Slashdot Mirror
'Black Box' Readings Help Convict Montreal Driver
the man writes "From CBC News, Here's one that is going to get a lot of attention in the coming years. Quebec police won a dangerous-driving conviction Friday using evidence from the 'black box' in the car, a first in the province. Turns out that not many people know of these things. Time to start working on the mod for my Toyota."
How about just driving responsibly instead of trying to mod your box so you can continue driving irresponsibly? If you've gotten in an accident AND the box happens to show you were driving like a fool, then in order for it to be a conspiracy someone would have intentionally had to get you in an accident while your box was malfunctioning.
Right. I believe you.
Dangerous-driving conviction? And that's bad exactly how?
The owls are not what they seem
It records a few simple data for a short period... like the events leading up to a crash. Unless you plan on using your car as a murder weapon, I wouldn't worry much about it.
OTOH, when it starts recording everything and sending it to the police every night at 2am, I will be among the first in the driveway with a soldering iron.
Why do planes have black boxes in the first place? I'm guessing the pilots of the plane have a responsibility to their passengers. In the event of a crash, grieving families might want to know what exactly went wrong before a crash. Is a car any different?
If I'm a passenger driving with a friend, that friend has a responsibility to get me from A to B safely. The same rules apply to me as a driver. I know that if a friend of mine was killed in a crash that I'd like to know if it happened to be someone else's fault or ultimately the car that was driving my friend's fault.
If you can prove these things inaccurate in crash conditions then maybe we should be second-guessing whether to use them to prosecute people. Until then, I don't see why it's harmful to use them as a tool to reconstruct fault.
Black boxes in vehicles should be common knowledge, easily retrievable in a court case (preferably fitting a common standard), and tamperproof.
The fault I find with them right now is that because most people don't know they're there it's more likely black box information would be used in cases against the owner rather than by the owner as concurring evidence to an accident report.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Tire marks. The amount of energy required to cause so much metal deformation. Distances airborne. Inertial effects. Witnesses. And I am sure there are many I did not think of.
The black box evidence is just one of many. It will either confirm the other evidence, in which case you have some explaining to do, or it may exonerate you. ( i.e. you WERE driving a safe legal speed and the other party did in fact do a real lulu in front of you. ).
My own take - its a non-issue. Every observable event will leave evidence. This is just one more of many trails left after an automotive accident event. You can really prejudice yourself by trying to tamper with the evidence.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
I agree. I'll be one of the first people to jump up at privacy violations, but I think both that the privacy issues with this are minimal and that the benefits are enormous. I would pay to have one of these installed so in the event of a crash if there's a dispute over who is at fault or if insurance should cover, I can pull the information and say "look, not my fault." Of course, if these start phoning home and reporting violations, then we have a major problem. They should be accessable only with a warrant or by the owner (or people s/he hires).
Moreover, you have not argued in any way why this is actually a rather good idea, nor specified what "this" is -- is it the box, or its admission as evidence, or something else?
Further, you tread rather dangerously close to what I call the technicalist fallacy, which is the belief that technology will solve the problems of human behaviour. The box will not stop speeding, but rather increase the amount of information the police have at their disposal. This fallacy is constantly invoke to intrude on daily life. And the more we crave our convenience, the more it will take away our privacy. And don't tell me the roads are not private, for this is not the issue. The issue is making any given citizen culpable for every minute of his/her life.
cheers, potor (like you, I do not own a car, and nor do I ever plan to buy one.)
"After all, a car is a lethal weapon just like a gun and guns have serial numbers."
Actually a car is a TOOL which is used for TRANSPORTATION and occasionally has SIDE-EFFECTS which may be harmful, but usually just have the intended effect.
Guns, by contrast, are TOOLS which are used for KILLING and commonly have the intended effect.
By your logic, a whole damn lot of things are lethal weapons just because they cause death. Your mistake is in calling a car a weapon. Weapons are DESIGNED to cause harm. Cars are designed to MOVE.
Now, if you rig a car up with scythed wheels like a good ol' fashioned war chariot, that'll qualify as a weapon.
Furthermore, I don't see why every single vehicle should not be manufactured with this feature. After all, a car is a lethal weapon just like a gun and guns have serial numbers.
I think most of them are now. The collected data is used to improve airbag designs. Since airbags are dangerous (though, admittedly less dangerous than hitting your steering column and dashboard when you're brought to an abrupt halt from 131km/h in Montreal traffic), manufacturers have a tremendous liability if airbags are killing people in accidents. I know for sure that GM, DaimlerChrysler and most of the Japanese companies are using this.
131km/h is 81.4 MPH. Speaking as one who has lived in Montreal and driven on Montreal's old freeways (built before there was a real understanding of freeway design), this is too fast for the freeways of the area, let alone the city streets. Much of downtown Montreal has narrow winding streets with loads of pedestrian and cyclist traffic. Doing 81.4 MPH in those conditions is criminal irresponsibility, and an individual capable of doing something like that clearly has such a gross lack of understanding of cars and their capabilities that they probably thought 2 Fast 2 Furious was a good movie.
Never been to Montreal? Would you drive 80MPH through the streets of Lower Manhattan? Downtown Chicago?
Christ, parts of downtown Montreal have cobblestoned streets. Wet cobblestones are insanely slippery, and you still can stand at an intersection and watch some idiot who thinks his MacPherson-strut equipped front-wheel-drive Acura Integra with tinted windows can take him around any corner safely at twice - let alone four times - the posted speed limit.
This should have been a criminal conviction, especially with the supporting evidence from the black box.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Yes, if you want to have this box in your car, by all means opt in. If you dont want it, you shouldn't have to have it. You'll pay higher insurance premiums, but thats fair.
No privacy violation -- it doesn't track where you've been, since these things only record a few seconds of data, it doesn't transmit to anyone, and it isn't easily accessable.
Further, the box has an equal ability to prove that someone is not at fault. It is there as a neutral observer.
Well, in my country there is a fifth amendment to our constitution that prevents the government from compelling us to incriminate ourselves in criminal court. This is a direct violation of that amendment. The biggest argument against this, though, is that there is no third-party validation. The local cops have to calibrate their radar guns, on a regular basis, with some known standard. The black box on the other hand, is configured however GM wants it to be configured, and is held to no external standard. In fact, they could alter the data to protect themselves in certain error conditions and no one could do anything about it because they're accountable to no one. Other factors such as damage to the device, and more likely, damage to sensors, could alter the readings recorded by the device, and the poor driver would be convicted with almost no recourse - the car company probably couldn't even be forced to provide the source to the box code since its a trade secret. This is one of the worst ideas ever. At least word is out now, soon there will be a pissed off engineer who will figure out how to bypass it....
When you drive your car on a public road your actions are public, not private. The police, courts, and public have every right to see the contents of your black box when driving on a public road.
Anarchists never rule