Big Brother hiding inside cars’ airbags (black boxes Goverment is Watching you)

The 1999 Pontiac Trans Am had to be flying, said officer Robert Cairo, a traffic crash investigator with the Trotwood Police Department.

The car skidded sideways off Union Road on Feb. 11, went airborne for 110 feet, landed in a field and bounced "like a stone across a lake" before it struck a utility pole, according to police. The impact ejected the driver, who broke his neck, and a passenger, who broke his spine.

"I knew high speed was a factor," he said, "but there weren't a lot of road marks, because by the first one, he was already going sideways on the road."

Cairo said he conservatively estimated the speed at less than 80 mph, "the minimal speed I could work out."

An electronic device on board the Pontiac, however, told police exactly how fast the car had been going — 124 mph in a 40 mph zone. And it enabled Trotwood to join the growing number of police departments and insurance companies across the country experimenting with data stored on computers, originally designed and installed on cars and trucks to control air bags, to determine what happened in the seconds leading up to accidents.

Called a Sensing Diagnostic Module, the electronic "brains" behind an airbag were developed by General Motors and are now manufactured by its spin-off company Delphi at an electronics plant in Kokomo, Ind. GM's air bags are made in Vandalia at Delphi's Interior & Lighting Systems plant and are later hooked up to the black boxes on assembly lines for GM and other auto companies.

Since 2000, it's become possible with the right computer decoding software to retrieve and read information stored in the SDM's electronic memory. Though GM designed the sensing modules to capture information about accidents that could be studied for ways to make cars safer, police and insurance investigators discovered that the data can also be used to help make a case about who caused the accident.

There are more than 500 Crash Data Retrieval Systems in use across the country, including 12 in Ohio, said James Kerr, program manager for Vetronics Corp., maker of the computer decoder. Among the Ohio buyers are the Dayton Police Special Investigations Division, Butler County Sheriff's Department and the State Farm Insurance Co., Kerr said.

The SDM, sometimes referred to as the automobile version of the "black box" found on commercial airliners, is also called an accelerometer or Event Data Recorder. General Motors' module is the most advanced, said Phil Haseltine, president of the Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety.

The sensor in GM cars is installed either under the radio in the dashboard or on the floor under the passenger seat. Data stored in the SDM includes the engine revolution speed, whether the brakes or throttle were used, the speed of the vehicle andwhether seat belts were worn.

In a collision, sensors close an electrical circuit and send a signal to the airbag, which inflates in 1/20th of a second.

Meanwhile, readings taken during the last five seconds before the airbags deploy become the SDM's last testament.

Opponents of the data retrieval include the national American Civil Liberties Union, which objects to the SDMs being installed without a consumer's knowledge.

Members of Ohio's chapter of the ACLU in Cleveland said "it isn't a concern" at this point, and statistics showing the number of times data from the black boxes has been used in court against drivers in Ohio or in other states is not available. In one early challenge to the use of SDMs, a lawsuit filed in 2001 in New Jersey against General Motors complained about the lack of disclosure of the SDM to car buyers. A judge dismissed the case.

The air bag monitoring modules have evolved since 1997 when the National Transportation Safety Board recommended vehicle manufacturers and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration team up to gather information on vehicle accidents using on-board collision sensing and recording devices. Officials at GM, which first offered air bags in 1974 on its Oldsmobile Tornado, say the information is used only for safety research, and poses no threat to consumers' privacy.

SDM data has been used in court — always with a court-ordered search warrant — to back up the findings from traditional police investigations.

In the Miami Valley, police officers said they acquire a search warrant signed by a judge before retrieving the SDM from wrecked vehicles.

Data obtained from a SDM after the February crash in Trotwood investigated by Cairo is expected to be entered as evidence in Dayton Municipal Court. The driver is charged with two counts of aggravated vehicular assault. Alcohol was a contributing factor in addition to high speed, police said. The car's black box also told police that the men were not wearing seatbelts, according to Cairo.

Cairo said he was unaware of the data device until a prosecutor suggested he check to see if the wrecked Trans Am had one. A Dayton police investigator trained to used the decoding computer helped Cairo download the contents of the SDM.

This was Cairo's first retrieval of SDM data, but Montgomery County Sheriff Deputy Ron Thayer has tried to use the black boxes in at least six cases — including four times in the past six months. He's been an accident reconstruction investigator for 12 years and has mixed feelings about the value of the SDMs.

In one instance, a module manufactured in 1999 was in a 2000 automobile and no data was available, he said, because it was a misfit. In another case, the SDM was smashed in the crash.

In addition, he said, the decoder can only be used in crashes involving certain makes of newer cars "and I'm still seeing a lot of '86 Fords," Thayer said. "We're going to be doing it the old-fashioned way for a while, I think. They can't take the human being out of the job. We're important."

Cairo and Thayer acknowledge that the use of the black boxes by accident investigators raises questions about privacy.

"Smart airbags" or "advanced airbags" are in development that that will include sensors detecting how big the occupants are, how far away from the airbag they're sitting and other factors, Haseltine said. Manufacturers are looking for ways to gather more information about crashes, but believe the "ownership" of data belongs to the consumer, said Haseltine, whose coalition represents auto companies.

