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Black Box in Speeder's Car Helped Conviction
sessamoid writes "This article in Newhouse News tells the story of a man who was recently convicted of two counts of manslaughter and vehicular homicide each, partially on evidence obtained from the Electronic Data Recorder (EDR) in the car. EDR's are found in all cars with airbags to measure the performance and effectiveness of the airbags and the conditions in which they are used. In this case, the EDR revealed that the driver was not travelling at 60 mph, as he claimed, but actually peaked at 114 mph (in a residential neighborhood) just seconds before the collision. Could this be the forerunner of many such cases in the future, where our cars tell the unadulterated facts, rather than subjective personal accounts?"
Does this mean that I have to microwave my car now???
"Could this be the forerunner of many such cases in the future, where our cars tell the unadulterated facts, rather than subjective personal accounts?"
Yeah, for about 3 weeks before an EDR modchip hits the market that reports whatever you want it to report.
-Rylfaeth
I understand some of the privacy pundits bitching all around about how this is an "invasion of privacy." However, the 5 seconds leading up to a crash can provide important data for the manufacturers and accident investagators...particularly if the driver of the car is killed in the crash.
;)
It's interesting that it has the top speed recorded, which is kinda the death blow in this case. In most speed-related auto collisions, law enforcement goes by road conditions and skid marks to determine the speed of the vehicle at impact. Imagine the mess if that were a child running after a ball...
Personally, I'm glad this guy is going to prison. There is no excuse for excessive speed in a residential neighborhood...especially when that exceeded by a factor of four. That's what they built highways for!
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
Cross a few wires oops, no more EDS. ;)
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
he gets it from this paragraph in the article
"While all vehicles with air bags use EDRs, other automakers have not been as quick to increase the amount of information recorded. Some are worried that consumers may resent having such personal information collected and they're waiting to see what happens to GM, Haseltine said."
emphasis added...
Stupidity is doing 114mph in a neighborhood. As long as necessary information only is kept in the EDR then there aren't any problems. Look at this situation. You're driving the speed limit on a two lane road, which is 55mph. Its rainy, but the road is fairly straight. Another car loses control because they were going 100mph and hits you head on. You spend a few days in the hospital because you were lucky. The other driver dies. No one witnessed the wreck. You've just been blamed for his death. However, upon checking the opposing vehicle's EDR, your name is cleared, your insurance rates don't skyrocket, and you've got a new car and are back on track in a few weeks. And of course this was posted under a privacy heading. If you were speeding and wreck because of it, you deserve to be blamed for said wreck. The EDR is just a bit of hardware to help in an already-confusing process of determining driver fault. I could have been cleared of fault on my last wreck if my 98 Cavalier had been checked for its EDR. Opposing party said I stopped at an intersection in heavy rain and turned my lights off. EDR could have said I was moving at around 20mph through the intersection when the van with no lights t-boned me doing 80. Fun stuff.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
While I can see the benefits of this technology, I also see serious risks in how it can be used.
The accident investigator was able to calculate that he was driving 98 mph using skid marks and the condition of the vehicles, and they didn't have to utilize a black box that could easily be fooled.
The police can piece back together accident scenes with very little eye witness testimony, I only see these new EDR's as an erosion of privacy. How long will it be before the police can scan my vehicle to see if I'm wearing my seatbelt, or ticket me remotely (think red light cameras only for speeding?)
The argument that insurance companies will eventually require these is even more likely.
I couldn't agree with you more. If you kill someone, you should be held accountable. If you were travelling the speed limit, and it was just an accident, then let the facts show that. If your a lieing asshole on top of the fact that your that you dont realize you should travel 114 in a residential area, then you should get the book thrown at you.
I have no problem at all with these devices being in my car. I pay the occasional speeding ticket, but I've yet to have these devices influence that. In fact, I feel better knowing that they can help convict people who need to be put away.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
You know, there's no legitimate reason for that claim, and I have yet to hear a 'privacy pundit' explain WHY it's an invasion of privacy. I'm very pro-personal-privacy, and I didn't like the idea when I heard about it- but I've long since realized that there really wasn't any basis for those feelings- that it was just a knee-jerk reaction.
