set-up a scheme to make money because they know college kids want to drink... and know more than half are under the age of 21.
The real surprise, to me, is in the laws regarding teenage pregnancy... excuse me... the lack thereof. It's ok for some fifteen year old girl to have a baby. That isn't against the law. There are no fines associated with it.
But if some college kids want to throw a party, the campus Beer Gestapo rushes in.
Anyways... these black boxes are a Good Thing(TM). They'll help analyze what went wrong. They'll help to eliminate a he-said-she-said situation where both drivers feel that the other is at fault.
Insurance companies should push to include a GPS system so that a car can be recovered in the event of theft... but make sure that said device is mig-welded to that car. What would be the point if a knowledgeable car thief knew where this box was, and could just rip it out. This would result in less theft claims... and could perhaps help eliminate fraud.
If you read this, you'll see that this is just another step in the social engineering process that the insurance companies have been playing since the early 1900's.
Also known as the Insurance Scam.
Yeah sure. That same 'people won't stand for it' argument was floating around about why 'Red Light Cameras' would never show up in Fairfax county.
After you get your first automated ticket complete with photo you just might change your mind a bit.
~~ What's stopping you?
Yo, why's it gotta be a BLACK BOX?!
(if this offends you, good.)
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
The FAA expressely prohibits "Black box" (CVR/FDR) data from being used in any legal enforcement action. It is only accessible for accident investigation and safety purposes. In other words, an airline can't legally snoop the data and decide to fire you the pilot just because you did something wrong. Only if there was an accident, and the NTSB, using that data after the fact, proves your fault, then only in that case, the data plays a role in any discipline action.
One can only imagine that they will make such a policy for cars, hopefully!
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
they've had these in some cars for a while. my 95 saturn's computer would record top speed, if brakes were pressed when the air-bag was deployed, and the speed at which the bags were deployed. i'm sure newer cars have more complex computers than that.
If this were about avoiding speeding, there would be a much simpler solution: put speed limiters in cars. But this isn't about speeding or saving lives, this is about control, surveillance, and profits.
I have to disagree with you, I feel impeding traffic in the RIGHT lane (or the slow lane in regions where slow != right) should in general be acceptable.
This should be the case for a few reasons: for saftey reasons, certain classes of vehicles (big trucks) have lower speed limits than others (passenger vehicles), so they have to impede traffic in order to drive safely (i don't know about you, but i don't want big rigs driving 90 mph); mechanical issues can sometimes limit speed to some maximum, that is within reasonable speeds for a road, but may not be what others are driving at, so the driver should move to the right lane, and depending on their destination, and severity of the mechanical issues may need to stay in the right lane for a while.
I do think that in addition to maximum speed limits, minimum speed limits need to be posted, and enforced, and certainly slower traffic should stay to the right, unless theres a reason (such as an offramp) for them to be on the left.
Need a Catering Connection
get ready to have your insurance company jack your rates for going over 65mph.
The above comment is way too simplistic -- the black box allows the insurance to be priced more accurately. Higher prices for drivers more likely to cause accidents and cheaper prices for drivers less likely to cause accidents.
The black box could measure speed, abruptness of turning, stopping, and so on. Feed a pile of historical data into a correlator and figure out which behaviors are correlated with accidents and price the insurance accordingly. Of course this is not good news for the bad drivers, but it's great news for the good drivers.
The beauty of it is that it's largely self-selecting. Suppose I found the Transparent Insurance Co. and we use black boxes to set our rates. All the good drivers use us since our rates are lower for them. The bad drivers and privacy-at-all-costs people can keep using the no black-box insurance co, and of course their rates are higher, since they attract all the bad drivers.
I am a bit of a car nut, and I know of a couple of cases where telemetry data has been used against car owners:
On the 1995 M3, BMW noticed all sorts of warranty claims coming in about blown motors (like the first 2 cars in the country, within a week of delivery). They eventually traced the problem to people missing shifts, going from 4th to 3rd as an example, under heavy accelleration (that IS why you bought an M3 after all). The very smooth gearbox (I can shift into 1st in my M3 at 80mph without a problem) combined with soft transmission mounts meant that missing a shift was VERY easy, in some cases, there is NO WAY to tell you put the selector in the wrong slot.