"I think they're pretty much unanimous on that, other than with a court order," Haseltine said. "I'm sure police departments would love to download the data in any fender-bender, but I think that's wrong."

In April, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association began working to create the first standard for motor vehicle event data records. The standard would define what data should be captured, including time, date, location, velocity, number of occupants and seat belt usage. Now, GM's black boxes gather information that's different from the way Ford, Chrysler and other companies' devices work.

Thayer said that people also are just starting to think about how data from SDMs can be and should be used to investigate auto accidents. There are questions about how the information is gathered, what it means and whether it's reliable enough for evidence about who's guilty or innocent.

Jason Alexander, Vetronics Corp. marketing communications manager, backs the recordings and their retrieval.

"You know, everybody had the scare put on them recently, thinking it's another 'big brother' out there, but what it is is a fair witness. It shows what physically happened in that car just before the accident."

"We have to go to the courts and show them it's valid," he said. "It's like when radar first came out. We had to go in there and validate (radar), that it does what it says it does. It will take a while to validate this, too."

Kaslin....EZ Pass is a monthly service for paying tolls (booths and bridges) in the tri state (NJ NY PA) area.

DoughtyOne....I have two major reasons why I am against EZ Pass. 1)Once we commit to paying a monthoy fee for toll booths and bridges we are saying that we agree to paying them. We agree that we should pay for something that we were told (in the 50s) would only last a short while to pay for the road costruction. We commit and we will have to pay for life. This may happen anyway but I will not commit to it monthly that is for sure. 2)This is where the big brother part comes in. The EZ pass can be used for two major BB tactics. They can use towers to track where you are based on the EZ pass on your car. Second they can tell how long it took you to get from one booth to another and thereofre give out trafic tickets based on this. I am not aware of either of these methods being practiced but the fact that they can be alone is enough to make me shy away from it.

Now some might say that I should not have to worry as long as I do the speed limit, but how many falsely accused tickets will there be based on the malfaction of these machines.

You r take on why you wouldn't use them?

It doesn't matter if you use EZ pass or not, I have traveled extensively and I have been through many toll booths and everytime I get a reciept it has the date and time posted on the reciept, at the next toll booth I get a reciept with the time and date posted on it. You don't need EZ Pass to figure out if you have been speeding between toll booths.

I'm with you on the Big Brother thing, but EZ Pass is meant to be a convienence not a monitor. When the Government and it's creative members who look for a way to collect fines step over the line. It's our responsibility to stand up and fight them. In case after case that intrudes on our privacy we see them challenged in our courts and in most cases our privacy is protected. Most of these violations of our privacy are attempted by Local or State Governments in an effort to raise funds by way of fines.

I own my own business and some of the laws passed by the county I operate my business in are so intrusive it's incredible. I challenged my local government over a water issue and won, and since then I feel it's my responsibility to speak out when it's neccessary. As long as we Americans keep our represenatives feet to the fire and remain active against their abuses we will continue to be the greatest and the most free population in the world. I for one believe we will always remain this way. "We the People" still means a hell of a lot to me. As it does you!

God Bless

Nah, I doubt I am of any interest to the FEDS or anyone else. But if I decide to become a terrorist or a fugitive from justice... I'll be sure to cut the antenna. "On Star" is completely useless without an antenna. That is why I purchased "LoJack" to protect my car from theft. It's only activated when it's reported stolen. And it can only be activated by the owner of the car with a password and serial number.

I still have faith in those of us who are willing to do more than snivel about how our rights are being infringed upon by Big Brother. As long as we stand up to those in government who want to invade our privacy and violate constitution rights, This nation will remain a Free Republic.

I have traveled extensively and I have been through many toll booths and everytime I get a reciept it has the date and time posted on the reciept, at the next toll booth I get a reciept with the time and date posted on it.

That is true but if you go exact change everytime or to a toll taker they are not really checking the time for that, unless there are cameras there at each booth and they put the time times together, based on when they snapped a photo of your license plate, to figure the time spent from one toll to another......enter EZ pass this makes that scenerio that much easier fro them to figure out. I also agree that this techinque of ticket giving is not widely used. Mainly because there would need to be a person in court to say for 100% certain that you went through that toll at that exact time or mechanical failure could be blamed in every single case. This would become costly for the state and I am not worried that they will be doing it anytime soon.

My biggest concern is them knowing that peopel are commited to paying the tolls monthly.

I'm with you on the Big Brother thing, but EZ Pass is meant to be a convienence not a monitor.

While it's true that having EZ pass is easier for me and you it IS a monitoring device.

I am with you that the EZ pass it meant to do more good then harm when it comes to our rights. I am not a conspiracy guy I just like to drive fast now and then : )

I don't care if they know which toll booths I'm going through.

Now this may be far fetched but would you start caring if all of the sudden you got a letter in the mail or better yet a police oficer shows up at your house and tells you that you are suspected of a hit and run accident on a highway that you never even traveled on but since the EZ Pass computer claims your number was scanned at around the same time you are now a suspect.

Seems like life just got a whole lot more interesting for you now : )

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