I realized that the data would only help me if I was not at fault, since it would be more accurate than 'accident' reconstruction. It could help me even if I was at fault. In either case, maybe a witness claims I was doing "at least 60", and the black box shows them to be dead wrong(I won't say lie- people are very bad at speed estimation as a rule, and that's under excellent circumstances). The box shows I was doing 40. A 60-in-a-35 now turns into a 40-in-a-35; still speeding, but a whole other picture.
Suddenly the "speed freak murderer who couldn't avoid that kid in the road because of his speed" turns into "that driver couldn't avoid that kid who ran out into the road without looking."
However, the 5 seconds leading up to a crash can provide important data for the manufacturers and accident investagators...particularly if the driver of the car is killed in the crash.
...or if the driver simply doesn't remember, as often happens to people involved in collisions. Someone I know was rear-ended by an SUV-driving-moron doing about 80. One second, the other driver was doing 25 in the right lane(slowed traffic), minding his own business. The next thing he remembered was lying in the grass with an EMT leaning over him saying, "hey, you okay buddy?" He remembers nothing about getting rear-ended by the SUV driver.
Please help metamoderate.
When I was 19, I came across some money, and went out and bought some exteremely fast cars. One of them (not the fastest, but my favorite) was a 1999 Mustang Cobra convertible. Just over 150MPH top speed.
Speeding became my life. I'd fly along the freeways by day, but at night it was a fucking free for all. Top speed down highway 85, racing through the santa cruz mountains, tearing up hwy 101, you name it.
There were a dozen times I pushed it to the edge and came out okay, but there was one that changed my speeding career forever. I was coming home from a ski trip, just entering the Si valley and getting pissed as hell about all the traffic. I was going about 130MPH up hwy 280, and all of a sudden the fast lane came to a stop. I swerved to the right just as the Lawrence expwy exit was coming up, and holy shit there were 50 cars at a standstill in the slow lane. I stood on the ABS - the car started to fishtail and I went flying down the emergency lane kicking up dust with 4" on the right between me and the guard rail. Finally I came to a stop just before the exit, and figured the quickest way out of there was to get my ass back on the freeway and head home, do I did. 100 horns honking.
I will never forget that. 10ms later on the brakes, and I'd have killed myself and at least the occupants of a couple other cars. I quit speeding right after that and sold the 'stang.
Not sure what the moral of this story is - speeding will kill you, everyone knows that. But if you're really into speed, I don't think anything but a near death (or death) experience will change your ways.
"Computers never make mistakes, do they?"
Not nearly as often as humans.
But a human will never make the same mistake 50,000 times in a row in under 2.5 seconds wiping out an entire database.
To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Information is stored at 1 second intervals, and the last five seconds before airbag deployment or near-deployment are saved in non-volatile memory. The information saved typically includes:
There's also post-crash data, which is useful for deciding whether airbag deployment should have occured. (That's actually why the data is recorded and why the NTSB analyzes it for collisions where airbag deployment was unnecessary.)
When you see this data graphed over time, it tells you quite a bit about the accident. There's more than speed information. Seeing throttle and brake inputs for five seconds before the collision gives a good indication of what the driver was doing. In this case, press reports say "Court records show the recorder in Matos' 2002 Pontiac Trans Am measured his speed at 114 mph five seconds before the crash in Pembroke Pines. The device detected he was pressing the gas pedal at 99 percent of its maximum capacity. A second before the crash, he was still doing 103 mph." Any questions?
But this is primitive compared to the Eaton VORAD radar system on some heavy trucks. That collects enough information to show what the other vehicles were doing.
Why can't he? The government already did. Congress recommended some time back that speed limits be set to the 85th percentile speed for a given stretch of roadway if no other major factor dictated that the limit be less (ie, engineering surveys show that a certain turn cannot be safely negotiated over XXmph for the average car). In that vein, surveys are regularly taken showing the speeds for roads. Almost unilaterally, the 85th percentile speed is above the posted limit. Why is that? I'll give you an example. Interstate 405 going through eastside Seattle metro area (Kirkland, Bellevue, Renton) is 60mph. The most recent numbers I've seen from Washington state surveys (2001, I believe) showed that the 85th percentile was approximately 71mph (or so -- you can find the reports on Washington's DOL web site). Just driving that interstate will back up those numbers -- most people on that road drive around 70mph except when approaching known speed traps. Shouldn't the speed limit be around 70mph then, if Washington was trying to follow Congressional guidelines and not attempt to line their pockets with speeding fines?
