[Nachum]

Peter Whoriskey wrote this. Talk about a name that would get you beat up after school...

[edcoil]

in the recall will they drive themselves to the local repair shop?

[Dick Holmes]

I guess this would help sort out who’s at fault in a crash, if the info is allowed to be used thus. This could be good or bad; your car could back up your story or drop a dime on you.

[ClearCase_guy]

This all sounds mighty racist.

[Sacajaweau]

So, one malfunction will start a recall?? A black box might be nice but it doesn't necessarily mean it will pick up how the flaw occurred.

For example, that dude with the runaway car that was videod...How do we know he didn't have his foot on the brake and accelerator (sp?) at the same time...

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

Hey! Watch it! “Whoriskey” is my middle name!

[Clioman]

I can just see the municipalities’ tax collectors salivating over this one. Why have red light cameras on the occasional corner—and have to split the take with some nuisance contractor—when you can have a little box in every car that will trigger the city’s billing computer to mail out a ticket every time that car exceeds the speed limit?

[Ingtar]

Dirty secret - pretty much all new cars have black boxes already. There have been court cases already where the black box “testified” against the driver. Big Brother is already watching.

[OB1kNOb]

Auto bill draft would require black boxes, allow NHTSA to issue quick recalls

[IYAS9YAS]

Sounds like a good idea to keep from ever buying a new car.

[6SJ7]

Let’s first install black-box recorders on all our politicians. I think it would be a very good idea to be able to know here they’ve been, who they talked to, and what they said. Especially handy in case one needs to do an immediate recall.

[Candor7]

Touch my truck feds.......and die.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Just smiling and waiting for the day when a John Edwards-type politician gets busted with a mistress or a hooker because muckracking reporters download black box GPS data from his vehicle....

[RLM]

I agree it’s more about government control than safety. Even more important is why the Congress is dealing with all these diversions when they still haven’t produced a budget on time for the next fiscal year.

[Myrddin]

There is already an intelligent highway vehicle initiative that employs 5.8 GHz radio, full time GPS and connectivity to the sensor systems on the car. Integration with roadside units provide "on the fly" warnings of excessive speed for the road conditions and geometry. There are also vehicle-to-vehicle layers to avoid collisions. The networking uses a "WiFi" style networking, but based on IPv6. Some devices have a dual IPv6/IPv6 stack with a 2.4 GHz radio for connectivity to 802.11b/g networks. The GPS is used to provide lane positioning/warning feedback. I was working on a related application with my colleague in VA before he passed away in January.

The 5.8 GHz radio could certainly be employed to track vehicle as they pass a roadside device with network connectivity. A unique IPv6 address matched to the vehicle VIN at the time of manufacture could track the vehicle without a GPS. Simply passing a network connected roadside device could provide a time-stamped "bread crumb" log of the vehicle's movements.