In 1996, BMW switched their cars from Bosch to Siemens electronics, and put a telltale feature on the motor management system. If the car went over the redline, it would set a fault with the RPM saved in memory. A few M3 owners have sued their BMW delaers with claims that they didn't over rev the engine but dealers denied warranty coverage and a few of those cases have been true. One way to tell if a dealer is trying to stick you is to look for a printout of the RPM fault, if the number is not divisible by 256, they are making it up.
Another example was the case of a hit and run driver in a Caddy SUV (the Navigator monstrosity I think). The police responded to OnStar's call, the system on the Navigator having called in after the airbag was deployed. Of course, with GPS, it gave OnStar gave the cops the exact location of the accident (but not updated information of where the driver had gone). The cops followed the nice trail of coolent and parts to the Navigator driver's home and arrested him...
. . . it's pretty obvious that the folks in Hartford have more power than we do, and that in order to pay less than US$3000/year for insurance, we'll eventually have to submit to these boxes. So what we should be doing, instead of whining, is researching and looking for vulnerabilities that can be used to disable them or to provide them with false data. Of course, that'll be a felony right up there with murder, so better get at it now.
...as a paramedic:
...as a citizen:
...as a card-carrying member of the ACLU:
Roughly 50% of the accidents I work are Motor Vehicle Collisions. NOT Motor Vehicle Accidents - no such thing exists. Speed is the determining factor in the severity of the accident both to the person responsible for the collision and the innocent people they hit. If everyone followed the driving code to the letter of the law, collisions would not occur - and anything that helps my cop friends (I see them at every accident) better determine what each idiot was doing is a great idea. Also, consider the prevention capabilities - the black box sends a warning to the cops that such and such a car is weaving and speeding on such and such a road, and bam - they pull his drunken ass over before he kills someone.
Ever yelled at someone who went through a red light or thru an intersection without stopping? Ever yelled at that asshole in front of you to get off of his cell phone?
I relish the privacy of my home. Driving on public streets, however, is in no way a private act. Each and every one of us in a car is weilding 3000 lbs (minimum) of momentum (speed dependent). That carries with it a significant amount of responsibility, which in turn carries a requisite amount of accountability. These black boxes would enforce that accountability. How is that a bad thing?
It will surely monitor your driving habits and give the insurance companies more reasons to refuse to pay. It'll allow cops to trace you but won't help in pinpointing your position if you have an accident.
If you were speeding and you had a collision, why should the insurance company pay? If you and I have policies with the same insurance company, it's my monthly payment that goes towards the money you get. Is that in any way fair? I follow the law, you break it, and you get my insurance money?
It's not that I don't have my tinfoil hat, it something called *REALITY*. Try it some time - it'll change the way you see the world
The stats include motorcyclists, cyclists and especially, *pedestrians*.
i.e. Include anyone who steps out onto the street if you please.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
>airplanes have. Forget Acme Rent-A-Car in Connecticut - get ready to
>have your insurance company jack your rates for going over 65mph."
>
Maybe, just maybe *MY* rates would stop going up when insurance companies start nailing asses like you who can't do simple things as following the posted speed limit.
I didn't say the technology wouldn't be necessarily be implemented. Simply that it wouldn't last.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I would think that once these are installed in vehicles, the next counter to this invasion of privacy would be to have forged trip information that could be inputted into the black box, or shared with others to do the same. I can already see webrings popping up to emulate onboard car systems so that they can fool the black box
I'm not sure. My senses were overwhelmed by the searing pain of his man sausage ripping through the tender flesh that is my anus but I believe I saw Vince McMahon on his name tag and patch on the shoulder of his uniform with the initials N.A.M.B.L.A Thanks, for your concern. I'm doing better except the bleeding has started again because I shat out the blood clot from my ass.
mass mounds of mctasty manchowder
One thing I think about this is that people might then be so concerned with making the black box report favorable results to the insurance company that they no longer pay as much attention to their surroundings.
Sure, there are typically less than 1 *airliner* crash per year, but ideally, they should be installing this kind of equipment in all aircraft.. Private planes go down all the time, but you won't hear about it unless it crashes into the whitehouse (mid 1980's), or a downtown building (Tampa Fl, earlier this year or Milan last week). Most of the time, private pilots try to get their small planes to a safe area when crashing. If that was recorded, they'd know the pilot was aware of the problem, and took measures to protect the innocent.