Yes, there's the occassional bonehead that thinks he needs to speed like a moron. However, studies have shown that these extreme speeders are more likely to actually drive the speed limit when that limit is closer to a speed they're comfortable driving (the difference between 60mph and 80mph is much more than the difference between 70mph and 80mph, so the guy going 80mph would be more likely to drive at 70mph than 60mph). On the flip side, there are those that aren't comfortable going that fast, and that's fine. There's a reason there are multiple lanes. Follow the standard "Keep right unless passing" rule (or "keep middle", since you probably shouldn't block on-/off-ramp access), and you'll do fine. As well, reducing the difference in speed does a whole lot more than just reducing speed. I'd rather get hit by an 80mph car while I'm also doing 80mph than get hit by the same car while I'm only doing 60mph. Obviously this only pertains to wide, divided highways. Residential areas or two-lane non-divided highways are much more dangerous.
Strangely, I was just chatting about this with my father (Happy Father's Day to all) and a couple of points came up that I thought were interesting.
The first was:
Blackboxes can be mandated on U.S. airplanes (which are privately owned) because the U.S. government can regulate interstate commerce and the airspace above the U.S. belongs to the citizens of the U.S. and are administrated by the government on our behalf.
Similarly, the interstate highway system is basically under the jurisdiction of the federal government and regulated by them (cars must meet federal safety guidelines, etc.) so it seems fairly straightforward to me that requiring black boxes in cars is well within the purvue of what we have allowed the government to handle in the past , especially since more people die in car accidents in the U.S. each year than in airplace crashes.
There is also precident for the concept that you can't just do anything to your own property (e.g. building permits, zoning regulations, child abuse laws..sorta). So this doesn't bother me too much as long as we are vigilent about misuse.
Which leads to the second point we discussed: the big problem is with the insurance companies. Their interest as a business is not really to protect you from harm, but to avoid paying claims since this costs them money. Often times this manifests itself in positive ways (credits for joining a health club, driver safety programs), but can also be rife for abuse. Everyone I know seems to have a story about recalcitrant insurance companies dragging their feet on legitimate claims. Personal injury lawyers prey on those fears all the time.
I could easily see a world where insurance companies look for any scrap of evidence they can to avoid paying your claim... these black boxes can supply it in spades: you were going 5 mph over the limit, zagged left instead of right, etc... until basically there would come a point where it would be difficult or impossible to get the insurance company to perform the service that you pay them for: to help you absorb some of the cost of a tragedy, self-inflicted or otherwise, in your life.
I wonder how many people would start dropping their car insurance because it really provides them with no value since there could always be some momentary fault found with their driving that the insurance company could point to. Perhaps we need to think about how absolutely some of this data should be interpreted; maybe the splitting of blame between parties in an accident handles this already. Should no-fault insurance become mandatory? Or should the adoption of this technology herald the beginning of individualized mass transit (that makes my head hurt typing it, I mean basically smart highways)?
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In X-Windows the client serves YOU!
Okay, people have been concerned about invasions of privacy, police/lawmakers making the boxes WiFi etc. Alas this is probably the way of things to come. Since it is coming, lets direct it in the way we want.
Right now we have to live with the lowest common denominator of driving skills (of which the star of the article was one). This means an SUV driving soccer mom with 5 brats is held to the same standards as a dedicated* rider on a GXR1000 motorcycle. Vehicle differences aside (braking, handling etc...) the people behind the wheel are completely different as well.
Since realtime reporting of all vehicle activity stresses the current regulations to the point of ridiculousness*2, start keying it into drivers as well.
For example I really wish there was some way to do gradiated speed limits. Some sort of transponder (similar to the tolls) or a broadcasting black box that lets the police know you are qualified to go that speed (so one doesn't get stopped without cause/waste police time etc...).
Add in a fee for qualification testing and usage to make up for lost revenue in tickets (are they really about anything else?). I'm sure people would jump at the chance despite any costs the state imposes.
Yes there are plenty of details to work out in the system, but hey, it's a slashdot post.
*This does not include the teenager riding around at 90+ in sandals, shorts, sunglasses and a helmet if the law requires it.
*2 If you honestly believe that you have never broken a vehicular law, you've probably just not read the laws close enough.
