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Automobile Black Box Sends Driver to Jail
myzor writes "This article from the Montreal Gazette reports that a driver got 18 months in jail for speeding that killed a man, after the black box in his car revealed he was going 157 km/h (98 mph) in a 50 km/h zone in downtown Montreal. The recording device, which stores data on how a car is driven in the last five seconds before a collision, showed that four seconds before impact, the driver had the gas pedal to the floor and didn't brake before impact." Reader ergo98 writes "Setting a precedent for the Canadian legal system, a Quebec man was convicted based upon the incriminating evidence found in his own car's black box." The Star also has another article looking at the issues surrounding the data recorder.
But the groundbreaking case is also raising questions about the privacy of Canada's drivers, millions of whom have no idea that their cars may be equipped with devices that record data that might later be used in court against them.
...less than a week before the third anniversary of his smashing into another vehicle at more than three times the speed limit.
Well I think they all just need to check their manuals and see if there's one in their car. Either way, who cares; you shouldn't be going insanely out of control in the car anyway, and if you cause an accident, take some responisibility for it.
How did it take them three years to figure that out? Wasn't the data right there in their hands?
Wireless News www.DailyWireless
I read once somewhere that these 'blackboxes' may be vital in making your airbag and other critical operations work. Removing them based off of privacy concerns (AKA fear of getting caught) may be foolish. I know removal may be suggested multiple times.
I do expect the technology to get better, but these black boxes are not yet able to navigate your automobile to the nearest police facility after you break the law. This will require increases in AI or centralized monitoring that do not yet exist.
I'm guessing you don't know what downtown montreal is like, driving 157kph is insanely fast given the size of the streets here, i've never seen anyone do more than 80 downtown.
also montreal drivers know that we're in the jay-walking capital of the world.
MABASPLOOM!
My 1998 Neon isn't on that list ;)
Candle burns its brightest in the dark
there was a discussion regarding this type of evidence. The lawyer and the engineering types where wondering as to the accuracy/reliabilty factor of these automtive black boxes. This of course would be the challenge in court...
Little bastard should be barred from having a license to operate any vehicle, for life.
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
This is disturbing. Maybe the box in my car is broken and 'stuck at 98'.
They forget to mention that if you are accused of breaking the law you can use the black-box to prove you weren't.
It's just an instrument measuring the state of the car. People don't call Odometers a "privacy issue".
While this may well be the beginning of a horrible slippery slope, it's hard to feel for the driver in this case. Three times the speed limit? Fuckin' hang him.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
I just can't get angry at this. Most modern cars already have data recorders that monitor what was happening when the "Check Engine" light goes on.
If black boxes mean I have an objective witness when some a-hole hits me at 98mph, I say bring on the black boxes.
Floored accelerator while doing 157 km/h through an intersection in a 50 zone, and not braking before collecting another car. Maybe big brother got it right for once?
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
These black boxes have far more benefits that outweigh any concerns about privacy. The use of them can serve as neutral observers to determine what really happened in an accident, and can help automobile manufacturers improve safety with the use of this data.
So no, the black box didn't send him to jail. Killing a guy with his car did.
Slashdot Moderation: From positive to terrible in 2 "insightful" posts.
I have posted on my car club forum (ffoc.co.uk) before about these devices, and quite frankly I find them deeply disturbing!
As all of us Slasdot'ers know, technology isnt always all its cracked up to be, and the idea that this bit of kit could send you to jail based on some possibly accurate information stored in it is crazy!
Does anyone know how to disable or remove them from ur car? Because I pretty sure they are not required by law here in the UK!
James
Automobile Black Box Sends Driver to Jail
Um, no. Actually driving like a criminal, and using one's car as a weapon is what sent this scum bag to jail. The "black box" just helped make sure this freak is off the streets.
sad robot making broken music
Lead-lined beaded seat covers and tinfoil driving gloves will become all the rage.
He only got 18 months for killing a man? For the speed he was going I would really expect a longer sentance.
This is great! Finally a Linux based car system that outs criminals!
Linux Rules!
Remember that this guy did kill a man as he was doing triple the speed limit. This maybe isnt a "grab your tinfoil hat" article as much as a "he only got 18 months?" article. If the RIAA gets its way, you'd get much longer than that for sharing a mp3.
A man was flooring the gas pedal, and he didn't even break before he hit someone.
Sounds like he was being an idiot.
Why are people so upset about things like this? I'm curious. What evern happened to personal responsibility?
Ted
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
I have to bring the privacy issue up. While there are some obvious good things about having this black box in one's car, one must ask though what exactally is this car monitoring, and what are the laws/regulations on gleeming information out. Also, what is the integrity of this box. If it is eaisly tweakable or corruptable--then can it really be trusted. If something like the patriot act( Yes I know this was not in America) can be applied to this kind of device, then perhaps more people should consider using a bike. Also, will it become law for these devices to exist, or would said driver be allowed to remove the device.
Driving 157 km/h in a 50 km/h zone is just totally criminal, and there is noone who doesn't know that. He bears full responsibility for the death. I find it disgusting that the defence lawyer thinks of appealing.
I like this use of technology. A lot.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
What? Try proper grammar, it works.
...about this so obvious violation of privacy...?
We should just require all pedestrians to wear bull-body airbags.
As much time as I spend working on my rides,I would know if there is one.(got rid of the damn air bags too)
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
...but when it comes down to someone trying to skirt the law with their lawyers and blatant lies then I'm all for this. I imagine that the convicted was going to say he wasn't speeding in court. Too bad we can't implant black boxes into convicted felons. Next time they "don't kill someone" there will be a black box implanted in their skin to place them at the scene of the crime.
My god, I kind of sounded like John Ass-hcroft there.
18 months is nothing more than a slap on the wrist. 5 years sounds good to be..
I'm one for putting speed restrictors on cars, seen a couple of nasty accidents in my time. Would make black box redundant
With the evidence that this guy was going 98mph and hit the guy without breaking, is 18months really that harsh of a penalty? Also, I wonder if insurance agencies will factor this into their agreements; something like: "thou shalt not disconnect this blackbox and if we see that you were breaking local laws we won't pay anything (or as much)".
-Wes
Another dupe. Yawn. This story was originally posted last October when he was convicted.
I'm sure a lot of people here on slashdot will think that this is just terrible and a travesty, But why? This is a win for society. This guy eas driving 100 in a 30mph zone. Is that really somebody you want on the roads? I don't.
But what about the privacy implications, you ask? Which ones. No data is stored unless you're in a collision, and in that case information is in the best interest of all parties.
I drive a car. I speed. I own aa radar detector. But this doesn't botehr me, because I'm a catious driver. I don't drive at highway speeds in a downtown area. I don't run people over. So unless you do, this isn't a problem.
Freedom is the freedom to say that 2 + 2 = 4
The lesson is clear: stay out of movie theaters^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H.. cars and you won't get arrested.
for the confused americans..
100mph in a 35mph zone..
BTW.. it's montreal.. you'd understand if you drove there.. they're all nuckin futs
I see the uses for a product as such but if we keep allowing the govt to monitor us at what point will it stop? After your car has the black box they will want you to breath in a tube to start your car every time.
Driving too fast is bad.
Killing people while driving can be a fucking crime.
When will people realize that, for god's sake ? You have no excuse when you kill someone while driving too fast, especially in downtown.
If only a government had the balls to resist the pressure of car manufacturers groups and impose an engine throttle limitation for common vehicles...
Regards,
jdif
Let's overcome our weakness.
I have no respect for the drivers privacy in this instance. None. He was traveling on a public road, with no consideration whatsoever of all other people.
People who drive cars recklessly make me sick... you are trundling around in a heavy chunk of metal, thats squashy on the inside, and hard on the outside. You are endangering everyone elses lives doing this. You must do everything reasonably possible to be as safe as you can.
If you want speed, be a real man (women are generally more intelligent) and buy a quick bike. Far quicker, and mistakes are far more severely punished.
"Thats right buddy, the large print giveth, and the small print taketh away."
I concur with other slashdoter that there is no privacy issue there.
The guy committed a crime and killed someone, then he lied either to the police or in court by saying he was going just a little over the speed limit. He deserved to go to jail.
If the blackbox was used to check if someone went over the speed limit (but committed no crime) just to give him a speed ticket without other evidence, then I would called that an invasion of privacy.
In this case, there was some evidence that the guy was lying about its speed, but not enough to jail him. So as good investigators, they seeked more evidences by analysing the blackbox. It looks fair to me!
In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with this. Its not like it was broadcasting this data - its only looked at in the case of an accident. If it can make these swine fry, all the better.
This guy killed someone my being a stupid jackass. He was going over 100km/h over the limit in a populated area. Rechless and/or drunk drivers deserve no pity. The defense is trying to appeal his sentence, but i think the only way he should be let out of jail is to make sure he'll never get behind a wheel again - not ever. He lost that right when he took it away from someone else.
its just amazing to see someone so selfish to take a life in such a stupid way, and then even consider arguing about getting jail time.
Now my car is probably a little older then anything that contains these, it's a 91, but I'm wondering if you could legally remove this if you wanted to?
I'm in the process of stripping my car down to it's bare essentials for autoX use however it needs to be street legal to get to the track.
I know that the aftermarket ECU I've installed is illegal because it can be tuned by the user and therefore fails the local smog rules. However when I had the car tested the inspectors didn't find the ECU and the results still came out clean enough so I don't care.
In my mind the most likely place to have this tracking hardware is in the ECU. It already knows all of the information he was convicted on. The new ECU has the capability of logging the same info, but I can turn it on or off.
I'd hate for something stupid like that to be the thing that gets my car pulled off the road.
Well, even your passport shows in which countries you've been, and can be used in court. As long as you know there's a black box recording your speed and that thing is not broadcasting, there's no privacy issue in my opinion, as the information is not disclosed until needed.
No one can come and "have a look" at your black box just to break your privacy: they must have a reason and the authority to do that.
Besides, it's ludicrous how the lawyer calls the sentence "very, very severe": 18 month for killing a man speeding at 157 km/h? 5 to 10 years seems a more reasonable range to me, other than driving-licence barring for life.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
I have to take off my tinfoil hat for this one. While where I go and how fast I got there aren't anyone's business under normal circumstances, five seconds of data gathered right before I crash are fair game.
However, there are some issues to be careful about:
* Five seconds is probably not long enough to know what really happened. I could have mashed the brake to the floor at t-10s, then hit the gas to avoid being T-Bone'd at t-6s... in that case, it looks like I was rushing headlong into the wreck.
* But how long is enough? 30 seconds? Five minutes? A day or two? Pick a silly extreme, and someone is likely to attempt to legislate it.
* Who has read access to the data? It's my data, so I should be able to plug the car into my USB port and see it for myself (as should my attorney).
