Posted on 04/19/2013 12:53:56 PM PDT by LibWhacker
We're all familiar with event data recorders -- or as they're more commonly known, "black boxes". EDRs are standard equipment on airplanes, and any time there's a mishap, news programs are full of journalists making guesses about what the recorders will reveal.
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that EDRs are coming to cars, too. In fact, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has backed legislation to make the devices mandatory on all new vehicles, beginning with the 2015 model year.
What you may not know is that the new legislation would only affect around 4% of vehicles sold in America. Why? Because the other 96% already have EDRs. If you drive a car made by a big-name automaker like Ford, General Motors, or Toyota, chances are good that there's a black box sitting in your dashboard.
In other words, the vast majority of vehicles sold in the U.S. today come with EDRs, and soon the gizmos will be found on all of them. Barring a huge shift in politics and/or technology, this situation isn't likely to change.
However, there are plenty of lingering questions about the mandatory installation of EDRs. Most of those questions revolve around privacy: (a) how should manufacturers notify new-car shoppers about the presence of the recording device, (b) how long should data be stored on the device, and (c) who owns that data?
AAA attempted to raise concerns about all three issues late last year, and the Associated Press has just picked up on the matter in the new video posted above. But so far, nothing has happened at the legislative level to address privacy concerns in a substantial way.
OUR TAKE
On the one hand, traditional notions of privacy seem to be changing. In an era when people are more than happy to share their locations on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks, privacy ain't what it used to be. As a result, EDRs might not be seen as overly intrusive.
Also, EDRs stand to boost auto safety by noting technological and mechanical problems in our vehicles. And in the long term, devices similar to EDRs may play a key role in vehicle-to-vehicle communications, which could eliminate thousands of collisions each year.
On the other hand, just because our definition of privacy is in flux doesn't mean that there's no such thing as privacy anymore. There are still plenty of lines in the sand that few folks want to cross.
For example, even if federal legislation doesn't stipulate that warrants are required to tap EDR data, one good lawsuit would likely find in favor of an individual's right to privacy. Courts have also questioned the usefulness of black box data, expressing wariness about the idea of EDRs as dispassionate witnesses to accidents. In fact, one judge in Nevada agreed that black box data "constitute[s] unreliable hearsay".
And of course, EDRs could provide one more way for identity thieves to steal vital personal info. (Thankfully, someone's already working on a fix for that.)
Yup, I hear you. I’m either going to have to get my a** to Mars, or to Barrett-Jackson/Mecum, which I’ve always wanted to do anyhoo. I have a feeling I’d better do it soon, though, before blackbox-driven demand drives the price of restored autos through the roof, ‘cause everyone who is incapable of restoring a car himself is going to have the same idea!
Yup, with all this talk of EMP lately, I don’t want a car with any computers, chips, solid state devices, black boxes, etc., anyhow! I’d even be quite willing to go back to the 50s. Loved those cars anyway.
Right now it just records diagnostic data for mechanics to jack into with their scan tool.
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I have heard of cases where say a Tractor Trailer with the ‘black box’ being ‘observed’ going over the speed limit a few miles/hours etc up the road and getting in a accident ‘NOT his fault’ and the defense claiming that proof of him speeding puts HIM at fault because if he hadn’t been speeding, he wouldn’t have been there at the precise time.
Probably ‘somewhat’ hokum BUT it surely wouldn’t surprise me.
First, they are NOT safety devices. They won’t do a ting to prevent an accident. They are being pushed by insurance companies so they can use the data in their lawsuits and the police so they can know who to ticket. Nothing more.
You disable them - your car No Go.
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You have small imagination ,,, what if you modify it to use only 1k of memory instead of a few GB or write to a volatile memory location instead of non-volatile and leave the programs function alone ... I will get in on this myself...
Can’t you guys spell “solid sate memory”????????
Sold at you local 7-eleven as “Flash Memory Stick”, or some such. 16GBytes at least is now dirt cheap, and you can BANK on (much) bigger ones coming tomorrow ..............
Awfully nice of them, getting on board.
...after 96% OF NEW CARS ALREADY HAVE THEM!!!!
Flo, the insurance gal, is already using these devices under disguise of lowering your insurance rates.
Slow boiling the Progressive frogs.
I'd imagine the write interface is tamper-proof, so there's not much chance of being able to wipe the memory. But since the engine management module is feeding data into that memory constantly, there has to be some kind of interface you could tap into. And if you knew the microcode, you could erase the entire contents.
Or just enough of it to make the rest unreliable.
Flo knows.....
True, but who wants an immobile $40,000 Lexus in their driveway as a landscape sculpture?
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