[Smokin' Joe]

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, meanwhile, has proposed long-delayed regulations requiring auto makers to include event data recorders -- better known as "black boxes" -- in all new cars and light trucks beginning in 2014.

I smell a new industry in the offing...

And I will not buy a vehicle with one. (Spin your tires in snow, and the acceleration recorded will rival a cat shot, the deceleration a trap.)

[pepsionice]

I believe you will have no choice after a while. This will drive a number of folks over to the used car market for the next twenty to thirty years. I also suspect that a new tech training school will open which trains folks on how to remove or screw up the black box.

What would eventually happen, if we all just played along....is that your insurance company would get ahold of the data and begin to connect the dots. Aggressive drivers would be readily identified and forced into paying $8k a year in car insurance (which they richly deserve to pay), and the soft-pedal guys would start to pay $200 a year.

[Salgak]

And given the typical Government Engineering standards. . . .they’ll be hacked in no time, allowing you to plug in a “governor” module and upload code that will not allow recording of events outside of normal tolerances. . .

[PMAS]

Many already have been putting them into their cars for a few years now - CNBC had a documentary a couple of years about the surveillance industry and they had a segment on the car’s black boxes. Toyota has been putting them in for a few years now, that’s how they were able to debunk the accusations about their cars accelerating on their own.