* Who has write access? Obviously, the car's sensors and nobody else. But are there safeguards (digital signature?) to ensure against tampering? And what if a hacker replaces the car's CPU?
* How about "erase"? IIRC, airline black boxes have a button that the pilot can hit on his way out of the cockpit to erase the voice recorder after a successful landing (defined: one you walk away from). Is this a Good Thing, or Considered Harmful?
* Is it fair if my car has the feature, but the other guy's doesn't? You can tell that I was speeding, but what if he was speeding more? Remember the "Malcolm in the Middle" episode, where the camera "saw" Mom pull out in front of someone, but another camera showed that the other car made a U-Turn right in front of her?
Lots of issues to be resolved. But I'll get one, if I can, *if* there's an insurance discount.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
If it's simply saving the previous five seconds before impact, then what's the problem? This will be an objective and relatively perfect witness.
Now if they start monitoring everything (as in every speed you go, along with GPS to know what road you were) that's a completely different issue, and should raise some privacy concerns.
This, OTOH, should make the roads safer, as well as reduce insurance rates.
I mean, I SHOULD be able to drive like that and I SHOULD be able to kill someone and I shouldn't have to worry about Big Brother knowing about it.
why SHOULD you be allowed? law enforcement is in place, specifically so you can't do these sorts of things. it isn't your right to speed, nor is it your right to kill. both are illegal, and for goo reason.
MABASPLOOM!
TheRegister ran the story about faulty speed cameras in the UK. Of course, a black box located in a car is much less likely to make a mistake than a radar. However, there always will be that possibility.
Combine the black box with wireless reporting, and radar will no longer be necessary. Of course, the privacy concerns would probably do that idea in. But it still pays to be vigilant.
It still would be theoretically possible to implement RFID reporting that would be built into the streets in cities...
I know that the metro/queer eye craze is going strong. Is it because this speeder killed MAN?
"in jail for speeding that killed man "
My black boxes is stuck at "doesn't signal while changing lanes" and "sings along to the Backstreet boys at top volume!"
They day I get pulled over and ticketed because my box says I'm "stuck at nerd" is the day that the terrorists win.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Remeber the first episode? Two guys tried to steal KITT? He promptly took them to the police and ejected them on to their hood.
Fight Spammers!
I read that as:
The Montreal motorist betrayed by the truth has been sent to a facility which offers the possibility of those lacking responsibility to rethink their stance on this moral predicament.
If the tree falls and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? For those to dense ... if information exists that is not made aware, does it hold any importance?
Ah yes, it then becomes a matter to how much truth we are entitled to maintain to ourselves. Or in another word, privacy. Corruption will remain all the while truth is suppressed. I don't like this fact, but I find it doubtful we'll get there because we are brothers (sisters -- does it even matter?)
(Note I just got done watching Dogma ;)
Other important factors are
He lied, he said he was going only slightly over the speed limit.
There was a huge amount of damage, that was not representative of his claimed speed.
There were no skid marks (Although ABS may limit them)
The investigators got a court order to look at the black box. They already had evidence that he was going faster then he claimed. And that he didn't try to prevent or reduce the accident.
The only thing the black box did was confirm evidence they already had, and make it more precise (exact speed, and that he didn't hit the brakes.)
Obviously, this guy needs some kind of treatment by professionals. It is a good thing the black box could help nail him.
But I really fail to see how this is interesting on Slashdot. This is obviously not a privacy issue. The black box records information about the last five seconds before a collision. That's hardly a privacy concern.
I concur with the other posters that there's not a privacy issue here, when you're on a public road driving a vehicle that not only affects you but the roads you drive on and everyone you encounter during that drive, the needs of public safety outweigh any "privacy" issues with the car recording speed or other engine statistics. It's not like the car is sitting there with a notebook writing down where you're going, either.
This guy's own stupidity got him in trouble, I for one hope that he gets his license revoked for life. They have good public transport up there. Let him take the bus.
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
> also montreal drivers know that we're in the
> jay-walking capital of the world.
I'm just waiting for the lawyer to lay the blame on Grand Theft Auto.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
At the racetrack...
;) ) and there's some yahoo in a pimped out honda civic going 90 mph..
Seriously, how many times have you been tooling down the interstate (Or here in Alberta, the yellowhead
Chances are the driver of that car
hasn't seen a racetrack or taken the required car control clinics and training nessecary to safely drive at those speeds...
Never mind the fact that potholes, debris, wild animals and of course pedestrians and other drivers exist on our public roads.
I saw this on the news last night and thought "hmmm... Precident setting" The problem with a black box, is that it might be prone to abuse. Lets say you rent a car and exceed the speed limit (80mph isn't usualy legal anyway as an example).
Perhaps the rental car company will charge you a fee for speeding. (maybe to cover any photo radar your triggered).
That kind of thing...
Also, on the news they intervied the dead Victim's sister.. she of course mentioned that without the black box data they would have figgured her brother
was at fault.. etc etc.
Guess there's 2 sides to the black box issue. It can be both good and bad, abused or not.
That said, if I buy a car with one. I will disable it. Hell, my car, my choice to make.
What if the black boxes could be used to help us in other ways? Imagine if every year your insurance agency could look at a black box from your car and see that you generally drove the speed limit and even avoided accidents. This could lower your insurance rates. On the other hand, if this box showed you were a horrible driver, maybe your rates would go up, or the insurance company would offer a safe driver course.
Notice.. that all those vehicles are made by GM or GM companies.. and all contain OnStar with the friendly operator on the end..
"Hello, This is OnStar.. Sir we're disabling your vehicle because your greatly exceeding the speed limit.. for your safety we are locking you in your car until the officer arrives.. An officer will be there shortly..".. "but.. lady.. I AM A DAMN COP!"
yes.. OnStar.. all seeing, all knowing.. and you thought you wouldn't want AAA anymore..
"I'm curious. What ever happened to personal responsibility?"
Our worst qualities did it in.
Responsability hurts. Must avoid pain. Do away with personal responsability. Pain all gone.
That high speed should be kept at the racetrack!
Is people will learn to drive around another 20 or 30 seconds before calling 911.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
"I mean, I SHOULD be able to drive like that and I SHOULD be able to kill someone and I shouldn't have to worry about Big Brother knowing about it." No, you shouldn't. That's why we have laws. This type of device isn't an invasion of my privacy. It's to protect me from the dumbass listed in the story.
Your speedometer might think you're going 100 km/h in a 40 zone, but you're actually not moving at all.
A more reliable measure of velocity / position is required -- possibly a motivation for including GPS in this kind of black box system?
The lack of intent is important. While the driver was reckless the death was an accident.
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
Is Canada in Europe now? How did they sneak out without us noticing?
Actually, the jay-walking capital of the world is Stockholm. In Sweden, a red light for pedestrians just means you're not insured if you get hit while on the street. It doesn't say anything about whether you're supposed to go or not.
You will not be convicted of anything based on ONLY the black box data. During an accident investigation a huge array of other evidence is naturally collected. If the accident inolves a fatality they will typically look at things down to the state of the filament in the lightbulb (turn signal bulbs, brake light bulbs, etc.) Using information like that they can tell if the bulb was lit when the impact ocurred. A deformed filament means it was heated so it was either on or on very recently. A clean break indicates a cold bulb not recently on. The fact that this a-hole was going 98 does not only come from the black box. Measurements of deformations of the vehicle, what it hit, etc. would allow calculations to determine at least a rough speed. If the calculations all show 20 mph and the black box shows 98 then the black box data will be thrown out the window. If physics calculations show 90 and the black box shows 98 then we're in the realm of statistical error. In short, I believe this is a case where if you're not doing something incredibly stupid you shouldn't be worried, the box will be your friend if you get in an accident. If you are doing something incredibly stupid then STOP IT or expect the box to bite you in the ass!
Anyone know if the Autobahn highway in Germany still lacks a speed limit?
Candle burns its brightest in the dark
I have no problems with the way this happened. I still have some faith in the legal process in Canada. The prosecutor petitioned the judge for the right to use the black-box as evidence, and won that right only after they had presented severe inconsistencies in testimony and evidence.
He was supposedly going just over the speed limit, but the excessive damage to the cars didn't support this. There were no skidmarks to suggest that he had tried to stop. He said the other car was running a red light. There were just a lot of things that didn't add up.
So, rather than just making a guess at who was right and who was lying, they brought in more evidence to make sure. That makes me feel more confident, not less. I'd rather have justice properly served, than not introduce that evidence for some silly reasons.
I'm a huge privacy advocate, but I don't oppose things like properly-granted search warrants, nor do I oppose this. If it gets abused in the future, then something should be done to prevent that abuse. But in this case, everything was done correctly, and what do you know, the system works.
Random and weird software I've written.
I used to live out that way (few blocks west)... Going fast on the road say 80ish wasn't that out of the norm, but nearly twice that, knowing that pedestrians/cars can suddenly come out of some blind alleys or out of the parking garages, serves him right to get in an accident, shame though he is only losing his license for 3 years, considering at least half of that will be time spent in jail...
I'd have to disagree with at least one of your boldly pronounced SHOULDs. You should NOT be able to kill someone and you most certainly should not be able to do it without worrying about big brother. That is precisely the point of government, you have all the freedom in the world, but that freedom comes to a screeching halt at the doormat of other people's freedoms. You are right on one thing though, you SHOULD be able to drive that fast. Buy only if you are able to do so without endangering anyone else's life. Whether or not that is even possible is certainly open to debate. In fact that very much is a valid debate. We have, as an aggregate, given up our freedom to drive that fast, because most interpret it as an unsafe act with great potential to hurt others. There are clear parallels here to gun control. Avoiding a constitutional argument, what is the difference between speed limits and gun control? If you dislike one, you should dislike the other.
Well, I have some karma to burn, so here we go.
157 km/h, in downtown Montreal.... what the fuck are you thinking?
This guy deserves it. How is this any different from an outside CCTV camera catching the whole incident? This makes everyone accountable.
The recording device, which stores data on how a car is driven in the last five seconds before a collision, showed that four seconds before impact, the driver had the gas pedal to the floor and didn't brake before impact.
+1 for perfectly reasonable uses of monitoring technology. Note how (a) it only recorded because there WAS an accident (post facto) and (b) the evidence was used only because someone was killed.
Let the leadfoot rot.
I hold the notion that privacy does not exist when you are on a motor way. It is only a matter of witnesses vs black box. The black box is more stustworthy. If you disagree and think that this data should not be availible, then I ask you how many other ways do you think the cops have to estimate his speed? From the damage to the car, pedestrian, and eye witnesses (if any) they can estimate his speed at impact. Its simple forensics. The black box just makes it more certain.