Most people are afraid of having "black boxes" in their car for the simple reason that they might be at fault, and want to be able to lie their way out of it. Heck, if I was doing 65 in a 55 zone, and someone pulled out in front of me, it's going to show my speed of 65mph, descending until the impact. Hopefully his vehicle will be black-box equiped to, and show that there wasn't a full stop made. Everyone knows that both parties scream "I'm innocent, he did wrong" in an automobile crash. It always happens like that.
Previous articles I had read about the automotive black boxes said that they'd keep a rolling 2 minute record of all the actions the car took, including turn signals and brakeing.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Certainly, there aren't many people who would support a device that logs your every move and reports it to the authorities, as this would be a gross invasion of privacy. However, black boxes that only record data when you get in an accident can be very useful. These devices have been used on some fire engines and ambulances for several years now, and most of the time the evidence on the recorder protects rather than incriminates the driver.
I know one firefighter who was saved by the black box information when he got into an accident. A car hit the fire engine when it was going through an intersection, and the people in the car claimed the firefigher was at fault - they said he was speeding and that his lights and sirens weren't turned on, and they tried to sue the fire department for some large amount of money. Fortunately, the black box on the fire engine proved that these claims were 100% false: the lights and sirens were on, and the fire engine was actually going well under the speed limit. Without the system, the firefighter would have lost his job and the city would have lost a lot of money needlessly. For these reasons, many people I know feel more comfortable with the black box than without it. A human witness can lie ("Officer, that guy was doing 90 mph! It's all his fault!"), but with the black box there's very little question about what actually happened, and very little chance of you getting in trouble for an accident that wasn't your fault.
sucks to live in your country where you always feel opressed, are you really living in the land of the free?
You can hypothesise about it all you like. The reason the insurance companies offer something like this is probably be because there's a statistical link between not speeding and having a lower rate of accidents.
If there wasn't, they wouldn't offer the discount.
I can agree with that, schoolbuses are limited to about 45mph, and despite being very annoying that is to insure the safety of our children. Mack trucks however are often the fastest things on the road! I'm not saying I'm comfortable with that, just that those guys seem like the worst speed limit breakers.
I think it should probably go by what is the safest operating speed. I school bus going 55 in a 55 should be brought under suspicion. I mack truck going 85 in a 75 should be more harshly punished than a car doing the same. Some would call this unfair, but a commercial drivers license should bring with it more responsibility, as should being allowed to drive such a large, potentially destructive vehicle.
Blackboxes, maybe even with 802.11 so the CHP can spy on you (drives fast, changes lanes frequently, tailgates, yeah... better send them a recruitment letter), beyone the obvious invasion of privacy argument (He's parked in front of your house again, sarge, shows up two minutes after you leave for work everyday...) there's certainly going to be a firestorm of protest at jacking up the cost of cars. We'll spend insane amounts of money once we got them, but don't even think about charging $200 more on the sticker price...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
According to this (pdf), other six-point violations in Ohio include:
Drag Racing.
Willingly fleeing or eluding a law enforcement officer.
Homicide by vehicle
Four points:
Willful or wanton disregard of the safety of persons or property.
Pretty forgiving, this state.
Monstromart: Where shopping is a baffling ordeal
There are times it is acceptable to exceed the speed limit: passing, before going up a hill, etc. Also, a speed limiter that worked in Hawaii (55 mph limit) might not work too well in Montana (limit = what the police think is safe for the roads and conditions). A speed limiter would have to be an extremely complex piece of technology to tell whether you were going 70 mph down a residential side street or passing someone at 70 mph on the interstate. Not only that, but it can also be unsafe to go slower than the speed of the traffic around you. If you can't go faster than 70 mph, but the traffic around you is doing 80, then all those non speed limited cars may end up crashing into you because they expect you're going faster. There is no really safe and effective speed limitation technology available.
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
Not to mention traffic speed. When I commute on I-280, virtually every car is doing about 80 MPH. Anyone merely going the speed limit is actually causing problems as everybody has to swerve around him. The CHP has long recognized this, and won't ticket people going traffic speed (in fact, this well-known practice almost jepordized California's matching highway funds some years back). Will my insurance company be as understanding, or will they jump on this as an easy way to ding me for more money?
Worse, as cars with this spybox slowly enter the market, the number of idiots going at or just under the speed limit will increase. Instead of virtually everybody doing a nice steady 80 with only occasional slowpokes, we'll end up with a much larger speed distribution -- and a much more messy and dangerous traffic situation.
