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Auto Black-Box Data Being Used In Court
DrEnter writes "Yahoo! is running this USAToday article about automobile electronic data recorder (EDR or "black-box") data being used in civil and criminal court cases. Most owners of cars so equipped don't know they have them, or that they can be used against them. The NHTSA has been investigating EDRs and is collecting public comments to determine if and how these devices should be regulated."
here
I'm not Seth.
depends on the company that build them. most manufacturers started adding them in the '90
The rental car company has no such restriction to accessing the data, and it can be used in interesting ways. Some unscroupulous rental car companies have added clauses that allow them to charge substancial ammounts more if the car is taken out of state without notifying the renter, and then do so when this happens, because they can, and can track it...
So always look at the little print on those car rental contracts....
IIRC most new cars have them, and the boxes are sent back to the factories from wrecked cars as a form of feedback och collision forces.
Relax.. RKE (Remote Keyless Entry) Module.
He wasn't BS'ing you.
Here's a response to a lot of questions people will have:
Which cars have it?
How long have cars had it?
Here's a lengthy explanation:
All cars released in the United States are OBDII compatible. This has been a federal mandate since 1998, although some carmakers decided to support OBDII in 1997 and some(including Toyota) had limited compliance in 1996. OBDII is an extension of OBDI, an earlier version of the standard. Carmakers were well aware that this law was coming, many thought ahead.
What is OBDII
It stands for Onboard Diagnostics, version two. It is a requirement for all cars mass produced(exemptions are issued, but it is for specialty manufacturers). It is a standard describing the diagnostics, logging, and interface to the Engine and Powertrain Controller Unit present in all fuel injected cars. Some of the parameters are always monitored, such as vehicle speed, air/fuel ratio, injector pulse lengths, rpm, gear(for automatics mostly), air flow meter/absolute manifold pressure meter, throttle/accelerator pedal position, and measured oxygen sensor output. There were minimums set for what a car had to monitor, but it is an extensible protocol and carmakers were free to extend it as much as they liked. Once the framework was there, extending it to include things like steering wheel position and brake pedal position/brake system pressure were easy. One of the minimums though, was that all cars had to maintain a 30 second rolling-log of all sensors and that as a minimum, the required sensor inputs had to be saved at the moment a sensor fault is detected. Hell, with the price of Flash memory these days, 30 minutes of logging was feasible. Many cars maintain a very detailed log of your driving activity.
So, in response, all new cars sold today have some form of limited logging, and many have very detailed logging. The only differences being what is logged, and for how long.
If you have any questions, just ask. Believe me, I know. It is my job to know.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Car's `Black Box' to Be Used in Trial
The Associated Press
FORT LAUDERDALE -- A data recorder similar to the black boxes used in planes, trains and space shuttles will be the key piece of evidence in an upcoming Broward County car crash trial.
The device can record a car's speed and deceleration, as well as when its air bag deployed and the pressure on the brake pedal before a crash. Some cars, including the one in the Broward crash, can also log whether drivers wore a seat belt or how hard they pressed the gas pedal.
Prosecutors in the last few years have begun using the technology, which auto makers began putting in vehicles in the 1990s to test air bag performance.
Broward prosecutor Michael Horowitz argued successfully last week for the chance to introduce the black box as evidence in the traffic homicide case of Edwin Matos. Defense attorney Roberto Stanziale said the technology was so new that he had difficulty finding a defense expert qualified to testify about it.
Matos, 46, is charged with four counts of DUI manslaughter and two counts of vehicular homicide after an Aug. 17 crash left two teenagers dead. Lawyers expect to begin picking a jury next week.
A blood test showed Matos was drunk at the time of the crash, but Circuit Judge James Cohn has dismissed the blood evidence because Matos had not given consent to take it.
Police say Matos was driving nearly four times the posted 30 mph speed limit on a Pembroke Pines street when he rammed into a car driven by Jamie Maier, 16, of Davie, who was backing out of a driveway. She and passenger Paige Kupperman, 17, of Miami Lakes, died when their car slammed into a tree.
The recorder in Matos' 2002 Pontiac Trans Am measured his speed at 114 mph five seconds before the crash, according to court records. It detected he was pressing the gas pedal at 99 percent of its maximum capacity. A second before the crash, he was driving at 103 mph.
So far, only Ford and General Motors have produced black boxes that can be read easily by a computer. The recorders measure these details for five seconds before the crash, taking measurements once every second.
Customers own the data in their cars, but the company can download it with drivers' consent. Investigators can gain access through a search warrant signed by a judge.
Black box data was used three years ago in a car crash trial in Illinois. More recently, the device helped prosecutors convict a South Carolina man in March of killing another man in a car crash.
The article says some kind of stupid things like this one.
"They were installed on newer-model cars to trigger air bags."
That is absolutely stoopid statement. Its a sensationalist word bending cart_before_the_horse statement. A black box does not trigger an airbag. But all airbag modules record data in order to carry out their business.
In any event, an airbag module does indeed record a little data like if your seatbelt is on so it can adjust the blow of the bag accordingly. But yes, I would be surprised if it were legal to use *your* airbag module against you. That would be personal data. and should require a search warrant for something specific.
Nevertheless if you claim you were wearing your seatbelt at the time of the accident, then can check it out...
From reading the link to ODBIII these lines scare me the most...
"The system is reportedly capable of retrieving information from 8 lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic whizzing by at speeds up to 100 mph!"
"...a stationary or portable roadside transmitter, it transmits back an answer in the form of the vehicle's 17-digit VIN number"
In other words they know exactly where you are, what's preventing someone from building a transponder on 915Mhz and tracking cars as they go by?
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"And may your days be long upon the earth."