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IEEE Building Automotive Black-Box Standard

Posted by michael on from the bent-out-of-shape dept.

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."

4 of 357 comments (clear)

  1. Some already have it by alanjstr · · Score: 5, Informative
    "Eleven of the 45 companies that build passenger cars worldwide already use some kind of black-box technology, according to representatives of the IEEE. The best-known of those is General Motors Corp., which said three years ago that it includes the device, known as a sensing and diagnostics module, as part of its airbag sensing systems on most GM vehicles. The module can store such information as engine speed, vehicle speed, airbag deployment, seat belt deployment and the state of the brakes before and during an accident. "

    Its just not a standard yet.

  2. It's already being done by EaTiN+cOfFeE+bEaNs · · Score: 2, Informative

    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...
  3. Re:Networked? by NearlyHeadless · · Score: 3, Informative
    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.

    There is usually fewer than one fatal airliner crash in the country per year, and hardly any others require analysis of the black box data.


    By contrast, there are tens of thousands of fatal car accidents per year, and hundreds of thousands of other accidents--the article said 6,000 per day.

    These boxes are only designed to hold a few seconds worth of data and the data is only saved and extracted after a crash. They don't keep your whole driving history and don't transmit it. I'm just astounded at the level of paranoia on Slashdot. When you have this kind of hysterical reaction to imagined problems, it undermines your credibility for real threats to personal privacy.

  4. 2 Instances of this Already Happening by aluminumcube · · Score: 2, Informative

    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...