* We dance where angels fear to tread *
60mph sounds reasonable to most people because they drive that fast about every day. This guy was traveling almost twice as fast as he was willing to admit. That is 84mph over the speed limit. Look at it this way, whatever the stopping distance of his car is (was) at 30mph, he was traveling almost 4 times faster. His stopping distance isn't increased 4 times, it would be closer to 16 times as far as his 30-0 braking distance.
Check here and here for some braking distances up to 100mph. Note the measured 30-0 versus the 100-0 stopping distances. A 2002 Corvette Z06 takes 108feet (60 - 0 mph) and 312feet (100 - 0 mph), 114mph would take the vette over 400feet.
This equates to the two drivers having 1/16th of the time and distances to react and make corrections. He was traveling at
114*5280/60/60=167.2 feet per second. His car weighed over 3600lbs with him inside, convert weight to mass, 3600/32.17=111.91lb
(167.2^2)*111.91/2=1,564,269
He was wielding a kinetic energy of over 1.5 million ft/lb, more than enough to destroy a school bus or go through a house, etc.
In my opinion, he wasn't even close to being accountable by admitting to 60mph.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
In Europe, or at least Germany, they already test if you haven't been wearing your seatbelt. Not by any fancy technologies recording that fact, they simply cut off a portion of your seatbelt and analyze the fabric, they can tell whether it has been worn or not that way..... and if it wasn't worn the insurance company won't pay your medical bills.
2. In this case, the evidence from the black box did not by itself decide the case. The speed limit was 30 MPH, he said he was going 60 MPH, the investigator estimated 98 MPH and the EDR indicated 114 MPH. Now, 60, 98, or 114 in a residential 30 zone is reckless driving anyways. All this proved was that he was lying,
3. There was no problems with unreasonable search, in as much as the judge had issued a search warrant for this information.
4. The problem is with automated prosecution, which is what traffic-cameras are, and some say this could be turned into. Combined with GPS and tables of speed limits and such.... Seems this enormous focus on speed to the detriment of other dangerous behavior is caused because speed is easy to measure. I do not for a second believe that we will be any safer with people going 30 MPH, behaving like zombies. Just because the speed limit is 30.
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
Lets face it.... 1.5 tons @ 98 mph is an extremely effective demolition tool.
I speak tongue-in-cheek because my best friend and his gf were killed by a driver moving at 90 mph thru a red light....by a truck vs a small compact car.
If it helps put the bastards away for life for murder, which is what I felt it was... then all the better. I'll give up that little bit of safety so that no one else will ever have to experience that phone call.
Police officers not obeying the laws are so bad in some places (like where I live), that I've come up with a nice idea! I say that there should be governors on the cruiser that doesn't allow the car to operate above a certain set speed unless the siren/lights are on. If it could be tailored to fit the speed limit of the street, that would be even better.
Police are supposed to be setting the example, not casually breaking the law as if they were above it. There's absolutely no reason why anybody should be speeding, right? Why shouldn't that also apply to police in non emergency situations? I'd assume that tampering with a police cruiser would be a pretty serious offense, too.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Wrong wrong wrong! A seatbelt does in fact help other drivers ...no seat belt...hangs on to the bottom of the steering wheel turns, car strikes another car in oncoming lane (no serious injuries but lots' of autos (yes "s"!!) damaged.
true accidents (I'm also an EMT)
--low speed (5mph) side impact that tossed the driver to the right
--low (20mph) speed rear impact, driver pushed back into seat and then forward by the impact, out of position to control the car (the breaks or steering wheel) run into car crossing intersection.
True, neither driver was really "at fault" but both would have avoided off loading their hardship onto other people if they had just been in position to control their cars.
And to address your second part, your personal choice to wear or not wear your seatbelt is tired to your insurance company's responsibility to have to pay your claim. Many insurance companies tie their rates to a promise to wear your seatbelt (I do... as does everyone I know in the public safety business). If you check a box that says that you refuse to use your seatbelt (remember, it's your personal choice) then they can change you a higher rate because, odds are, you are going to cost more to treat after your accident.
The people on Slashdot should be good enough at physics to know that only a freaking idiot doens't wear a seatbelt because it's a personal choice....it's about as smart a choice as walking at night with sunglasses on. There just isn't a reason.
-- What? Another