Black Boxes in Vehicles

[tkcomer]

I’m not sure if this is the right forum, if not just move it. I saw in today’s Ledger about the couple that had the wreck on the AA highway that killed the grandmother and two small children. I noticed that they pulled the “black box” from the truck and determined they were speeding at the time of the wreck. Which was used as evidence to indite the driver of the truck. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this technology. And I don’t know of any automobile manufacturer that tells its buyers that it is on board. And was a court order issued to get the black box? Will a day come that the police can pull you over, plug a laptop into a port and say “Well now Mr. Comer, looks like you were doing 68 in a 55 zone thirty miles ago.” And give me a ticket based on that information. Don’t believe me? Who would ever thought of a day where a person gets sent to jail for punishment and has to pay for their stay? Its called double jeopardy. Don’t ever underestimate the kind of schemes a cash strapped government will think up. Think of red light cameras. I’d have no problem if they used them to prove a person ran a red light to cause a wreck. But it is a well known fact the government could care less about preventing wrecks with them. The manufactures of the cameras even claim increased “revenue” from the cameras. Not wreck prevention. I don’t think I like where this technology is headed.

[kdown]

This technology has been around for several years. We run Detriot Diesel Series 60 engines in our trucks. We can plug a reader into the on board computer and find out a lot of things including maximum speed, etc. Having this available probably makes everyone safer.

[Jeremy]

There was an article about this in October's Wired Magazine:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.10/start.html?pg=5

Seems like this would be a violation of Fifth Amendment rights to not incriminate yourself, unless there was a way to voluntarily disable it of course. 65 percent of 2004 models have them it says. I agree with the last line: "Hey, hackers: How about some counterintelligence?"

[tkcomer]

A private business spying on you is a little different. Though a lot of firings have been thrown out of court for the invasion of privacy. This is the government. And they are strapped for cash. Who had any idea that they would use the Mafia busting RICO act to take property from owners whose tenants sold drugs? Without their knowledge? So they could sell it for cash. The government says it’s for the “good of the people”, but it seems to me a way to raise money with out raising taxes. It’s always the ‘good things’ we need to be monitored for. If you do no wrong, why worry about it. But a lot of average Joes and Jills get caught up in these stupid laws. And their lives turned upside down. While the real criminals run amok. Because they have no cash to pay a fine.

[Jeremy]

1999 Car A collides with 2005 Car B. Both cars were speeding. Car B is found at fault because it kept a log. Woohoo, that seems fair.

[Chuck]

1999 Car A collides with 2005 Car B. Both cars were speeding. Car B is found at fault because it kept a log. Woohoo, that seems fair.

Proof is better than hear say in a court of law. It is amazing that we pay so much more money to give them the proof they need to find us guilty.

[Jeremy]

Hmmm... more incentive to get that 1965 Mustang Convertible :)

[mark]

................I'm against it. More infringement into our personal lives.

Hmmm, where's the ACLU on this one??


I guess the 10 commandments has them too busy to deal with real problems...............see ya mark

[Chuck]

Love the idea but would like mine in a Chevy. lol

I am looking for an article I read a month or so back that shows how you movement and speed can be tracked by GSM in your cell phone.

Really in these modern day times it just depends on how bad they want to track you.

[tkcomer]

I’m still leery of the idea. Do you think if the state found out the guy was only going 54 MPH they would have given that to the defense? These are test cases. I honestly have no problem if they tap the box after the wreck occurs, it’s the “mission creep” that alarms me. Every time they pass a “good” law, someone in the government finds a way to pervert it. Once the public accepts the tapping of the box for wrecks, you can bet the government will move on to the next level. It’s this government control of the people I’m having issues with. But my one big problem is the carmakers not telling anyone that these boxes are in there. Do you think Uncle Sam found out by accident what that box could reveal? The Nanny State was bad enough. Passing stupid laws because “Its in your best interests.” But this police state, and all the abuses that have happened, scares me. They need to quit snooping on the average Joe. And build more prisons. That way when a cop arrests a real felon, they’re not back out on the streets in a few hours.

