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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."
Since insurance money is involved, I wonder how long it will be before someone tries to hack the data. There are already a couple of sites that are at least documenting some things and doing some tricks. Since the owner of the car generally has or can gain posession of it between when the accident happens and the data is subpeonaed (sp?), there is opportunity. It doesn't seem that the data is encrypted or hidden in any way, probably to make it easy on mechanics (simple and portable software).
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
This is utter bullshit. Dealers should have to inform their customers that the car they're buying has a device that could incriminate them with ease in court. And who's paying for these devices? The consumer? Maybe they should be an optional extra. Yeah right.
Save yourselves! Rip these things out right now! Write your senator! E-Mail your representative! Hack the thing so it continueously records you going 25mph with your seatbelt on! Just don't sit there and let anything your car says be used against you in court.
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
>Why on earth haven't they told people about these devices?
:-) "I couldn't have possibly caused that accident, sir, I was in reverse the entire time!"
Simple. Because now my next hack plans are to see what I can do to either disable that box, or to fix the data going to it. I expect I'm just one in a soon to be large pool of people hacking their cars.
Wouldn't it be neat to go -20 km/h all the time!
>So at the moment, I see them as nothing but good.
And they sure are. But that doesn't mean I won't do what it takes to avoid getting in trouble. It's human nature.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
For crying out loud, if someone is speeding and causes an accident, they deserve to get stiffed by the law because they are a dangerous, arrogant, son-of-a-bitch. These people kill. Having a box that records five seconds worth of data is not a problem. You think you should have a right to endanger other people's lives and break the law? If you think the law on speeding is wrong, campaign against the law. If you think the speed limit is too low, campaign to raise the speed limit. But if you think it's right, then why on earth should you have the right to break it and not get caught?
Not all your points are garbage - the police should not be capable of recording onto such devices, and Insurance companies shouldn't have access to the things, but people who drive well already tend to get lower premiums than people who drive badly - don't you have 'no claims bonuses' in your part of the world? Age-related insurance levels?
Who determines how much data is too much? You're taking stand on this. You say it's ok because only some small amount of data is collected. But here's the rub: It's not up to you if any data is collected, or how much. This thing has been crammed down your throat without your permission. And if the technology is to be expanded past your personal comfort threshold, fully expect it to come in the same manner as the last.
Alright, so let me get this one straight.
The black box is supposed to help the police and prosecuters figure out the speed before an accident, and car companies fix defects in their design?
That, my friend, is what I call a shovel of bullshit.
Firstly, speed can be gandered by a number of methods, mainly by the length of skidmarks.
Secondly, since when did car companies begin caring about their customers getting killed? As soon as the car is sold, they don't give a ratsass about it unless you stop the payments, inwhich case they reposess it and try to sell it for more than it's actually worth.
Blackboxes are on airline jets becuase, well, there's gotta be an excuse besides "we didn't maintain the plane properly" when one goes down, and it's nice to know what happened. Popular ones are: Sheets of ice were on the plane wings hindering movement, wind broke a wing, or my personal favorite, the piolet was drunk(why would a piolet fly if he was drunk? I'd think if they are smart enough to fly, they are smart enough not to drink and fly). Mostly, it makes a certain amount of sense; if boeing makes a few thousand planes with defencts, the industry is going to find a way to fix them becuase if a large percentage of a fleet of 500 planes goes down, they've got a major financial and PR crisis. How are you going to explain 5 or 6 planes crashing in a 2 month period? Blackboxes help to detect defects. On planes, they are justified to an extend, but on cars...it just doesn't add up.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
Because, if you cause an accident and don't have one, then it's that much harder for me to prove what really happened.
I'm glad they're in there. I can't see that it's a privacy issue; if there's an accident, everyone already knows where I was anyway! I think what people are worried about is that they'll actually be blamed for their irresponsible driving. Well, frankly, airline pilots have had to live with that for years, because they have the responsibility for others' lives. Anyone driving a car is in the same boat--you have a responsibility for your life and the lives of other motorists.
The other side of it is that they can provide useful diagnostic information when your engine is malfunctioning. I've been wanting to buy one of those things that hooks up to the OBD and records the information in my laptop.
--RJ
The shame of this is, the black box data isn't even needed. Surely, simple forensics could differentiate between a collisionat or near the speed limit (with or without braking) and one at 103 MPH. There is little reason to introduce controversy into the case. As for the DUI, the blackbox can't help there, it could only show reckless driving (which simple forensics could also prove, driving about 100MPH in a 30MPH zone is definatly reckless).
People living in the United States seem to have come to a very wrong belief about the concepts of "self-incrimination" and privacy -- to the extent that I think many of us do not really understand what these concepts mean anymore.
Take the constitutional amendment against self-incrimination. Do you really think that this protection was put into place to prevent evidence from your car being used "against you"? For godsake, this amendment was created to prevent people from being tortured or coerced into false confessions by the government, a basic human right. It's kind of embarassing to have this human right turned into "my car's data recorder cannot be used to incriminate me", don't you think? Since when did your car become an extension of your body, subject to the protections of the constitutional restriction on self-incrimination??
And then, the issue of privacy. People here have come to the belief that "privacy" means that nothing you do should ever be aired for anyone else to see. Again, a perversion of what was fought long and hard for. Privacy is the right of common citizens to be let alone in their daily affairs, to be secure in their peoples and posessions from unwarranted intrusion by others. It is *not* the right to conceal information in a car crash. Sorry.
This is a problem in a prosperous society, where many people have forgotten the reasons why urgent protections were needed from different kinds of intrusions by government or others. Basic rights have been manipulated to become more and more, rights of luxury and desire -- so that we claim violation of basic rights for the most trivial (or undeserving) things. The "right" to smoke in bars? The "right" to have an unobstructed view of the beach? etc etc. We need to get a grip and not squander the real rights that were wisely given to us.