How acturate are they? Very. There are two ways to control the fuel injector pulse in cars. ine is Mass Air Flow (MAF) and the ither is speed-density. Either way, the computer is accurate enought to mix fuel to milliseconds on the injector pulse. (And we know milliseconds are forever to a MHZ computer)
The if MAF, the fuel is calcualted by the reading from the MAF sensor which gives the amount of air flow into the engine (take sint oaccount temperature of air too). Add 1/14.7 of that, and you have proper mixture. The other way is speed density. You measure the temperature of the air, the volume (displacement) of the engine, and the RPM, and it knows how much fuel to use as well.
Now that engine is connected to a transmision of fixed ratios. Here, we need to make an assumption, 1) the clutch is not in or failing (slipping) and 2) his wheels aren;t spinning against the pavement. Then from the RPM alone (which we know is tracked) you can accurately calculate the speed.
I think these boxes are a good thing. They will expose negligence and fraud. Also I think they have a tendancy to coroberate your story in an accident and actually come to your defense - that you actively tried to aviod it. All this helps place the blame on the correct person so justice can be served fairly.
I myself have been in 2 accidents where my guilt was questionable, had these been availible I am sure I would not have been at fault.
If you're using privacy to hide the truth, then there's something wrong with what you are doing, and you know that.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
This is an emotionally charged case where the individual was clearly at fault. As a test case, is this sufficiently compelling to allow it to stand as a precedent? After all, if you have nothing to hide, why should you be concerned that your driving behavior is being monitored?
One might even extend this surveillance to gather even more data. Perhaps there should be continual video surveillance of the inside of your car to monitor for unsafe behavior. Even better, perhaps the police should even be allowed to search your vehicle anytime they wish to ensure that you are not carrying any stolen goods or contraband. If you have nothing to hide, why should you care?
Take it a step further. Perhaps there should be continual video surveillance of the inside of your home to ensure your safety, monitor for unsafe behavior and check for stolen goods.
It is exactly this attitude on the part of the British that stimulated the Revolutionary War. There are many good reasons to allow the redcoats to trample on an individual's private life, much like the example in the article. But are these good enough reasons to turn loose of these rights?
Thats quite the tin foil hat youve got on there michael.. first the video camera in the cinema and now this. Off with the tin foil hat already. That bastard got off too light with 18 months. Hang him. What a non story.
Increasing the amount of storage is not an onerous task. Nor is changing the parameters for recording. Allowing the black box to save ever incident above 55mph or hard breaking/acceleration is relatively trivial.
... like reducing speeding.
And if you are okay with using them in these circumstances, why not use them for other life saving tasks
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
driver got 18 months in jail for speeding that killed man
the guy in the movie theater got a year and all he had to do was take out his videocam.
A automobile black box is a great thing as it allows the police to prove the guilt of an individual who killed someone with a car while speeding. It would also allow someone to prove they WEREN'T speeding when they hit someone that stepped out from between two parked cars instead of using the crosswalk.
The only thing a blackbox records is what the car was doing, not what you were doing. The police still have to prove YOU were the person behind the wheel.
If they were to start equipping cars with interior video cameras to record the occupants, then I'd be worried about my privacy!
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Furthermore, going over the speed limit is a crime - sure, victimless (although excessive speed is a likely catalyst for accidents), I'd agree with that, but by definition it breaks the law so it's a crime.
I think he should be nailed to something. That said, the guy who was videotaping in theatres probably shouldn't see a year in jail.
In a flagrant case like this, I am really glad they nailed the ass hole, but there was plenty of evidence without the box. A lack of skid marks indicate no braking, conservation of momentum give the approximate speed at the time of the colision, as does the magnitude of the damage.
The fact is, in cases like this, you don't need a black box to know that this guy was doing more than double the speed limit...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Then, we'll have a blackbox in your knife, to see what happened the last 5 secs before you cut this bread, err... stabbed somebody.
A blackbox in your toothbrush, to see how often you brush your teeth, before sue you dentinst...
Mmmm, I still prefer my old peugeot - it doesn't have anything like this - but I also don't think one should drive THAT fast in a city...
He should've looked both ways before crossing the street.
He was driving. Obviously I wasn't there, but chances are he was crossing the intersection on a green light, too.
Registering accounts later than some other chrisb since 1997
Source story from where the link comes.
Sure the "black-box" provided some evidence but it probably just corroborated other evidence making the case somewhat stronger.
I don't know all the evidence the police have but it probably includes: severity of damage, lack of skid-marks, testimony of the passenger in the vehicle, and distance that objects in the collision were thrown.
I'll bet they have a pretty good idea of the speed involved without the black-box. Maybe not that he was doing 3.14 times the limit but, say, 2-3 times the limit. Two decimal accuracy isn't important. The fact that he was way, way over the limit combined with his driving history is what sealed his fate.
A better question is why, given his track record, was he allowed to drive and why is his punishment for wildly reckless driving resulting in the death of a human being a mere 18 months and why is he banned from driving for a mere 3 years? He obviously didn't learn his lesson after the previous triple-the-speed-limit crash.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Yeh, who knows! Today they want to use these things to pop people who run down and kill other people, tomorrow they'll want to plant the damn things IN OUR HEADS!
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
He was convicted because of the data. NOT arrested!
No bitch about your rights being messed with michael?
But it didn't protect the guy who got killed.
So many people seem to believe passing laws will solve problems. Doesn't work. Nobody can force anyone else to obey laws.
Is it legal to have your own car testify against you?
Privacy is terrorism.
Indeed among my social circle it's common to leave clubs a half hour before last call (3am) or plan on hanging out in a late night coffee shop or restaurant for 'til at least 4am before braving the downtown streets. Even then many of us intentionally take indirect routes to avoid the drunks.
Its also useful to know that by US terms Montreal isn't a violent city. Indeed when I moved here I was appalled at all of the car crashes that lead the evening news. At least, I was appalled until I realized it was simply the maxim if it bleeds it leads in action and where US cities would have killings and gunfire in Montreal the news was having to settle (!) for mostly car accidents.
The result is for the press, especially the extensive tabloid press, accidents and incidents like this are big news. Every media outlet in Montreal is talking about this today, and I'm sure tonight many partiers will be reconsidering their travel strategies.
Finally, Ste. Catherine is the east-west "Main Street" through Montreal. Its a heavily built up with large and small stores, theaters, restaurants, and yes being Montreal, stripper clubs mixed in too. Even at 1am it is always heavily trafficked, both with vehicles and people coming and going through downtown.
Frankly at Ste. Catherine & Foy there's no way one could reach the speeds this yoyo was going unless one floored the gas and held it (as his blackbox read.) It's not like cruising down main street in some small plains town where the signs at 1am are a formality and there's not a soul to be seen, this is a light every block with folks on the sidewalks everywhere and steady traffic throughout.
So yeah, it looks like Quebec courts are gonna start using the 'expert testimony' of black boxes. Frankly I'm not concerned as the courts here do pretty much bend over backwards to find reasonable doubt and I've heard of cases dropped and evidence suppressed on some exceedingly conservative grounds.
Compared to eyewitness testimony from traumatized folks, measuring skid marks and vehicle deformation, debris fields patterns, etc. these numbers are probably going to be useful, especially at confirming or contradicting all of the other evidence. in my book that's a good thing and you're vehicle is right is right in being mined for information, be it a crushed windshield, blood on the bumper, or data in it's black box.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I see the relevance of posting this article to Slashdot- black box used as evidence- but what I found more interesting is that the guy's being sentenced to only 18 months for the murder of another person.
Wrists killing you? Not in 2 weeks. Learn Dvorak.
the guy knowingly broke the law and commited involatary manslaghter ...i say 5 to 10 without a drivers licence for the rest of his life to discouradge other from doing such stupid shit and posing a risk to others in the proccess...the guy is an idiot...
I think privacy is important, but in my opinion, you forfeit many such rights the instant you hurt or kill someone.
So let's say the guy freaks out just before impact, he's repeatedly mashing on the brake, misses and hits the gas, then impact.
Last five seconds shows he revved up to 157 mph so that must be what caused the crash, right?
What I'm saying is, I wonder if it's possible for the data to be interpreted more than one way. In a case like this, it's easy to want the guy to fry. I'm just playing devil's advocate here because I personally think that if he's guilty (and gosh he appears to be) he should be locked up for a long time. 18 months is just not long enough.
But I suppose that's why we have a constitution, due process and concepts like innocent until proven guilty; to try to make an honest effort to prove guilt and come up with appropriate punishments; to keep people like me from making snap judgements off little evidence, getting a rope and hanging guys like that.
If having black boxes in cars will make people more responsible for their actions, I am all for it. If they mean less people will die or be injured as a result of a driver breaking the law, it is a positive thing. I support black boxes because I believe in personal responsibility and accountability.
I do think this would make the world a better place.
-Brent
Every should assume their new cars can record their driving habits, but the justice system should be required to get a search warrent to get access to that black box. This means the need to show probable cause that says the need to get access to the box. And just being in an accident is not probable cause. They should need to show evidence that you were in fact in violation of some law and that the black box could provide the proof of that violation.
I am not a lawyer, I just watch people that pretend to be lawyers on TV.
Just rig up a switch that will dump a couple capacitors into the recorder. Those used in really crazy stereo installations should work.
:)
Obeying the law and get hit--cool, the recorder will show that.
Driving at the speed of stupid and plow through a bus stop--flip the switch so there's a bit less evidence.
In all seriousness, though, it looks like things worked how they're supposed to this time--the guy got caught being criminally stupid, and is paying the price. Like above posters pointed out, though, the data could be misconstrued. Wheels spinning on a loose surface might look like you're going 100 mph.
I don't think these things are complicated enough to employ any kind of inertial rate sensors--accelerometers and gyros could tell you precisely what the vehicle was doing in three dimensions, but at great cost.
In the meantime, just keep that capacitor charged
--Ribald
This guy Gauthier was going 98 miles an hour in a 30 MPH zone, and killed someone, and severely injured his passenger. What would be the analogous charge in the US? I can't believe that he's only getting 18 months in jail and his lawyer is calling the punishment "very very severe."
I'm not defending the US justice system, I think we have some f'd up laws, but this sentence seems pretty lenient to me, consider the guy's obviously a maniacal driver.
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
driving 157kph is insanely fast given the size of the streets here,
montreal drivers know that we're in the jay-walking capital of the world.
Both are reasons to question the black-box data. Sounds like it is pushing the limits of the "laugh test" could this driver really have been driving that fast given the location? Is there corroborating evidence? If the victim really was hit at 157kph, forensics should be able to verify that independent of the black-box.
PRIVILEGE: "A peculiar right, advantage, exemption, power, franchise, or immunity held by a person or class, not generally possessed by others."