3. The government can require you to use a corporation's property; e.g. mandatory insurance.
...horizontally across the freeway. Who's fault? :)
:)
My car is usually horizontal when it's on the freeway, or anywhere else, for that matter. Driving with e.g. your headlights on the pavement instead of your wheels is not something I'd normally recommend.
I know you meant "perpendicularly" -- it was obvious enough from context -- but I just can't get the image of the car sliding along on its nose, with the driver saying, "ah, finally I'm safe!" out of my head....
I hope your right but they seem to becoming increasingly common in the greater DC area (along with big brother street cameras). I don't see too many people getting upset about it.
Reminds me of commercials running before movies. I used to write letters and boycott but after a year and half I gave up. All the theaters had them.
~~ What's stopping you?
As a registered Tennessean, I object to those kinds of stereotypes!
If you must know, approximate last 30 seconds of any Tennesean auto accident are:
"No kiddin! I am driving and talking on one of them new fangled Walkie-Talkie phones! Oh, crap! I dropped it! (SHOUTING) Stay on the line bubba, I'm gon get it!"
Oh. That's a pretty reasonable thing, then. That's why speed limits should be speed ranges.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
That my friend is the truth the world over...
We have horrible accidents in the US with DUI and truckers falling asleep too.
Good luck to you.
Newer model sports cars log the highest RPM and/or speed that they've hit in order to protect against overrev damage warranty claims to the valves, etc, as a result of mis-shifts to racing abuse. It is likely possible to get the codes cleared with a scan tool, but if they're non standard, there's no standard tool for doing it. The Acura Integra Type-R has been rumored to have the ability to tell if the owner has put the vehicle past redline.
This isn't to say you can't fool the ECU. Boxes exist now that take the vehicle speed sensor (VSS) input to the ECU and report a lower value than is actually being travelled to get around speed governors which are mandated by law in Japan and put in on some cars (most SUVs will not go faster than 160 km/h). This isn't to say you can't just replace the engine computer altogether, there are many products that do this already from manufactuers like Haltech, AEM, Motec, etc.
This gadget is too easy to work around, and there's no incentive for consumers to put it in their cars if they don't want to. It is a myth that high speed has anything to do with safety - it's usually the slow drivers with bad situational awareness the cause accidents.
What it is, however, is one more step towards mandated government control of vehicles, and is bad news. Changing the ECU is illegal now, because you're tampering with emissions equipment, so messing with one of these gadgets would be, too.
If legislators really gave two shits about safety on the highway, they'd make professional driver training manditory - think a few hundred hours of training, not a weekend - and reinforce that with 5 year re-evaluations of drivers. I've chosen to spend lots of money taking performance driving schools and learning how to drive, something which has saved my ass from an expensive accident more than once. A stupid little black box is not going to help the soccer mom with no idea how to merge into a 120km/h highway traffic flow, or how to do simple brake and avoid maneuvers in a top-heavy vehicle.
..don't panic
You need to get an old car that doesn't have any of these silly gizmos. Soon, all new ones will have them. So I will, for the good of humanity, sell my car to some lucky slashdotter. Its an '89 Dodge Colt with 212,000 miles. I think $10,000 is fair for the peace of mind of not having anyone spy on you. First one to call XXX-XXXX gets it.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
Several dozen cars already have these implemented. That high end mercedes you drive with that neat traction control that wont let you slide thru an icy corner? well guess what.. That records that data for the last minute or so.. incase you DO get in an accident it gives the company some info about it.
Seen it in a Porsche accident.. guy swore he was doing 70 mph.. skid marks over 500 feet long.. Insurance worked with porsche and got the info and found out that he never hit the brakes until it was too late.
Not telling who I worked for but I was a safety systems engineer for one of the Big 3 here in Detroit.
I can assure you cars already keep this information. The airbag module already tracks your acceleration and has about a 5-20 second log it can store in case of accident. It also stores if you were wearing your seatbelt because it communicates with the cluster that knows if your belt was on or off. Of course the newer modules need to know if you belt is on so they can fire the belt pre-tensioners anyway. But we tracked it for "other" reasons.
Yes the ABS also likely has a log.
So yes, this module will have a record of the exact accelerations involved in an accident and this was a 97 vehicle which I was working on in 1993.
