Posted on 06/16/2003 9:07:08 AM PDT by John Jorsett
When Edwin Matos killed the girls, he didn't know his car would become a witness for the prosecution.
Like millions of Americans, Matos had no idea his car contained an electronic device recording what he did just before the crash, but it was information that would help send him to prison.
Matos was driving the 2002 Pontiac Trans Am in a 30 mph zone of a suburb near Fort Lauderdale, Fla., when the car driven by a teenage girl pulled out of a driveway into his path.
The driver and her friend died instantly.
Defense lawyer Robert Stanziale said Matos was going about 60 mph. Assistant State Prosecutor Michael Horowitz said that his accident investigator calculated Matos was traveling about 98 mph. The electronic data recorder in Matos' car showed his peak speed was 114 mph in the seconds before the crash.
Last month, the information from the EDR helped convict Matos of two counts of manslaughter and two counts of vehicular homicide.
Matos, 47, is scheduled to be sentenced this Friday. He faces a minimum of 22 years and a maximum of 30 years in prison.
While most people are familiar with the black boxes in aircraft, which also serve as event data recorders, few motorists know there are similar devices in their vehicles as part of the system that controls air bags. Only 36 percent of the 38,000 people surveyed by the Insurance Research Council were aware of EDRs.
But at least 10 million vehicles have them, estimated Philip W. Haseltine, president of the Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety, a lobbying group in Arlington, Va.
The most sophisticated EDRs collect pre-crash information including the speed of the vehicle, whether the driver was accelerating or braking and whether the seat belts were buckled.
The collection of such information has excited a wide range of groups for different reasons, and EDRs have the potential to become one of the more controversial issues in the auto industry.
Safety researchers see EDRs as an excellent way to get more detailed information about real-world crashes so they can see how to improve safety.
Insurance companies see EDRs as a way to determine who is at fault in an accident and whether seat belts were used. One day they could also allow an insurance company to know who is naughty and nice in everyday driving.
The courts see EDRs as an new tool to determine the guilt or innocence of people involved in serious, criminal accidents.
Privacy groups see EDRs as electronic snoops and a threat to privacy. Consumers Union, the nonprofit group that publishes Consumer Reports, says "there are significant potential dangers" to motorists' privacy.
The prime role of EDRs has been to control air bags and to record information about how well they worked during a crash. General Motors Corp. took the lead in collecting more information.
Starting with the 1999 model year, all GM vehicles had EDRs programmed to record about five seconds of pre-crash information. That included whether the driver was accelerating or braking and the speed of the vehicle, according to a study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The idea was to learn more about how to improve crash performance. After selected, serious crashes, GM would collect the information with the permission of the owner of the vehicle, said Jim Schell, a GM spokesman.
GM routinely shared that information with the highway traffic safety administration.
While all vehicles with air bags use EDRs, other automakers have not been as quick to increase the amount of information recorded. Some are worried that consumers may resent having such personal information collected and they're waiting to see what happens to GM, Haseltine said.
Those include Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Corp., where company officials say they generally have limited capability on their EDR systems.
"We don't want our vehicle owners thinking that their manufacturer is conspiring against them," said Rick Ruth, Ford's manager of design analysis.
So far, GM doesn't appear to have suffered any public backlash, said Haseltine, whose group is funded by major automakers. But he acknowledges that could be because relatively few people know about the devices and how they could be used.
During the Florida case, the accuracy of the EDR was challenged by Matos' lawyer, Stanziale, in several areas.
He argued that it was new technology and that it had not been accepted or proven. The judge dismissed that argument in the face of various studies by groups including NHTSA.
Stanziale also argued that Matos had modified his Trans Am, changing the size of the tires and even the engine's software to make it faster. That, he said, would have caused the EDR to make wrong calculations.
Horowitz said there was no proof the changes affected the EDR.
Horowitz contends the EDR played an important role in convincing the jury because it was part of the car's safety equipment and was simply recording the information. "It is not for the prosecution or defense," he said.
The devices can provide important information ranging from the force of the impact to how the air bag deployed. That all helps investigators to understand "the nuances of a crash," said Sean Kane, a partner in Strategic Safety, a safety research firm based in Alexandria, Va.
But for the complete crash picture, EDR information must be considered along with other crash investigation techniques, Kane said.
Generally, EDRs have been found to be accurate, but not perfect, according to studies by groups like NHTSA and its Canadian counterpart, Transport Canada.
There is a need to use caution, warned one Transport Canada study. "It is evident that, in certain situations, the stored data may not correspond to the actual situation in the vehicle."
Automakers say the information collected by EDRs belongs to the owner or the person who leased the vehicle and they will not download it without permission. But that doesn't mean others can't get it.
In the Matos case, a judge issued a search warrant allowing the prosecution to harvest the information.
Criminal court cases involving EDRs have been rare, but industry observers expect them more often as the number of vehicles with EDRs increases.
That may make many people unhappy. Fewer than half of the 38,000 surveyed by the Insurance Research Council favored the use of EDRs to investigate accidents and determine fault.
But the insurance industry maintains EDRs are a good idea because the information can help determine what really happened, said Sean McManamy, a spokesman for the American Insurance Association, a lobbying group.
Consumers Union has warned the NHTSA that without regulations to limit the disclosure of such information, there is the potential for abuse, such as insurance companies requiring consumers to have EDRs and make the information available as a condition for providing insurance.
Such electronic devices also raise the possibility of routine monitoring of how customers drive.
That is my initial reaction, as well.
The defense should have argued that the data were faulty; when the speed is measured at the drive wheels, and the defendant's foot is on the accelerator, the sensor will certainly return a false reading when the car is airborne (allowing the wheels to suddenly turn faster than if on the ground). </sarcasm>
Seriously, other than the fishing expeditions, the only real problem I have with any such devices is when they are wrong, unbeknownst to the prosecution and the court.
If your hypothetical includes GPS technology and records the location as well (think OnStar), your goose is cooked. ;O)
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