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Car Owners to be Notified of Blackboxes in Vehicle
smooth wombat writes "As a follow-up to this long ago posting, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has passed a resolution requiring car manufacturers to inform buyers if their cars are equipped with Event Data Recorders (EDRs). The new regulation also standardizes what information is to be collected. Car manufacturers must comply with the new regulation beginning in the 2011 model year."
One thing I've always feared: some huge speed bump because after some driving incident/accident I'm embroiled in an "I said/you said" recount of the event. I try to be as safe a driver as possible and have managed 30+ accident-free years. But almost every trip is an adventure with crazies on the road every day. This black box technology could hedge my (and others) bets on accurately describing what "went down".
I don't like the thought someone would be watching me all the time like Big Brother, but on the other hand if I get t-boned, and the other party claims I ran a red light or some other nonsense I like the thought there could be an electronic record showing the other party was traveling way over the speed limit, weaving, slamming brakes, etc. right up to the event.
It could be a great equalizer for insurance rates. It could even spur better driving in on whole by the general populace (some drivers of course and their negligence is intractable).
And, as for the breach in privacy, I don't see much demand and/or interest in the type of data described in the article in contexts other than accidents. If you're accident free, why would the data be interesting?
(Aside: I actually installed a "Car Chip" in my car for personal monitoring. Most notably I was surprised at the frequency of "hard accelerations" -- far more than I'd have guessed. The data was charted against distance, and I was able to "see" where I was "hard accelerating". Interestingly after knowing this, and paying more attention to accelerating I self-modified my habits and the mileage for my car (Civic) increased almost 6%.)
(NOTE: this doesn't address and/or discuss the notion of tracking movement and travel via mechanisms such as GPS... a whole other ball of wax in privacy discussions.)
But what happens when all cars have black boxes, and there's no way to avoid buying a new car with one in it?
What also needs to happen, in addition to informing the buyer of the existence of such a recording device in a car, is to have the buyer decide whether or not such a device should be disabled/removed before purchase at no extra cost or liability to the buyer.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
This changes nothing. Try to get car insurance without agreeing to give your insurance company access on demand.
Do we ALSO need a law to indicate that it's illegal to remove my own property from the car and then destroy that property if I'm in an accident? Imagining that it's my fault, that is. It's not evidence of a crime, unless I intentionally caused the accident.
Are police just entitled to come along and remove it from my car without my permission now? Do they have to ask?
--Jim (me)
After all, the life cycle of a car, beginning with design, is just plain long. They can't just mandate that beginning tomorrow, every car made will have 'future technology 1' embedded. Fine, that makes sense.
But if this is just about notifying buyers, it should be immediate. There's no need to give GM five years to get out a dealer bulletin and some stickers for the owners manuals.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
5 years of collecting any kind of data we want, without telling anyone!
If the data is a loop of recent events and data is not leaving your car how are they watching you?
I was telling an attorney friend about EDR's and his response was "really? I suppose that means I can subpoena that information and admit it for evidence. Unless it's ruled self-incrimination..." We spent about an hour discussing and it brought up a whole bunch of interesting questions: Is the information on this machine considered part of a persons "papers or effects" or is all information now property of the government court to be surrendered on demand? Is destroying this device considered tampering with evidence... do I have a right to smash up my own car (computer, books, diary, etc.)? If not, I think this intrudes on my property rights. Where does the court's right to information about me end and my rights to my own property and information begin? Is it safe to say "none of your damned business" any more?
Anyone know if this information will be required to be disclosed to vehicle renters?
:-)
The presence of the recorder will be disclosed in the fine print you don't read. Duh.
The "telemetry" of your drive will be disclosed to the rental car company (the car's owner - seems fair) in preparation for computing you bill.
I'm not a big fan of this level of privacy invasion but their is too much precident for privacy crushing actions that this will likley be mandatory in the near future(7-21 years out), as the added price will be negligible.