MS is already trying to get into cars. MS and IBM and and others were at the Society of Automotive engineers conference this year. Their was a whole floor dedicated to Smart Cars or whetever they are calling it this time. Yes they are trying bluetooth but in the automotive field we could care less. Their is no need for that and as such it wont ever get there. Not from the OEM at least , maybe aftermarket.
The only thing likely to happen here is the OEMs end up getting money from the government to do something that they are already doing...
Problem is ... it's against the 4th and 5th Amendment ...
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
Of all the automated traffic enforcement/monitoring, the red light camera is the only sensible one. There is absolutely NO excuse for running a red light or a stop sign. On 99+% of the roads I've driven on in my life so far, the speed limit was WAY low for normal driving conditions in a modern passenger car. Even in very bad conditions (blizzard), as long as the roads are drivable, the speed limit is too low. Which is why there is no 100% enforcement of the speed limit. Speed limits would just have to be raised. But a red light is there for a reason; it doesn't mean you can drive through it if you feel like it, because it means someone else has a green light, and you're gonna have a collision. Even if no one is in sight, you're gonna lose at most, what, 20 seconds waiting for your green?
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
My god, I could not believe how retarded most of the rest of the country was when it came to speed limits. I was on a couple road trips, from calgary to toronto and victoria, and am I glad I live in Alberta. 110 is the usual speed limit, whereas 90 most everywhere else. BC is just waking up and raising limits to the mind numbing speed of 100kph on a stretch of 1 highway. 90 around here is reserved for undivided 1 lane roads and gravel roads. And even that is of course never observed or enforced.
I really could not believe that on Ontario, on a 4 lane smooth as glass highway max speed was 90. For fucks sake!
The real problem with highway collisions and accidents is NOT speed, it's retarded drivers. It's because of retarded drivers that you have a 90 speed limit, and because of retards our local 22X is such a meat grinder. My driving test consisted of a 5 minute drive, and the only 'skills' tested were turning left on a non-lighted intersection and parallel parking. I kid you not. I was shocked. Really.
If you can't go faster than 70 mph, but the traffic around you is doing 80, then all those non speed limited cars may end up crashing into you because they expect you're going faster.
People who crash into slow traffic on the highway should not be driving. Which points to another shortcoming with US driving safety: if people cared about safety, they'd require serious driver education, as opposed to the minimal training currently required.
All of this brings me back to my original point: the US isn't serious about driving safety. The US is serious about putting lots of expensive and unnecessary gadgets into cars.
Isn't the most useful part of the black box the voice recorder? I don't think anyone is going to say "hmm...I think I may have been going a little too fast on that ice patch back there, and that's why I am in this uncontrolled spin"
T( H)GSB Apr 21-27
___ alwaysBETA.com - Hey, you've got nothing better to do.
Well DUH! Look, when there is more than one lane, the left lanes are known as the PASSING lanes. If you aren't PASSING anyone get the hell out of it! Creeping past someone by going 1MPH/KPH faster than the other car doesn't count. It shouldn't take more than 5-10 seconds to pass someone. If your a creeper...you may as well just slow down and stay behind the other cars. And for god's sake, don't SLOW DOWN to switch lanes unless absolutely necessary! Speed UP instead. It's safer for you and everyone else on the road too. If you can't speed up...stay to the right or get off the damn road.
Lead, follow, or GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY!!!
(Sorry, road trip today...and this tripped some flashbacks.)
jackass, "wreckless driving of teenage boys"..... wreckless how? Where are you getting your information? Last time I checked, I could remember my age old-timer ;)
There ARE speed limiters on your car.
Current automotive computers have both rev limiters and top speed limiters in them right now. Not to mention all kinds of other snoopy shit for recording throttle position, brakes, gear selected, and road speed. Cars with super-duper traction controls record all that info too.
And all that info is already used in court sometimes.
Welcome to the 21st Century where your car can rat you out.
Interesting issue here though, is speed controls would prevent essentially NO accidents. Speeding is not what causes accidents.
Speeding fines are simply a road tax pretending to be a safety measure, as are photo radar, red light cameras et al.
Feeling more paranoid yet?
Bad example. It has been shown that racers on the average get in more accidents than drivers overall (overconfidence in one's abilities).
