Black boxes: soon in every car
Date: 2002-10-26
Almost all vehicles built today have a "black box" recorder, a simpler version of the flight data recorders found in airplanes. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is considering a proposal to make the boxes mandatory within a few years in all vehicles sold in the United States. The boxes can provide crash investigators with valuable information following traffic accidents. However, beyond the crash information the boxes provide, companies are marketing add-on units for parents to monitor their children's driving habits and devices linked to video cameras.
Basically, the boxes gather information from sensors in the vehicle that log inputs such as the engine performance, vehicle speed, and braking. Typically, the boxes remember the information for about five seconds, after which it is overwritten by new information. When a crash occurs, the previous five seconds is frozen in memory, providing invaluable clues for crash investigators and safety engineers.
As the boxes become standard and their information-gathering more sophisticated, questions are arising concerning who owns the information they generate and how it's used. Some legal experts say it should belong to the vehicle's owner, and not be retrievable without the owner's permission, but if the car is leased or the bank still carries a loan on it there are obvious complications. Read the full article at NewsHouseNews.com
Comments to this article have been disabled.