RIGHT: "Rights are defined generally as 'powers of free action.' And the primal rights pertaining to men are enjoyed by human beings purely as such, being grounded in personality, and existing antecedently to their recognition by positive law."
According to several US Supreme Court decisions (see U.S. v Guest, Shapiro v Thomson, et. al.), the right to travel freely is enjoyed by all citizens. As the primary purpose of driving is to travel from one point to another, it must therefore be a right. As far as I have been able to determine, there have been no USSC cases that, by abridging the right to drive, relegate it to "priviledge" status.
If you come up with a USSC case to the contrary, please post it.
Yeah, right.
True... the black box worked in favour of getting an a-hole off the road. Unfortunately, democracy is a messy business and the right to live without state surveilance should be paramount. Black boxes, photo radar, RFIDs, etc. all have some purpose for sure - but the right to privacy ought to trump them all.
CrazyLegs
"Pork!!" said the Fish, and we all laughed.
I don't have any objection to these boxes. I'm a bit of a privacy nut, but I'm also a law-abiding citizen. If we're talking about legislation that begins issuing citations to speeders every time their black box is scanned during an oil change, then I'll certainly join the naysayers. But if it's being used exactly like fingerprints and DNA, to secure convictions for violent criminals, then I'll applaud the technological development. (Yes, I think vehicular manslaughter resulting from driving double the posted speed limit in a metropolitan area constitutes a violent offense.)
Having said that: I don't know what they told you in Philosophy 101, but "slippery slope" isn't a logical fallacy in a courtroom. It's a valid argument, and oftentimes a compelling one.
crib
Please don't read my journal
Let me see if I can help sort out your reactions...
In 1997, my wife and our two year old son were approaching a large, busy intersection at the speed limit. There were three lanes going in each direction, east and west, two more lanes southbound only. Needless to say (you would think), there was a traffic light above the intersection of the eastbound and southbound lanes. A driver turned from the westbound lanes into the southbound lanes and just kept right on going through the red light. She told the police she didn't realize there was a light there! She struck our 1991 Honda Accord in the left rear wheel area with the wheel absorbing most of the impact. The Accord was spun at least 180 degrees by the impact and my son's carseat was tipped over, but he was unhurt. My wife suffered a spinal injury that still impinges on her spinal cord and caused the doctors to recommend she refrain from lifting anything over 15 pounds. This pretty much ended her career as an RN. Now she is having trouble with chest and hand pain related to the nerve impingement. She has had extensive physical therapy and chiropractic care for 7 years now. Thanks to listening to my idiot brother-in-law, I had reduced our underinsured motorist coverage a few months before this accident and we ended up with about 35,000 USD cash for a lifetime of reduced mobility and pain. Nationwide Insurance deliberately dragged their feet trying to get us to accept a reduced settlement. We finally sued them near the lawsuit deadline and they settled within two months thereafter. The mitigating factor was their idiot driver had blabbed about being "100 percent responsible" for the accident. Thank God! Even with that, Nationwide jerked us around for an extra year and a half beyond what they should have. I loathe them. They sent their adjusters here to Southern California in the wake of our wildfires last fall and my coworkers overheard them laughing about underpaying claims and dragging things out.
My point here is that when a driver royally screws up, blackbox evidence can help settle the matter clearly and quickly allowing everyone to get on with their post-accident lives. If the driver who rammed my wife had not blabbed, the blackbox could have blabbed for her. Everyone, please be safe out there. When we are approaching an intersection that has been green for 10 seconds or more, but are the only car approaching at that point, my wife and I both slow down and look around carefully now since another fool may "not realize there is a traffic light over that intersection". That was how my wife was hurt. We don't drive smaller cars anymore either. She has an airbagged minivan and I have an airbagged half-ton pickup. Our next vehicle will be a 3/4 ton Suburban. It tows our big trailer well and protects my wife and three children. We'll buy more energy-efficient vehicles when they get safer and can tow 8,000 pounds over the Rockies.
In principio erat Verbum.
Presumably some kind of Grandfather clause could be written for older vehicles.
As for calibration, yes, there are issues there. But now we are talking about fraud. The government already knows how many miles you've driven your car. There are severe penalities for altering odometer readings. I don't see how altering a black box would be much different.
At that speed, he didn't hit the brakes because he was about 174 meters away from impact, nearly two blocks away.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Individuals are having their rights violated because they didn't know the crime lab could tie them to a crime after they left cigarette butts at a crime scene.
Now, if it were law that all cars have recorders to "monitor" all your bad driving habits, then yeah I would be concerned. But that is not what is happening. They used evidence to convict somebody, and didn't even put him in jail for that long.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
How can we honestly say that the use of roads, with cars, is really a priviledge rather than a right anymore? In some localized areas, it may be possible to function without a car, but not in the vast majority of the nation. Heck, I have to drive 40 miles to the next town just to buy shoes so I can walk to the university for class.
We have a right to travel,
We have a right to be secure in our effects,
How can we not have the right to be secure in our effects while we travel?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
I don't think anyone pities some jerk who goes insanely fast, kills someone, and then gets caught because he didn't know his car was watching; and I think very few people would have a problem with the last 5 seconds being 'caught on tape.' This seems like a very good deterrent without grossly invading personal privacy.
What we have to fear, though, is that big brother is rarely satisfied with 'good enough' and that 5 seconds will probably grow quickly as well as the number of items monitored and the ease of extraction (it seems fatal accidents are the only times that data has been used so far). I don't mind them knowing I slammed on my brakes and spun the car around before plummeting to my death however I would rather they not know I visited the bank, church, and grandma before doing so.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
Not surprising. 95mph in a 30mph zone.
What do you expect when you mix a 26 year old and a 2000 Pontiac Trans Am?
The box may be purely evidence, though I am unconvinced.
In any case, search warrants overcome 4th amendment protections. There is no warrant that can compel a person to testify against himself.
You might take a look at The Bill of Rights.
-Peter
I seriously don't understand how a black box can be considered an invasion of privacy. They only time they are accessed is when something happens and the information is required to settle a dispute. Maybe if they were keeping track of where you went, or using RFID to monitor what you bought at the grocery store, but they are only logging the last few SECONDS before IMPACT.
All of the jaywalkers in California are attorneys which is why we ALWAYS give the pedestrian the right-of-way here.
Once you are driving without that permit or license, make certain you get pulled over and make certain that you tell the police officer right away that you are driving illegally. See how long you stay out of jail for.
You are right, the government cannot take away your fundamental right to travel freely across this nation. You can walk, you can pedal yourself around with a bicycle, heck you can even drag yourself on your belly if you so desire.
You have no inherent right to drive an automobile, it is written nowhere that at birth you have the fundamental right to drive.
Nobody here needs to put up a single US Supreme Court decision. That is covered by the State Law and there is no single Lawyer that I am aware of that would ever claim and attempt to take to the Supreme Court your 'Fundamental Right' to drive if you have a Suspended License or revoked Operator's Permit.
You want proof? Walk, bike or drive yourself down to your local circuit court and look at the day's docket. You will see more then a few people with reckless driving cases up before the court.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Our web site http://www.harristechnical.com/cdr.htm has a lot of information on Event Data Recorders for cars including a list of all cars so equipped, explanations of what is recorded, when data is recorded, how it is recorded and how it is retrieved. A free preview of a documentary video on EDRs is on-line. A list of court cases where EDR evidence was introduced in the US and Canada is posted.
Can one of those Pontiac POS cars even go 157 clicks?
So how long until we have the Slashdot article on how to hack the black box? It's in my car, it is my property, so why not find a way to disable it without breaking the car? Common Nerdom, you know you wanna do it :)
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
The Constitution guarantees all free citizens (i.e., those who have not had their freedoms curtailed by legal process--e.g., convicted felons) the right to travel. It does not guarantee you the right to travel on anything other than your own two legs. Cities can regulate whether they allow horses on their roads, since your right to travel freely on a horse has to be weighed against the right of your fellow citizens not to have horseshit littering the sidewalk. The government can regulate whether you're allowed to fly a 747, because your right to travel freely by a plane you're piloting has to be weighed against the right of your fellow citizens not to have a Boeing crash in their back yard.
The right to travel is strong and sacrosanct in the United States. Travel by any method you choose is not, and has never been, a right.
Check Westlaw for caselaw. There's a staggering lot of it. In pretty much every single Federal district in the United States, someone's had the bright idea of contesting their license suspension by walking into a Federal court and claiming their Constitutional right to travel is being abridged. These things get dismissed on summary judgment, since the facts are not in dispute and the law is unambiguously clear.
Fritz
____________
Huh?
I completely agree with the other comments here that in this case, the use of the black box is justified. In the same way that forensic analysis of the accident scene is justified (and that, in many cases, can reveal the speed of the cars involved in a crash). This driver was clearly being reckless.
The problem, as I see it, is twofold:
1. Car manufacturers are putting this technology in cars without telling consumers about it. That's not cool, and it might even discourage people from doing stupid things behind the wheel if they knew there was more potential for getting nailed if they ended up in an accident as a result.
2. This same technology could evolve into a monitoring system to generate revenue for local governments. Just like the gatso cameras in the UK which have little to to with safety, and everything to do with sticking drivers with huge fines for breaking arbitrary rules - which appear in some cases to be designed specifically to be broken! And if this were to happen, it would be easy to imagine insurance companies requiring that all cars contain these devices in order to get reasonable rates. It then becomes an easy option for municipalities to raise additional revenue by lowering speed limits unnecessarily - and this is not what speed limits are for!
Ultimately, speed versus safety is a tradeoff - if we wanted to be perfectly safe, we wouldn't drive at all - but we have collectively decided that the higher speeds afforded by driving cars is worth the additional risk over walking. If we allow this tradeoff to be made by localities, and give them a powerful tool to make massive profits by setting unreasonably low speed limits, drivers won't like the outcome, and at that point there will be little we can do about it!
I have serious objections to letting any government snoop my mail, e-mail (if I encrypt it), or peer into my home. I *don't* have any such objection to the government knowing how fast I'm driving. They can measure my speed externally with a radar unit or light-beam-breaker or inductive loops in the road. The presence of a black box in my car, as they are presently embodied, is just fine with me. The way I drive (cautiously and paranoid as hell), it is more likely to save my butt from a negligent-but-litigious driver.
A black box that tracks where I drive all day, now that would be cause to bring out the logic probe and pliers, but the present amount of data collection is not enough to permit significant governmental abuse, as far as I can see.
Don't forget, every driver is operating a deadly weapon; in my book, that calls for some accountability.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
I wish I had a black box in my car when I was involved in an accident a few years ago. I was completely innocent, and it probably would have saved me from all blame. Unfortunately, there was no way to prove I was in the right, and I wound up with a couple of points on my license.
