What a Black Box Data Dump Looks Like

An anonymous reader writes "Massachusetts Lt. Governor Tim Murray recently crashed his Ford Crown Victoria while reportedly traveling 108 mph. The car was pretty much shredded, but Murray walked away without major injuries. According to data from the car's black box, Murray and the Crown Vic experienced the equivalent of 40 gravities during the crash. The data contradicts the story he gave police. Maybe we should strap black boxes to all our politicians."

Comments

Advice

[stanlyb]

So, the first thing you should do after a car accident is to find and destroy its black box, so your insurance company would have no way to avoid paying the, what, insurance?

Re:Advice

[ackthpt]

So, the first thing you should do after a car accident is to find and destroy its black box, so your insurance company would have no way to avoid paying the, what, insurance?

"The most interesting thing about the damage your vehicle suffered, is that the passenger compartment is largely intact, except for this little plastic box in the back of the glove box, which appears to have suffered severe physical trama at the end of a tire iron. I don't think we're going to honor your policy, sir."

Re:Advice

[mr1911]

The other end of the seat belt connector would be your best bet if you wish to survive the accident you seem to be planning for.

Re:Advice

[SimplyGeek]

I know people who get spare connectors from the junk yards and keep them plugged in so the car doesn't keep beeping at them about the seatbelt.

Why people go so far to avoid wearing a seat belt is beyond me.

Re:Advice

[hawguy]

Or you could, you know, drive responsibly and treat your car like the potential deadly weapon that it is. So when the insurance company looks at the black box data, it matches your story.

As long as the data is read by an independent third party and made available to the driver (and his lawyer), the black box data shouldn't be something to fear.

Re:Advice

[Anonymous Coward]

You are missing the point. I DON'T have to say anything, or prove anything, It is my right to be silent and to not incriminate myself. It is their duty to prove me wrong. If they refuse to pay without reason/facts, then i will sue them. End of story.

You're right. You don't need to say or prove anything when you make a claim. They also don't need to pay your claim. If you believe that they do need to pay your claim and you sue them, then you WILL have to testify and give evidence. A lawsuit is a civil case. It is not a criminal case. The right not to testify only applies to criminal cases.

Please enjoy getting to pay to have your ass handed to you.

Re:Advice

[nschubach]

I usually wear my seatbelt, but when I don't, I'm intelligent enough to know I don't have it one without a stupid fucking alarm going off every 15 seconds making sure I'm aware.

... says dead_user.

(Sorry, I found it amusing.)

Re:Advice

[mr1911]

I either have to break the law or ride in fear of instant decapitation from the seatbelt in case of a crash

You are suffering from irrational fear. If the accident is severe enough for a seatbelt to decapitate you, you will certainly not survive without the seatbelt.

On the other hand, it is not unreasonable that you will be in an accident of such severity that you would not be decapitated by a seatbelt but seriously injured or killed if not wearing it.

Re:Advice

[JWSmythe]

    There are better seat belts, that do a better job of restraining you. Most people wouldn't want them in their passenger car though.

    I only installed them in one of my cars. On the weekends, I did some amateur class racing in my street car. The shoulder belt was worthless on the left turns. It was much nicer with the belts installed, I didn't have to brace myself while taking the turns. I also couldn't reach the radio or air conditioning controls while belted in.

    Seat belts do save lives. You have a better chance of survival firmly strapped to your seat, than you do being ejected from the vehicle, and potentially your own vehicle landing on top of you.

    Passenger car seat (lap and shoulder) belts do a pretty good job of restraining you, while allowing comfort. The twisting that can occur during a wreck, due to only having one shoulder restrained, is a lot less than what could happen without it. I'll have back and neck pain forever from a wreck I was in over 10 years ago, but I did survive relatively unhurt.

    I've had to give practical demonstrations to kids on why they have to wear their seatbelts. They'll argue, so I'll do a brake check at about 30mph (after checking for cars around me). Although they insist they can catch themselves, they always end up on the floor asking what happened. They usually don't try to argue with me about it after that.

Re:Advice

[silverhalide]

Stop right there. This is hands down the shittiest advice I've ever seen posted to a forum that could get someone killed. I really hope you're trolling. Saying air bags aren't designed for seatbelt use is completely ignorant and life-threateningly wrong. In fact, it's quite the opposite, an airbag could potentially kill you if you use it without a seatbelt.

While I don't like calling people names in forums, you are an ignorant idiot that could get someone killed if they follow your advice and get in a wreck.