Storm
Notification laws aren't that useful. California has one that requires businesses to post warnings of "hazardous substances". Problem is, damned near everything is a hazardous substance under this law. Consequently, every business has one of these placards and nobody pays any attention because if we did, we'd never be able to buy anything. This notification will just end up as another piece of paper in the mound that nobody ever reads and that we sign whenever we buy a car. I suppose it will have the benefit of letting the seller say, "We told you about this" when some dope comes back a few years later, upset that his black box recording ratted him out as going 100 mph just before the crash.
Remeber when you could pay for cable so that you didn't have to watch all the comercials? Remeber when you could get a customer service card and get a discount, instead of needing one to pay just under market value instead of 10% over market value? They might give people a discount on insurance until it is adopted, and then they are going to check the records and everything on there will be another reason to raise your rates. Even if you are a perfect driver, there will be times when you need to accelerate or brake. The current system can't tell what the speed limit was, so all that "hard acceleration" is the type of behavior they will look at, or the time you go out of state and the speed limit is 5 miles over the maximum speed in your home state.
I could see where you could use the information in a court case, but then why couldn't you submit your data. The other person may or may not consent to a search. If your data shows that you were driving correctly, now you have a reasonable cause to get a court order for the other guys data. At that point it would follow all the same laws as physically searching your vehicle
To all of the /.ers who want to just remove the EDR. It's an integral part of the engine management computer. You can't remove it and have the car continue to function. I predict a future aftermarket business for replacement management computers without the data recording aspects.
But the answer to your question is no. A new law isn't needed.
The thing you have to realize is that there are very few "accidents" in traffic situations. There's a reason the police refer to them as "collisions" and not accidents--because usually someone has done/failed to do something that causes it. That usually involves recklessness or negligence on the part of the driver. Those actions ARE crimes, whether or not there was a specific intent to commit a crime. In my area the police are trained to immediately download the information from the EDR at the accident scene. No driver permission required, because it's part of the investigation of the cause of the collision. Police accident investigators have a handheld device that plugs into a port in the vehicle that downloads the data from the EDR for later analysis.
By the way, vehicles that are equipped with GPS services such as OnStar automatically call authorities in the event of a collision. Do you really believe that they couldn't also upload the EDR contents at the same time? I'm not saying they *do* that, but it's not inconceivable.
Okay, I'm no expert, but I do know a little something about automotive control systems, and my understanding is that part of OBD-II is that vehicles record at least 30 seconds prior to and after any event that bears reporting; this is called snapshot data. In most systems, only one snapshot can be stored, and there are IIRC four levels of criticality; snapshot data is overwritten when a more critical message must be logged. At that point, the last 30 seconds of data is written from RAM and, if processing continues, the next 30 seconds are recorded. One of the things that can trigger this event is if the airbag computer indicates that the airbag has deployed.
Mind you, this is on 1996 and newer vehicles - and some vehicles went OBD-II before the deadline. I believe (just as an example) that the 1995 Nissan 240SX is among them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What needs to be required here is that the black box data cannot be released without the owner's signed approval. And that retaliation cannot be taken against a car owner who refuses to release this data. Anything less is not enough.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I think I will install one of these into my Yugo!
"You were on the marketing team? "
No, I'm an engineer, suspensions on Mustang, engines on Corvette.
"Your low profile tires comment makes absolutely no sense."
Because you don't know what you are talking about.
"They are indeed not designed for racing."
Thank you, that was my point.
" However, they are high" (ish) " performance vehicles (the Corvette more so) and they should be fully capable of being used in closed course events such as driver education (racetrack) and autocross.
Of course they are. But that's not racing. If you want to race a Corvette you replace almost every single component and body panel. It's a whole new car.
"It's hard to believe that the Corvette with its near supercar horsepower, handling, and braking is only being designed with slightly elevated durability targets."
Well, try really hard. Or become an automotive engineer.