I came to a stop sign at a "T" intersection. I saw headlights way off in the distance, so I started to pull out to make a left turn. I only moved about a foot or two before I noticed the car way off in the distance was going very fast, perhaps 2-3 times the 25mph speed limit. So I stopped, over the line but still not sticking out into the intersection, put my car in reverse, and backed up behind the line. Well, the sight of me startled the other driver, who swerved, lost control, swerved back, and then sideswiped my front bumper.
Unfortunately, there were no witnesses except a security guard who was a friend of the other driver, who worked in the neighborhood. This witness lied profusely. It was my word against theirs. They won.
Black boxes would have proven the other driver was speeding, and that he swerved and then swerved back to hit me. For me, it would have proven that I had rolled forward, then back, and that the impact occurred *after* I had pulled back and stopped for at least a second. Plus, in this particular area, going 50mph or more *is* reckless, by anyone's standards. This driver would have had no sympaty from any judge or jury. Black box evidence would have backed up my story, and I'm pretty sure it would have gotten me off the hook.
No one was *really* hurt in this accident -- I barely felt the impact, and all it did was peel the license plate and some rubber off my front bumper. It put a shallow dent and streak along the side of the other vehicle. But of course, the other driver got involved with a typical LA crooked lawyer/chiropractor duo, who bilked my insurance company for thousands.
Imagine all the pointless litigation that could be eliminated by these black boxes. I say bring them on! We should have had them 20 years ago (before then was probably not technically/economically feasible). The only people hurt by black boxes are lawyers, and that's a good thing!
Have you ever driven in Montreal?
98mph is not uncommon among the citizens of that city. I'm from Ontario and compared to Monteal, Toronto driving is like riding a pony at the kiddie zoo.
Once I can remember driving along minding my own business when two cars passed our double lane traffic on either side travelling about the same speed, while there was a traffic jam. Road rage is not at all uncommon on the roads in Montreal. And with the road conditions, it's a wonder how more accidents don't occur!
The fact he was going 98mph doesn't mean much; I wouldn't be surprised if the driver was drinking a beer, smoking, talking on the cell phone and writing notes on his dashboard sticky pad, at the time of the accident!
I'm not quite sure the black box was needed. Wouldn't the coroner's report make it evident that the guy was going way faster than the speed limit? That already proves he lied under questioning. The fact that he didn't hit the brakes should have been demonstrated by the lack of skid marks at the accident, right? So what did this box do that old fashioned detective work couldn't?
while (!sleep){
sheep++;
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The government does not need a warrant to inspect a vehicle after a crash. The NTSB can inspect any vehicle at any time for safety issues. Inspecting a black box for mechanical failures would just be a matter of course.
And if the vehicle is involved in an accident, then anything that has to do with that accident is under investigation.. including the vehicle involved.
However, if they go into the trunk and find a bale of pot, they have to have a reason to have been in the trunk. But they certainly don't need a warrant to inspect your brakes if there was an accident.
"I drank what?" - Socrates
The rest of us breathe a sigh of relief the day you side-punch a Kenworth.
Chris Knight is my hero.
The black box just showed he was lying his ass off.
Of course its there.
When you get in your car and drive on public highways, streets, etc. you do not have a right to privacy. Now if you are on private property, by all means...drive like a maniac. However, your fellow citizens should have the right to be as safe as possible. Using black boxes, cameras, and other technology is a good way of policing that and punishing those that are breaking the law and putting other people's lives in danger.
Back in 1990 or so, some pork chop driving a Honda CRX drove over swimmer and Olympic gold medalist Victor Davis after a barroom argument, also in Montreal. Davis was killed, and this smug little asshole essentially got off scot-free, as there was some dispute over whether or not it was deliberate...3 am, completely empty road, and he's driving on the sidewalk...you do the math.
I wonder what might have happened had there been a similar black box in that car. Maybe there was, but it certainly didn't come into play during the case. I remember the pic in the paper, (the Gazette again), of this little fat fuck walking out of the courthouse with the most arrogant, nasty little grin on his face. I hope he's able to live with it.
Executive summary: in this post I suggest that our Canadian cousins aren't at fault for carrying technology too far (in using event recorders to prosecute a vehicular homicide case), but that they do not go far enough. I propose that if we're going to use technology in support of public policy (safe driving, etc.) there's a lot better technology to use. Is this a good idea, or a bad one? You decide.
Let's suppose that we're the feds, and we want to "use technology to save lives..."
...in the Vietnam-era sense of "we had to destroy the village in order to save it." Let's think about how we could--relatively inexpensively--implement technology solutions to:
Put a transponder on the vehicle instead of a license plate
Vehicle identification today is based on century-old technology: the stamped metal license plate. Why not replace the license plate with a transponder? It would be a simple exercise: just embed the transponder on the license plate you already use, and pass legislation to make interfering with the device a summary offense. There would be some immediate benefits: a police officer stopping a vehicle at night, particularly a vehicle with an obscured license plate, could interrogate the transponder and automatically retrieve information about drivers associated with the car. If the stopped vehicle belongs to a person with a prison history for violent crime, the officer might respond with a lot more caution, or with backup. The felon is driving his girlfriend's car? Well--we can easily use a database to identify associations: if she posted bail, if she let him report her address to his parole officer, etc., we'd have her information in the database, associated with his. So if the cop stops a car licensed to her, he'd still be warned that there might be a violent felon behind those dark-tinted windows. That's a good thing, right?
Integrate the transponder with in-vehicle information systems already in police cars
A major cause in reduction in crime has been the installation of in-vehicle information systems in police cars. A cop can check outstanding wants or warrants in a jiffy, instead of having to radio information back and forth to somebody else at headquarters. When they were installed in a local township nearby, an enterprising sergeant went to a local shopping center on Saturday afternoon, and started typing in license plate numbers: he made half a dozen arrests that afternoon. Let the guy point a radio at the transponder instead, and integrate the radio with his in-vehicle system, and presto! Watch his productivity soar. A clever use of technology, no?
Require mag-stripe devices as part of the ignition system
Your driver's license probably already has a mag stripe on it--require a simple device in the car to accept a valid driver's license to start the car. And wire the device to the transponder--so interrogating the transponder identifies the vehicle AND the driver. Just think of what we can do then! We can identify kids driving on junior licenses after midnight, we can identify who was driving the car when the vehicle speeds past a checkpoint, or we can use information about vehicle and driver to monitor traffic patterns (where you live vs. where you work). Just think of the ways we can improve public safety, or even public transit. Neato, huh?
Do we have your civil libertarian juices pumping, bunky?
So ask yourself, is this a good thing?
Because, through the course of history, government has used practically every new technology to advance its causes. Sooner or later it will use transponders, databases, and high-speed networks. And if those uses make you nervous, you might start thinking about what arguments you might make.
It's not an issue of privacy. The issue is this:
For the courts, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from expert testimony.
If the incident had been captured on camera, that tape would either be used only to corroborate a witness' account or thrown out. But because black boxes are not easily understood by judges and juries, their limitations are also not easily understood.
The mistake here is that the court is taking the black box data not as forensic evidence, but as expert testimony -- and testimony is something that only a human has the legal right to give.
How many of you have received speeding tickets based on the "testimony" of a radar gun? Here is a case where a schmuck has been convicted of third degree murder based on the "testimony" of a even dumber device.
(And for the record, I'm glad he's off the road. Yes, besides his sentence, he's lost his licence for life, as well as his insurability. Not to mention the fact that a civil suit ruining him financially for life is no doubt on the way.)
IANAL but...
The facts of the case are established by the pedestrian's death and the coroner's report. The black box is just another witness to the crime, or perhaps secondary evidence. Same as a surveillance camera or skid marks on the pavement.
Now if someone was convicted of a DUI where the only evidence was erratic driving as recorded by the box, you could expect the lawyers to have a vigorous debate over the reliability and admissibility of that evidence. For instance, what is the legal standard for "tamper-proof"?
Premature optimization is the root of all evil
Inspect they can (maybe), but can the black box be introduced into a court room with out a warrent? This is upto judges and lawyers.
I saw that on TV too...
What stops me from hitting something "gentlty" and purpously at say, 10 km/h? The damage wouldn't be so bad, but I'd get my bloack box "used".
Seems reasonable, instead of say, removing it.
This is such an invasion of privacy! I mean what's next, a unique code for each car in a state/province?
We all live in a #FFFF00 submarine...
The recording device, which stores data on how a car is driven in the last five seconds before a collision, showed that four seconds before impact, the driver had the gas pedal to the floor and didn't brake before impact..
When does it know when to start recording?
thelikesofwhich.com
If you're using privacy to hide the truth, then there's something wrong with what you are doing, and you know that.
Uhm, yeah.
I used my privacy to hide from the government that I was actively trying to overthrow it, because I saw it as corrupt, misantropic, a threat to society and our way of life, and to humanity as a whole.
This was the truth, and I used my privacy to hide it.
This was in Germany, 1938, before the bloodshed began.
Or in Iraq, recently.
Or in Rwanda, a couple of years ago.
Or in Bosnia, a few more years ago.
Or in...
It is not freedom if you are only allowed to agree with the government. The right to be and do wrong is what defines freedom.
The notion that "if you are not doing something wrong, you have nothing to hide" have been applied to all fascist and police states. Don't let the attitude creep into mainstream American thinking. That is dangerous.
I wonder if required recording devices owned by the defendant like this shouldn't be also perview of the 5th amendment [if Canada has an equivalent]. Certainly the police could use other forensic facts [like the size of the dent left in his car, the fact there was no skid/break marks, witnesses...] to incriminate him.
I'd guess that its recording to flash ram. So where's the flash module? Not specific to a brand of car, but what component has it?
If it records 5 seconds, as ram get cheaper, how about whole trips? Last 72 hrs of drive time? Last 30 days of drive time, enough to cover what, ten years of driving?
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of chopsticks? The Shadow knows (yes, the link is workplace safe).
See what I've been reading.
I acknowledge and engage in pure logical debate, but this ends when we are talking about what actually happens. Hence, I acknowledge slippery slope as a valid concern (if not a logical debate point).
I say we hang him. Hell, I'll pull the lever on the gallows.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
1. Don't drive a car with a block box.
/var/log is a black box too, what does that have to do with "Democracy"?
or 2. Don't drive.
What's wrong with you? Do you have any comprehension skills?
You femmy-types always bringing up "Democracy" over everything.
Guess it is time to rig up an EMP bomb in the back of my Z28. That way after a wreck it goes off and there is no data.
http://courts.state.wy.us/2003opn/2003WY77.pdf
0 6/ 27/news/wyoming/07ceeca18fd7d4922a93f098890bccc5.t xt
John and his GF were killed by a driver going approximately 90 mph, drunk. That driver ran red light after red light, until eventually driving his truck into John's car.