Otherwise I agree with the rest of your comment.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
I'm also in FL, and I could not believe what the driving test was: less than 20mph for a couple of minutes in the parking lot! WTF?! Even if this had been my first time in a car I could have passed it. No wonder driving in FL sucks so bad, where 95% of drivers don't know what the turn signal's for, and most of the other 5% forget to turn it off for the next half an hour.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Both of my vehicles are multipurpose. For daily driving, and at the racetrack. How would this blackbox differentiate between me going 165mph down the straghtaway and doing the same on a public road ?
In most cases I would agree with you, but the DVP does some weird curvy things once you get south of Don Mills Road, all the way into downtown. If you don't know the curves, you could easily end up upside-down in the river valley before you know what happened.
Reality has a liberal bias
Sure there is... I was ticketed once in Sacramento for running a redlight on Broadway. The light was yellow for 2 seconds (seriously, I went back and timed it). The speed limit was 35, so 2secs=50ft (if my math is right). The State's own DMV handbook says that reaction time to stop is approximately 2 seconds. This means that if I'm between 50 and 100 feet away when the light turns yellow I'm almost guaranteed to run it, and I did!
Even if no one is in sight, you're gonna lose at most, what, 20 seconds waiting for your green?
Obviously you've never driven in Fairfax county! If you get stopped at a red light on Hwy 50 (which has cameras) or Rt 28, your going to be there 4-5 minutes. This is in contrast to CA which has a 2 minute maximum light cycle.
Finally we can prove cops work at donut shops!
I work for GM and we have (rightly) gotten a bit tired of drunks mashing up our cars, killing themselves, and/or killing others.
And then sueing the crap out of us.
The plan is to have something to take into court the next time some idiot takes himself or someone else out and then claims that he was "only" doing 30mph.
Um, that's kinda their point
the autobahn does have a speed limit of 250 km/h. it is enforced in an odd way though: car manufacturers must speed limit their cars to 250 km/h.
i also notice that german drivers are far more skilled than US drivers. i've been surprised many a time to find drivers in germany (contrary to my low expectations) observant, forward thinking, and skillfully agressive, yet they know when to be careful (pedestrians and bicyclists are treated like gods). and i've noticed a higher percentage of people brake before turns, and accelerate through turns, then i've ever seen in the US. i'm sure many an accident on 17 crossing to Santa Cruz could be avoided if people actually slowed before entering the turns in rainy weather, rather than nailing the brakes at the apex.
Each and every one of us in a car is weilding 3000 lbs (minimum) of momentum (speed dependent).
:)
;)
I put "speed dependent" there for a reason - momentum is p = m*v where m is mass and v is velocity.
Pounds (lbs) are a unit [wihatools.com] of force or of mass.
(Notice how I was nice enough to include your whole sentence and not take things out of context?)
Using Newton's Law F = M*a we see that mass and force are related by acceleration; therefore pounds can be both force and mass if and only if the acceleration is zero, which is not a very interesting case.
For momentum, you'd use lb*ft/sec
And you'd be wrong. the English unit of mass is the slug, which is equal to 14.6 kilograms. The pound is in fact a unit of force, equal to 4.45 Newtons. Therefore the relation "momentum = lb*ft/sec" is wrong; the correct relation is
momentum = lbs*sec or m = F*s. You can derive this using p=mv , F=Ma, and a=m/s^2. I derived it myself, and I didn't need a website to do it
(Yes, this is non-intuitive. If you still do not believe it is correct, however, consider this: 1) the English equivalent of the Newton is the pound; 2) the SI unit for momentum is either one of kg*m/s or Newton-seconds. Therefore the English equilavent of Newton-seconds is pound-seconds = 4.45*Newton-seconds. As a side note, this sort of unitary tomfoolery is typical of why Britain, an empire which once spanned the globe, is now an island
Naw, that'd make too much sense.
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
I could see a system where you'd have a bunch of variables that would set your driving privileges, and they would be enforced by the box and wireless. For example, you'd take a reaction time test, and faster reaction times would allow a greater speed limit for you. That would be programmed into your black box. Wireless signals from speed limit signs would set the speed limit range for a stretch of road. You might be able to go 85, while somebody else could only go 70. If you had vision problems, a setting on your black box might not let you start your car after dark. Etc. Maybe there'd be timed functions, too. Like after 24 months, your allowable speed limit would drop by 10 mph until you go to the shop and get a brake job, where they'd also reset your box.
If they'd all communicate with each other on the road, you might even be able to set up a safe and reliable autopilot.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.