Passive restraint systems ARE without a shred of doubt designed for maximum effectiveness with the active restraints in place. It's a SYSTEM. You could, for example, fly over the steering wheel airbag if you're not wearing the belt. OEM seatbelts are designed with a very carefully calibrated amount of "stretch" to them that will give in a crash too. Changing these out is potential suicide. You are not a crash safety engineer, and god help us if you ever become one. Leave that to the pros. Wear your OEM, crash-tested seatbelts and never ever touch the airbag system.

Re:Advice

[onkelonkel]

"Most people would say they aren't especially comfortable

Oddly enough, I feel uncomfortable when I don't have a seatbelt on. It feels like nothing is keeping me in my seat. I know it's all in my head, but for me it's one more reason to wear the seatbelt.

I have a better idea...

[AngryDeuce]

Maybe we should strap black boxes to all our politicians.

Explosives would be far more beneficial to society in general...

Re:40 gravities?

[SJHillman]

And what do you think the G in G-force stands for?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-force

1G is equivalent to Earth-normal gravity (an object at rest on the planetary surface). 40G is equivalent to 40 times Earth-normal gravities. Gravities is commonly used when discussing force related to multiples of Earth-normal gravity.

Disclaimer

[girlintraining]

There's a disclaimer right there on page one:


Accident reconstructionists must be aware of the limitations of the data recorded... should compare the recorded data with the physical evidence...

Those disclaimers do mean things. The data was never intended to be used as a "black box"; That's purely media hyperbole comparing it to what's in an aircraft, which is designed to aid in accident reconstruction. The courts routinely dismiss GPS tracking data on phones used as evidence that the driver wasn't speeding because the device isn't meant to be used for that, and isn't precise enough anyway. An officer's radar gun, however, is.

That said... let us all look to the sky now and return to mumblings about conspiracies between or about the government and/or insurance companies.

Re:Engineering

[Binestar]

Examples like this are what I use to counter people who say regulation is horrible, free market should reign uncontrolled. Cars weren't and would not be this safe without regulation enforcing it.

Re:Engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

Your car must suck. 100 mph is not very extreme speed unless you car is from the 70s...

Re:100mph and no seatbelt?

[Animats]

I think they buried the lead here... 100mph, sans seat-belt, and he walked away? That's goddamn incredible. I've seen first hand what an accident at 170km/h looks like (on the Autobahn) and walking away seems basically impossible.

You have to be impressed with the performance of the air bag system. The logging shows the seat belt unbuckled, and the air bag controller firing the first stage charge, then the second stage charge 10ms later as the system detects a severe crash.

The accelerations indicate the car first hit something that didn't stop the vehicle. Then it hit something hard, but either bounced off or broke through. That's the brief 40G spike. (Football players experience 40G spikes in normal play.) Then there's some banging around.

Understand that this is just the airbag's record. All the airbag controller has is some accelerometers and seat belt information. Airbag controllers record that data primarily to improve the performance of airbags. In the early years of airbags, there were a very few incidents where airbag deployment caused fatalities. (The worst it ever got was 0.5 fatality per million years of car registration.) This was essentially fixed (down to 0.01) by 2003. About a second of data is kept at all times, and shortly after the airbag fires, that data is locked in memory. Note that there's only 712ms of history here. The deceleration of 23MPH during airbag deployment is about typical for a crash that didn't involve hitting a solid obstacle like a bridge. The airbag has to fire at just the right time to be most effective, and the two-stage systems have to react properly to accidents of various types and severity. Here, the airbag system did exactly what it was supposed to do, and the driver walked away from the crash.

There's no vehicle computer data in the report. Vehicle data has more data sources and much longer term.

Re:Engineering

[omnichad]

Those crumple zones protect the other driver too. There's a reason they don't make cars like they used to. And that regulation protects ME from YOU.

Re:Engineering

[Ferzerp]

I don't think you understand what makes a car safe. You don't want something that is indestructable. You want something that dissipates a majority of a crash specifically by destructing. Previously, vehicles weren't designed to do this, and so the weakest area was the cabin. Now, they're designed to do that, and the cabin usually remans the most intact part of the vehicle, while most of the crash energy goes in to "shredding" (to use your terms) the rest of the vehicle. Ever seen an F1 crash? The reason they typically survive is that all that energy goes in to making the car practically disintegrate...

Seatbelts?

[ratboy666]

Sure, seatbelts and airbags save car drivers -- which is why I am against them.

As a pedestrian, cyclist and motorcyclist, I think that ANYTHING that increases car driver confidence is... bad.

Get rid of seatbelts. Get rid of airbags. Put broken glass into the dashboard.

That should act to straighten out a lot of car drivers!

And, who knows? Maybe the additional care will balance out the removal of protection; hey, we may even have a reduction of fatalities.

Smear a bit of blood on the glass in the factory, just to be sure to get the point across.