The courts ruled that a liquor serving establishment has no duty to stop serving alcohol to an intoxicated person.
http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2003/
So I say to black boxes, please, bring them on.
He's out of work, and he's applying for a job as Slashdot editor.
Karma be damned, I am shocked that slashdot posters not only don't think this is a problem, but they don't even recognize the issue. Maybe 2 or 3 posts that I read hint at it. To spell it out for you, the issue is that THIS SYSTEM WAS NOT DESIGNED FOR THIS PURPOSE! Police must have radar guns calibrated on a regular basis. They cannot go to radio shack and buy the same radar gun you'd use to clock the speed of your pitch and start writing tickets. I have no issue with having a system that tracked everything I did in my car, if it was designed for the purposes of reconstructing an accident. As several other posters have pointed out, this system was designed to be used as an internal check tool of the auto manufacturer to verify that safety systems were functioning in an accident. Maybe the tool they use is incredibly accurate and tamper resistant/evident, but until it is qualified as such it should not be used for purposes outside of it's design specs. Period.
Slippery slope arguments are not always (if, technically, ever) logical fallicies. UCLA Law professor Eugene Volokh recently published a great law review article on the subject: The Mechanisms of the Slippery Slope, 116 Harvard Law Review 1026 (2003). (See also PDF Version.)
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
It seems like that would give you incentive to speed up.
So anyone have a tech solution to MORE recording to defend oneself? I'd like to place a camera next to my dome light, to record both my speedo and everything viewable through the windshield and side windows, and a second camera to record the through the rear window. It seems with taxi drivers having some type of recording device in their cabs, it should be possible, without the problems of vibration with hard drives.
/. ? I'm sure others would be interested, especially from the reaction to this story.
One of my relatives was rear ended by two people who were talking to each other on cell phones (no hands-free mic/earpieces even though mandated by law) instead of paying attention to the road conditions. They full on slammed into him on the highway in a construction area (traffic was stopped after stop and go traffic for over a 1/2 hour), and he's been in tremendous physical pain for almost two years now, and is probably crippled for life. Because of this accident, I've been noticing many drivers talking on cell phones without the hands-free kit, in full defiance of the law. This is something that would be easy to record if a camera could be recording through the rear windshield.
Anyone know how the taxi recording systems work? Are they using a tape recorder instead of hard drive? Is there a cheaper solution that could use the same cameras they use, or cheaper cameras (I think their systems cost something like a thousand dollars?), and record to flash ram (or a better suggestion?), instead of hard drives that would have a problem with vibration and bad roads?
From what has been in the news a while ago about the taxi recording systems, the video isn't so great, so anything else would need to improve on quality, and probably on capacity for recording (I'd like to record whole trips, not just the last 5 seconds before an accident, and accident/motion sensors are WAY beyond my capabilities.
Any ideas where to look? Someone can write this better and submit this to
1.) Is there a uniform standard for what data and how many seconds of time is allowed to be kept in the auto's black box? 2.) How is the accuracy insured? Can someone run into a kid and the black box show that they were only going 25 mph when they were actually going 50? The SRS (safety restraining system)is checked each time I start the engine, but that is only a processor and sensor-OK test. If the airbag does not employ properly or rapidly, does the black box still say it was ok when I started? (OK, three things.)
I was on a jury for traffic court.
The accused defended herself with "If I'd have been going that fast he would have pulled me over sooner for being a menace."
Writers imply. Readers infer.
I know of his place from a Cadillac Site I'm a regular on.
A quote from the page
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion, you must set yourself on fire.
...so all the /.ers who think slippery slopes don't apply to everyday life can be enlightened.
I hate it when pulls the "slippery slope arguments are logical fallicies" and posts some link to a page (like we are supposed to take everything we read on the 'net as gospel) supporting their position.
Sheesh!
Think about it- why do we bother punishing CEO fraudsters? Now that they've schemed their way into millions of dollars and their professional reputations are in tatters why put them in jail? They obviously have no ability or motivation to repeat their crimes so deterrence is not the answer.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3613715.stm
A Belgian motorist was left stunned after authorities sent him a speeding ticket for travelling in his Mini at three times the speed of sound. The ticket claimed the man had been caught driving at 3380 kph (2,100 mph) - or Mach 3 speed - in a Brussels suburb, a Belgian newspaper reported. However, police later admitted that a faulty radar had been responsible for the Mini's incredible feat. The police have since apologised to the man and promised to fix the radar. The incident took place in December, but only came to light when Belgian prosecutors were asked to follow up the unpaid fine. "We called the local police to find out what height the plane caught speeding along the Boulevard Lambermont was flying at," a member of the Brussels public prosecutor's office joked to Belgium's La Derniere Heure newspaper. Police also said they had made a mistake in still sending out the ticket, given that it was impossible - even for a doughty little Mini - for a car to have travelled so fast.
Instead of taking all the time and money on integrating technology to catch when someone was excessively speeding, why not just limit the speed a car can go? Or just meet in the middle and put a chip in the car that will only allow it to reach the speed set by surrounding transmitters. Even if it's an emergency, it's silly to put yourself and other at more risk than you're already in. I love how we as a society want a speed limit and vehicles that can greatly exceed it.
To my knowledge, there is not a DOT standard that says what a black box should and should not record for a period of time. However, in the best interests of lowering costs, I would not be surprised if automobile manufacturers are not acquiring their black box firmware from a limited number of vendors. These vendors, no doubt, would recommend to their customer to use the same recording techniques as they have developed in the past.
The manufacturer would run its own quality-assurance tests on their device. Different organizations, I would imagine ESPECIALLY insurance companies, would also do their own testing. Think about it - insurance fraud is common and costs insurance companies millions upon millions of dollars a year.
If the insurance companies had their way, the black box would do more than record a few seconds prior to an accident. These companies would test the machines not only to determine accuracy, but how the data recorded could be used to potentially settle any claims made against an insurance policy.
Nonetheless, if a question were to be raised in court as to the validity of such devices and their reliability of recording information - the evidence (the recorded data) would be challenged by the defense, and ultimately - an investigation into the testing of such devices would be admitted into court.
If you look at the schematics of most SRS systems in vehicles, you will notice how many fail-safes are installed to ensure that the device works as advertised. There is usually a backup system that can take over if the primary fails to ensure there is not a vulnerable circuit in the SRS system.
The black box could record any number of things - status of the primary and secondary test system. The status of the system five seconds prior to the crash. Which system (primary or secondary) actually triggered the deployment. The amount of data recorded is virtually limitless - the selection of what data is recorded is a choice by the manufacturer.
Ayup
1) Never buy sophisticated car
2) Sue the manufacturer
I am ashamed of the legal system that lets a murderer who utilized a 3,000 lb weapon at twice the speed limit to kill someone get off with only 18 months. And that was his SENTENCE? Guesses as to how long he will actually serve?
50 -> 157 km/h in 4 seconds... This must be quite a powerful car.
This kind of childish advertising went out of fashion in Europe years ago, but it's still prevalent in the US where almost every car commercial looks like the other. the traffic is non-existent, the speed is high (sometimes using special effects to make it impossibly fast) and the music is loud and brash. Pass the sick-bag.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
What's wrong with throwing dynamite into a lake?
Is there any party who has suffered a demonstrable injury from tossing in the dynamite? If not, than there's nothing wrong with it.
Maybe that wasn't the point, though...
Then you bring in this 'argument from adverse consequences' (putting pressure on the decision maker by pointing out dire consequences of an "unfavourable" decision). about shooting people.
Focus, Please.
Let's say you OWN a car, it's YOURS. YOU CAN PROVE IT BY SHOWING THE CORRECT PAPERWORK.
You have the RIGHT to do with it as you will.
Isn't *that* what FREEDOM *is*? Being able to do WHAT YOU WANT, with your shit?
Now, I suspect you're going to say, "The State Owns The Roads"
Betcha a dollar "The State" can't prove it. And some piddly ass A.D.A. CERTAINLY CANNOT PRODUCE THE PAPERWORK. (much less actually prove the existance of his "client", and a real "attorney/client" relationship with them...)
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
That would be pretty powerful. But it doesn't say that. It says he topped out at 157 in a 50Kph-limit zone. He could have been doing 140 before that.
BTW In an accident that bad, MANY times they can tell exactly how fast you were going at impact, without fancy models, etc. I was talking with a guy from NTSB, oh, 15 years ago, and he showed me HOW
The look at your speedometer. In an impact that bad, there is USUALLY enough flex in the needle of the speedo that it TAPS the face of the gage, and usually leaves a small smuge of it's color on the gage - one microphoto, a little bit of expert witness testimony, and you've got the same problem
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
The airbag control unit has two "slots" in EEPROM for stored events, the "Deployment Event" and "Near Deployment Event" slot. The "Deployment Event" slot stores the last five seconds of data when the control unit fires the airbag. This is a one-time event - once this has happened, the airbag control unit cannot be used again. (It's replaced with the airbag, if the car is repairable.) "Near Deployment Events" represent situations where the airbag unit started the "fire the air bag decision" process, but decided not to fire the bag. Two successive accelerometer samples of 2G or greater wake up the air bag control algorithm. The biggest delta-V near-deployment event is stored; a bigger one replaces the old one. After 250 engine starts (at least in GM vehicles) the "near deployment event" is erased.
There's local power storage in the airbag unit, so that even if battery power is lost, the airbag can still fire. So the data usually gets stored, too.
The real purpose of this unit is to fine-tune the "fire the air bag decision" algorithm. Early airbags were going off in accident situations that didn't really require airbag deployment. The current generation is doing better. The NTSB collects this data. This found at least one defect. A few false deployments had occured on gravel roads when a big rock happened to hit the sensing unit. That's been fixed in current models.
Not as powerful as the brakes that go 157 -> 0 km/h in 4 seconds.
to a search warrant and and a tap. Unless you live in Michigan, the first state to abolish search warrants. Don't even need a judge any more.
OnStar does monitor 24/7 upon police request. A judge ruled only that OnStar must be able to deliver the services the consumer paid for while the tap is in place.
Man, I didn't come anywhere NEAR close to stating my point properly... I completely understand the comments about it, so let me try and explain myself better...
Before I even do that, let me just say that I had an aunt that died in a car crash some years ago as the direct result of a drunk driver on the road with her, so I am quite sympathetic to anyone that has experinced any sort of auto-related tragedy.
What I should have said originally is that I don't want to live in a world where freedom is traded for safety. For instance, if you could tell me that you have a device that when embedded in a car would make it absolutely impossible for anyone to ever die on the road, and to do so all I have to do is allow the government to track my every move, I would absolutely be against that. I would not want the possibility of being killed on the road (or of my children being killed on the road, to bring the point home more) to be removed IF the price was my (or their) freedom.
