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Black Boxes In Cars Raise Privacy Concerns
hessian writes "In the next few days, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is expected to propose long-delayed regulations requiring auto manufacturers to include event data recorders — better known as 'black boxes' — in all new cars and light trucks. But the agency is behind the curve. Automakers have been quietly tucking the devices, which automatically record the actions of drivers and the responses of their vehicles in a continuous information loop, into most new cars for years. Data collected by the recorders is increasingly showing up in lawsuits, criminal cases and high-profile accidents. Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray initially said that he wasn't speeding and that he was wearing his seat belt when he crashed a government-owned car last year. But the Ford Crown Victoria's data recorder told a different story: It showed the car was traveling more than 100 mph and Murray wasn't belted in."
That's the particular problem with this 'black box' is people are going to think it's like an airplanes black box. Airplanes have people looking at them to make sure all the sensors are working. Your car, maybe once a year at inspection. I have an older car that the seat belt sensor sometimes says I'm not buckled in, which is wrong, I feel naked without the buckle on. But, if I got in a wreck and the sensor showed me not buckled in, I'd have a job of proving I was.
I have a feeling that lawyers will turn this in to a fiasco of prove your 'black box' isn't making shit up, in which they will be right to do.
I would like to say thank you for pointing this out!! It goes both ways! It can help prove your innocence as well!
As someone who was involved in a fatal traffic accident where a 14 year old boy skateboarded out into the middle of the road in front of my truck(it was pitch dark out, the kid was wearing ALL black with no protection crossing a busy/main 4 lane road, oh and from the toxicology report, stoned off his ass), without that black box in my truck I would be in jail for manslaughter right now. The reasons for such is that the police were able to identify 1) Speed information before and after crash 2) Braking information - When did I apply my brakes, How long did it take to reach a complete stop, etc. 3) Steering Information/Angle 4) Seat belt information 5)Impact information and with this information they were able to ascertain that there was no possible way for me to stop in time without my prior speed having been an endangerment to other drivers (35 in a 55 zone to have stopped in time based on where I was first able to see the kid).