[kdown]

Are you riding on a black box?

Turns out mine has one. A 2000 Chev. Impala

When a plane crashes, one of the first things that investigators do is to try to find the flight data recorder or "black box". It allows investigators to determine what may have gone wrong and caused the crash. Black boxes in cars can function in about the same way.

In the United States, there are approximately 190 million drivers. If you are driving a car manufactured by GM or Saturn, you could be carrying around an event data recorder (EDR) and not even know it. The EDR senses various conditions in and around the vehicle and that can then be obtained by various individuals for various purposes.

EDRs record the following data:

Vehicle speed (five seconds before impact)
Engine speed (five seconds before impact)
Brake status (five seconds before impact)
Throttle position (five seconds before impact)
State of driver's seat belt switch (On/Off)
Passenger's airbag (On/Off)
IR Warning Lamp status (On/Off)
Time from vehicle impact to airbag deployment
Ignition cycle count at event time
Ignition cycle count at investigation
Maximum velocity for near-deployment event
Velocity vs. time for frontal airbag deployment event
Time from vehicle impact to time of maximum velocity
Time between near-deploy and deploy event (if within five seconds)

Using this data, insurance agents and police officers can reconstruct the events leading up to a crash. Black boxes have been in all GM cars since 1999 and in many other makes and models since 1996. (See below to see if your car comes standard with one.)

EDRs were originally intended to record what caused air bags to open. The data that triggers the air bag often tells the story of what happened in the seconds before a crash.

An even more advanced version of the EDR is being tested by Ford in police cars. This model sends data to 911 dispatchers in the event of a crash. It even allows dispatchers to talk to the occupants of the vehicle after the crash and relay the exact location of and number of passengers in the car.

Privacy concerns

Since these new black boxes are networked to the dispatchers, privacy issues rise even as automotive executives tout the safety improvements afforded by the device. The big issue: tracking. Who monitors the data sent from each car?

David Sobel from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) says he fears citizens will lose control of that data. "The bottom line is, the user, in this case the driver, really needs to be in control of what kind of information is collected, how long it's maintained, and who is going to have access to it," he said.

Judy Bridgeman-Veal, a spokeswoman for the Ford Motor Company, disputes Sobel's concerns. "This is not a constant monitoring system," she said. "Unless there is an accident, there will not be any tracking." What we wonder is how these cars begin tracking what happened to the car before the accident if they don’t start tracking until after the accident!

Even though auto companies insist privacy will be protected, there are currently no standards in place. For more on EDRs, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has a comprehensive guide on its website.

One chief concern is what if the information in the black box isn't accurate. How would you know? If the radio in the car breaks, a light doesn't go on, or the engine starts making loud noises, you know immediately. If the black box starts misreporting your speed, or doesn't record the fact that you hit the brake, the experts' reliance is placed on faulty information.

The Value of Information

Another big concern is that there is no way in which you can tell if an automobile manufacturer started recording other data like where you go and what you do. Though there is no information that this is happening now, adding GPS tracking would be quite simple.

Though this may sound a little paranoid, there is a very high dollar marketing value to determining information about where certain people go and what they do. Simply adding an inexpensive global positioning device would track everywhere you went and this data could be made available to anyone willing to pay the price for it. You may not have any secrets but do you really want your whereabouts being made available to mega-marketing companies?

MORE INFO

Event Data Recorders — More than 40 million vehicles now have Event Data Recorders (EDRs), which today can record auto speed, engine revolutions per minute, and the status of seat belts and braking for five seconds before and one second after an accident. Lawyers have already used EDR data in civil and criminal highway-accident cases. A proposed regulation from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) would standardize EDR data by 2008 and make it easier to access. In several states, privacy concerns about EDRs have resulted in legislation that bars insurers from putting wording in a policy's cooperation clause requiring insureds to provide EDR information. Some car rental contracts make insurance coverage invalid if the renter is breaking the law. Following a loss, the companies might be able to use EDR data to determine whether the driver was violating speed restrictions or other laws. Linked with OnStar or a similar system, an EDR could report the location of an accident and driver behavior over a period before an accident.