In retrospect, this may have not been the best case to make this point with because we're really not talking about something like that. As another poster pointed out, we're talking about something that can determine what happened AFTER the fact with a high degree of accuracy, higher than would be possible without it certainly. I don't have a problem with that at all. Those that do wrong and harm others should be punished in a very stringent manner, I completely agree with that.
But, I do think things like this quickly and easily become the proverbial slippery slope leading to tracking our every move in the name of public safety. This is the inevitability (I believe that's what it is) that I want to avoid, NOT being able to punish those that do wrong, that I am all for 100%.
When I said I should be allowed to kill someone, I didn't mean literally that society any government should have no problem with me killing someone. What I meant was that I want the freedom to make mistakes, even those that lead to the death of myself or, God forbid, others. I ABSOLUTELY want there to be punishment for such things, and very harsh punishments in some cases. The only way to remove the possibility of such mistakes is to curtail personal freedoms to the point that such mistakes are impossible to make, and that's giving up too much in my opinion.
This argument comes up a great deal with regard to terrorism as well. Some people are quite willing to trade civil liberties if they believe the government can then protect them from harm. I am not willing to make such a trade. Believe me, I don't want to die, and I most certainly do not want my children to die. But if the price of freedom is the threat of death, whether from terrorists or idiot drivers on the road, I take the threat over the loss of freedom without hesitation.
"Give me liberty or give me death". I didn't make it up, but I can't think of truer words.
That's the point I was trying to make originally. I did a poor job, but I hope this clears up my position a bit.
*
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If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
Normally, I'm the first out of the box in support of privacy, but in this case I'm all for the black boxes (provided they continue to operate as they do now, with five seconds of rotating data stored longer only in the event of an impact).
In this case, it fundamentally falls to "rights" versus "privileges": driving is NOT a right, but many people drive as if (a) they have the right to drive even if they're really, really bad at it, and (b) driving isn't really that dangerous, and can be done casually and taken lightly. Neither is the case.
The flipside, of course, is tracking WHERE YOU GO in a car, and WHERE YOU ARE at any given moment. That is nobody's business but your own. Oh, and if you think a little black box is going to tell people that information, you might want to pay more attention to the cell phone tracking that's starting to surface...
Has anyone thought to compile a list of cars (make and model) which come equipped with black boxes? It would be good to produced such a list because it will allow the consumer to choose a car based on his or her inclinations toward privacy effectively voting with their checkbook.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
the thing stopped recording after the accelerometers on the car noted the collision. Nowhere does it say the car stopped in 4 seconds.
Note that stopping from 157 km/hr in 4 seconds anyways is not an impossible situation-- that works out to 10.9 m/s/s, or 1.1 g's-- a value that can be attained in many cars.
Inspect they can (maybe), but can the black box be introduced into a court room with out a warrent? This is upto judges and lawyers.
Well, let's see. To get a warrant they must have some sort of idea that you've committed a criminal offense. So if they've determined the other guy was at fault, they can't get a warrant to search your car and get the black box.
Instead, they subpoena it for the court case, and you still have to comply. Requirements on a subpoena are much looser because a subpoena is just a requirement for information, not a search for criminal evidence to be used against you. It's information to be used against someone else, and you're really expected to just give it up on request. If not, subpoena. They get it anyway. If you don't give it up, then it's a criminal offense, I understand.
No, I'm not a lawyer either. But I don't burn my brain cells watching TV, either.
Like what I said? You might like my music
... If that'a the worst punishment this new technology makes easier to inflict, color me indifferent. Yes, I know, ...slippery slope..., ...next time it will be...,...police state...,...privacy issues..., I know, I know. Just this particular penalty really does dull the impact. Or is it just me?
people are liscensed to drive responsibly, they don't need more limitations on how fast they can drive, because in theory, they should be able to drive safely at any speed. if you want to return to the nazi regime, then go ahead. maybe that's why your country surrendered in the first place.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
yes, girls read /. too...
The fact that a civilized country would even consider giving someone a criminal record for sneaking a camcorder into a movie theater. There should be no MAYBE, there should be one thing and one thing only: ABSOLUTELY NO jail sentence for sneaking a camera into a movie theater, period.
There are certainly people who claim that one is not required to have a license to drive, and do so successfully. Here is one person who does so:
http://cjmciver.org/dl.shtml
Yeah, my driving instructor always said if theyre not in the crosswalk, theyre fair game. And if you do hit them, as long as you stop, theyll usually let you go without so much as a ticket.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
In our system, anything is legal unless there is a law that forbids it. I have the right to do anything that isn't against the law. There are some things that are expressly granted as rights as well. In British law everyone has the right to use the King's highway. The government has the right to regulate my use of the road but cannot unreasonably forbid me to use it.
The law says that I must qualify to get a driver's license. The law says that my driver's license can be revoked under certain circumstances. However, if the local licensing agency refuses to grant me a license because I have green skin then I can get a 'Writ of Mandamus' (sp?) to force them to do their job and grant me a license.
Driving is not a privilege any more than life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are privileges.
As for calibration - Any instrument is subject to errors. If the only thing that indicated that I was speeding or whatever, I would certainly challenge its accuracy and reliability. Loose connections and noise are a plague on electronics and can easily produce errors.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Hey, what is this thing "jay-walking"?
I make a point of always walking down the middle of the road of a certain street in Central London. If I do it long enough, hopefully they will pedestrianise it. Of course local drivers hopefully know which streets people do that on...
Read a book or two that doesn't contain "Dummies" in the title. Then we might be able to have a civil conversation.
CrazyLegs
"Pork!!" said the Fish, and we all laughed.
Dude.. if you have an American automobile that was made after 1996, it is very likely you have one of these black boxes in it. They have already been used in court in the US. Indeed police already know how to suck the information off of it as well as all insurance agencies. I have seen them do it without even so much as a search warrant. That is because the insurance company "buys" the car from you and therefore it is their property. Suck away. I was in an accident with a 1998 Olds and it confirmed what I said. In my case it confirmed my version of what happened even though they didn't believe it at first. I got a reckless driving ticket out of it (at the scene... no access to the box there), brought the data and results from the black box to court - case was immediately decided not guilty. Woo hoo.
Seems to me that I have even seen handhelds on ebay that will get that info for you.
Did the other guy run the red light or not? If yes, then it doesn't matter how fast the kid was driving, the other guy ran a red light. If not, the kid is getting off really light.
In Singapore, it's the law to have your taxi or truck tattle on you if you're speeding. All taxis and delivery trucks have a little yellow light on the roof. When you go over the limit, the light starts flashing, and the seatbelt buzzer sounds inside the vehicle. It's common to see taxis and trucks over there driving down the highway with the little yellow light flashing. How long before there is something like that in the USA? I can see herr Ashcroft requiring black boxes with GPS and 2-way radios that send speeding, failure to stop or failure to signal info to the local police, and the ticket arrives in the mail. Patriot Act!!! Just like with DRM and copy protection schemes, there will spring up a black market for black-box circumvention devices, which will then be crushed with aggressive DMCA like tactics. Where's my bicycle?
A search of Google returns 46,000 hits for Negligent Homicide. On the face of it, many, but by no means all of these, have been traffic cases, and defendants have been convicted of the charge, even when cold sober at the time of the accident.
The recording device ... showed that ... the driver had the gas pedal to the floor
- Two thoughts come to my mind:
- Is there any chance the "recording device" could be wrong? E.G. does the software ever make a mistake?
- On my Windows PC, I effectively have "the gas pedal to the floor" and it still just sits there like a turd in the tank.
I guess in the case of the first issue, the prosecution must be able to prove the odds of a software or hardware malfunction are remote enough to justify sending someone up the river. Another problem is that the device didn't record the state of events outside the automobile, specifically the state of the traffic light in question. Did the deceased run a red light before the fatal collision?The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Good if the technology works, why only the last 5 seconds.
Maybe not in this situation, but lets, say you were accelerating in order to prevent the accident. I mean there is only so much a device like this is going to tell you.
It is not like it can see the entire situation.
Sounds like more expensive cars, and another way for some one to be set up. Anyone with enough power could abuse such a device. Lets say the presidents car is speeding goes out of contol and hits you (unlikely but possible). You are stoped at a light.
The CIA, switch the Boxes, or perhaps alter them, making it look like you ran the red light, and that you caused the accident.
This may be good or it may be bad, I think weather anyone likes it or not we are going to have them.
So get used to it.
Is it calibrated? look at you speedometer.
the black box is not a seperate box. It is some extra flash in the Air Bag computer.
If (AirBag == True)WriteFlash(FourSecBuff);
BTW GM did not intend for them to be "Black Boxes"
They figured they could hit a junk yard and grab them to get some real world crash data.
Just a little Software validation.
I think that black boxes SHOULD be mandatory. If you are out in the public realm, then *surprise* you need to follow a set of laws to not kill people, because 45,000 people in the US are killed each year by raving loons driving cars! There are 1.5 million auto accidents.
Freedom of speech is one thing, but here you are in the PUBLIC REALM, and you are responsible for your actions. Especially if they endanger people's lives.
If it were up to me, there would be NO more cars in the cities. That would solve most of these issues rather quickly, BUT...
1. The box is bought with a car by a person who owns a car. Was the person given a choice to disable the box, or configure the recording function? If the person did not have a choice, it may amount to being forced to testify against himself by keeping records in a box available to the law enforcement and judges (remember, the box is his property, and the record produced by it is also his, even though it becomes available when the car is examined as evidence). A person may choose to not keep records that may incriminate him later, so taking away this choice amounts to forcing him to incriminating himself.
2. Was the existence and purpose of the box even announced to the buyer when the car was sold? If the box was recording the speed secretly, it may amount to an unauthorized search -- same as if, say, a phone was tapped, or a sound/video recorder was installed in someone's car without a warrant. If police demanded that car dealers sell cars with built in sound tape recorders, constantly on and recording loops, and then used those tapes to convict criminals that were talking in those cars, police would never need a warrant for installing such a device, so that would be illegal under any sane (or moderately insane) legal system. The data recorder isn't that much different, it performs the same function, and serves no other purpose but provide information that is likely to be used against the car's (and in this case, a device itself) owner.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
put a toggle switch on the + or the ground. the cars ecu needs power to store the data. (switch) 1 potato, 2 potato, 3 potato, (switch) ahhh, no worrys.... most ecu do not have flash as it is too expensive, and slow to log to. need something a little more real time.
but on the higher end cars who knows....
"This means the need to show probable cause that says the need to get access to the box."
98 Mph on a downtown city street in the vicinity of a stop light???
If you really value your civil liberties and don't wish to lose them, be somewhat reasonable when driving.
By the way, the condition of the two autos involved made it pretty hard to swallow the convicted driver's explanations! Keep in your mind the fact that he hit the other vehicle at 98 Mph! That made it pretty obvious!
