Mandatory Automotive Black Boxes May Be On the Way

Attila Dimedici writes "The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is expected to announce a new regulation requiring all vehicles to contain a 'black box.' Not only that, but the devices would be designed to make it difficult (possibly illegal) to modify what information these devices collect or to disable them even though the courts have ruled that the owner of the vehicle owns the data. The courts have also ruled that authorities may access that data (to what degree and whether a warrant is necessary depends on the state)."

Comments

Re:Limitation

[SIR_Taco]

The current EDRs (Event Data Recorders) only store the last few moments leading up to a crash (crash is judged by either rapid deceleration, or by air-bags being deployed). In their current state, they wouldn't retain information long enough to be able to be used for anything like you mention.

AFAIK, as an emergency first responder, these boxes have been present in most vehicles already for quite a few years (close to a decade). You may very well have one in your current vehicle but are unaware of it. The new part is making them mandatory.

Some items that it stores in the moments before and during a collision:
- Speed immediately before rapid deceleration
- RPMs
- Brake application or lack there of
- Force of impact
- Which airbags were deployed
- Whether the driver was wearing a seat-belt (other passengers too, if the vehicle is equipped to sense that)

Those are the fairly standard/common items. Other vehicles with steering-response and/or traction control etc. will also log those items.