Just imagine that your are the first policeman on the scene and you are looking at a car that has just been hit at 98 Mph!
The guy was caught doing 157KM/H in a 50KM/H zone and killed someone. He should have gotten LONGER in jail instead of just 18 months.
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
And certainly not shared by "all citizens."
Since when do you see 8-year olds with a drivers license out driving?
Blind people?
Sorry, it is not a right. It's not in the constitution. You have feet. You can walk, or take the bus, if you are stupid enough to live somewhere in which you cannot walk to work, the store, or school.
People driving too fast and striking other people sends people to jail!
MAF? ITYM AFM (woohoo, I started a post with 3 acronyms). There are two common air sensing systems for fuel-injected engines: MAP (manifold absolute pressure) and AFM (air flow meter). I think the latter is what you are describing. The problem with it is that the CPU can calculate it instantly, as you say, but the sensor is near the start of the air intake, which can be several metres away from the point of injection (on a turbo car), so it is using slightly out of date data, so it can make all sorts of mistakes (eg. if you boost then brake hard on a turbo with AFM it is liable to stall as you brake because the engine floods with all the fuel that was meant for the boosting).
If I were designing this black box , I would hook it up to the speed sensor on the gearbox, the same way that your dash speedo works. (Practically speaking, make it read off the dash speedo). Of course, the AFM output could still be stored.
#1. It wasn't a pedestrian stupid. He hit another car... who probably had the right of way.
:-( boohoo. What they don't think about is that it exonerates the innocent... justice and civil liberty are supposed to compliment each other, not vice versa. We now live in a world where justice is proclaimed evil and the criminal's civil liberties outweigh those of the innocent thus depriving the them of justice.
#2. Darwin was ROBBED! The idiot should have killed his own damn self running into a telephone pole or something. I don't think 18 months is enough for him.
#3. I think these black boxes are great! Those civil liberty freaks can shove it... they probably think it shouldnt be allowed because it incriminates people
Last. What kind of inconsiderate jerk are you to say such a terrible thing. How would you feel if this was a close relative of yours or your best friend... would they still be a dipshit?
There are actually two kinds of slippery slope arguments. The fallacious one is where you say that "event X has happened, therefore event Y will inevitably happen." An example of this is "if the government makes us register our guns, they will come to take the guns away."
Not the best example, because there are plenty of examples from real life where first the government required registration, and then the government came and took the guns away. It's hardly unreasonable to worry about something that has actually happened many times.
A better example would be "Since it is possible to put an RFID chip in cats and dogs now, it's possible to put one in people now, and therefore the government is going to require RFID chips implanted in all people. Therefore RFID chips in cats and dogs will lead to tyranny."
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Wow. When I saw a reply from someone named "fuckslashdot," I was expecting to see a totally different post. ;-)
Severed Head of Mr. Jones: Murder! Murrrrrrderrrr!
Severed Head of Mr. Smith: Guilty! He's guillllllty!!
Severed Head of Mr. Cooper: Dang, it's cold in here. And how are we talking without any lungs?
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Am I suppossed to feel sorry for this asshole? He was doing 50 MPH OVER THE SPEED LIMIT! Good for him I hope he gets fucked in the ass every night in prison. He killed someone for cryin out loud.
Maybe I wasn't clear... My example was to show that the computers that monitor and control cars are acccurate enough to be able to determine speed through a variety of ways and very accurately too.
So not only can you determine through a sime read of the speedometer, but the MAF, fuel trim, RPM, current gear (which can be found from RPM vs Speed even in manual transmissions) all form several ways to verify the speed reading.
Yes, you are right there can be lag in a MAF setup. Speed-density (aka. MAP (MAnifold Pressure)) won't have this problem so when your BOV actuates, you won't run rich. I forgot to mention manifold pressure in the speed-density.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Okay let's go back to pre-capitalist law enforcement. You don't want me to drive above the speed limit ? Then make a car that doesn't go above the speed limit.
Making a car that goes to 200km/h, then putting in a chip that tells the cops when you go over 50, is ENTRAPMENT. Make a car that stops accelerating at 50 instead. It's already nasty enough that speed limits are being calculated according to income possibilities, not safety. I would be quite happy to drive the black box up the designer's ass at 200km/h.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
For those that recall the radio station Quebec spoof of the I Am Canadian beer commercial, one part comes to mind.
"And although I can't turn right on a red light, but Tabernac! I can go straight through them!"
Montreal is nuts like that. I remember driving through Montreal, and having to do over 120km to keep up with the flow of traffic and not be a hazard, in a zone marked 50 km/h. (Now, this fellow might have not been on such a busy and wide street, but the driving in Montreal truly is nuts in general.)
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
You have a fender-bender in you new (say) Pontiac with a (say) Pontiac executive. You are following too closely, clip her car's bumper, and both cars end up in a heap. The black box in your car says that you were doing five over, you were following too close, and you car needs an oil change. The black box in hers says she was doing the speed limit and even the tires were at the right pressure.
After your fine, suspension, and/or jail time, against all odds you get into a wreck in your busted old Pontiac with another Pontiac executive. This time, he was driving 120 MPH on the wrong side of the interstate, while you were carefully signaling a lane change. Strangely, the black box in his car shows he was doing the speed limit on the correct side of the interstate, while your black box says you were changing radio stations and eating a ham on rye sandwich at 120 MPH without a seat belt on. (Certainly the black box "evidence" would be less credible in this case given where the cars land, the fact that your could no longer go 120 MPH, and that no traces of ham or rye were found at the scene.)
I'm all for black boxes in cars, but I want more than the word of a Pontiac executive that the data that comes out of it is accurate. (Nothing against Pontiac here; the guy's car was a Pontiac, so I picked on them.)
On another note, regarding the ridiculous 18 month sentence for killing somebody by hitting them with one's car at 90 MPH, wouldn't it be interesting if we had the old eye-for-an-eye punishment? Cruel? Arguably. Unusual? Certainly. Interesting? Definitely!
Or just forget jail time. Paint a big red bulls-eye on either side of his car and run a news story on Montreal television, complete with photographs of the crash scene and a picture of the new paint job. Tie him into his car, replace the engine with that of a chainsaw's, and leave him in an inviting spot near a heavily-traveled road.
And while I'm rambling, how about the judge (or jury) that let this guy back out on the road after his first speeding-at-three-times-the-limit offense? Let's give them a hand!
And to Judge Louise Bourdeau who will put this guy back on the streets in 18 months and back on the road in 18 more: a hearty round of applause! In her words, according to the article, "No sentence can replace the loss of this young man." Thank you, Judge Obvious. As it turns out, we don't have murder trials to resurrect the victims. We have them (among other reasons) to keep more people from getting killed.
I'd bet (hope?) if somebody ran around town with a chainsaw -- no license required -- hacking people to death he'd get more than 18 months in jail.
But maybe that's because Pontiac doesn't make chainsaws and they don't have black boxes.
The changes in velocity that the wheel will experience in those conditions will probably indicate that the tires weren't in proper contact with the road. It shouldn't be too hard to convince the authorities that your car isn't capable of accelerating from 40 to 100km in 0.2 of a second.
If it's capable of measuring the amount of throttle and braking being applied too it should present quite a detailed picture.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
While I was in Japan recently, I read an article in the Stars and Stripes newspaper. A US soldier was accused of drunk driving resulting in the death of a Japanese citizen, and the judge looked very unfavorably on the fact that he had not apologized to the family of the victim.
In the future there will be no 'probable cause'
Look what has happened to the American 'Bill of
Rights' in the Constitution. The DMCA has made
a mockery of our Constitution, and our overly
pliant judiciary is reminiscent of the German
Weimar courts' abandonement of their own people
in 1934. The phrase over the door of the German
Reichstag, their parliament house, reads 'Dem
Deutschen Volk' - the German People. It rang
hollow then as a similar phrase on our Supreme
Courts Building -Equal Justice Under Law. Look
at the last presidential election, when our
supreme court colluded with a republican mob
in Florida and selected a president for us who
had NOT won the popular vote. If Gore had been
elected, the Arab 'blood fued' against the
Bush family would not have been directed against
our twin towers and they would be standing today.
With regards to our cars, it takes no genius
to see that 'Homeland Security' will soon mean
'Geheimestaatspolizei' (Home State Police) =Gestapo. Soon they will realize the potential
in the black boxes and not only demand instant
access but also instant control. They may
even demand and recieve means of mandatory vehicle self destruct devices in cars...to prevent
them from 'injuring sensitive locations or
approaching secure areas'. As for recording
activities in the cars, while video may be far
away, it might not really be. Anyone who turns
off or removes such a device could be deemed
prima facie guilty of conspiracy to terrorism
and tried in a military court (Patriot Act) even
though he was an American citizen. Failing that,
he could become a disappeared one like the
'desaparacidos' in Chile in the 1970's under
the Pinochet dictatorship. This Pinochet regime
was the darling of an American economist named
Milton Friedman, and is the template for the
future of our own American society to be used
by the monetarists that now control our
government. Chile witnessed how really weak
a formerly well off population was when
confronted by a new raw force of autocracy.
You figure out the implications while your
friends are busy with time wasting self guilt
excersizes or misplaced sycophancies regarding
people who care about them less than the dust
under their shoes.
I have thousands of rights, as do you! You even have the right to assume that I see each and every freedom as a privilege. Which is far from the original topic, but hey that's your right too!
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
There are also plenty of moderate people who would like gun registration to make the job of law enforcement easier
Except that it doesn't work. The Supreme Court has already ruled that criminals don't have to register their guns, so by definition only law-abiding folks will register their guns.
A fired-bullet database sounds like a good idea, but it is fraught with problems. Brand-new barrels don't make the same marks as barrels that have been used a while, and a savvy criminal can take some cartridges, smear some grit on the bullets, and fire the bullets from the gun. Now the barrel marks don't match the database. And of course criminals have access to machine shops just as law-abiding folks do, so they could have the barrels machined or replaced.
Since many criminals use stolen guns anyway, all you would be able to do is figure out from whom the gun was stolen. Doesn't help find the criminal.
Registration will catch a few really dumb criminals, but that's about it. And the Sullivan Act in New York shows that you can require registration, but then not let anyone register, to make a de facto gun ban.
I welcome a registration program that required that owners prove that they are competent in gun safety and marksmanship.
This sounds good, but statistics show that places with such laws aren't actually safer than places without such laws. In Washington state, you don't even need to take a safety class to carry concealed, and there are no problems with people carrying unsafely.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Look at you. Get back to fucking up more computer games for people. You fucked jacked ass motherfucker.
I recommend avoiding Saturns -- go for a Sunbeam, or a Shelby Cobra, or maybe an Aston-Martin DB7 Volante. ;)