- It was only a matter of time. For several years, electronic
devices in cars have monitored acceleration and braking to save fuel and
improve safety. Now, they're saving some of that data to give automakers
and police a better idea of how you drive. So far most of the devices record
the last five seconds of readings before a crash, for example, a little
like flight-data recorders in airplanes. The information has proven extremely
useful to auto designers and accident investigators. It's also being used
to prosecute drivers.
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- "The problem is most people don't realize these
devices are in their vehicle," says Eric Skrum, spokesman for the
National Motorists Association in Madison, Wis. "That information
can be used against you, and there's no sort of regulation about who owns
that information."
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- Already, drivers have had data from their own cars used
to convict them. Last month, Danny Hopkins of New York was sentenced to
5 to 15 years in prison for killing Lindsay Kyle after the black box in
his Cadillac CTS indicated the car was going 106 miles per hour five seconds
before the crash. Investigators originally thought the car was going only
65 to 70 miles per hour. In St. Louis, Clifton McIntire of Phippsburg,
Me., pleaded guilty to manslaughter last month after the black box in his
GMC pickup revealed that he was going 85 miles an hour before he slammed
into the back of a Toyota.
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- Today an estimated 30 million cars contain these "black
boxes" " they're actually silver " known as event data recorders
(EDRs). Most record simple data such as whether airbags deployed or if
passengers wore seatbelts. But most cars from General Motors and Ford,
as well as some Toyotas and Hondas, track even more information, including
vehicle and engine speed, and whether the driver was accelerating or braking.
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- Automakers say they want this information to help improve
safety equipment. "The main purpose of the EDR is to get data after
a crash to help us understand how the airbags worked," says Alan Adler,
manager of product-safety communications at General Motors in Warren, Mich.
"The privacy of our customers is very important to us, but [the device]
doesn't record anything that isn't true."
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- Crash investigations
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- Without EDRs, investigators frequently don't have enough
data to pinpoint the cause of an accident, says Joe Osterman, director
of the Office of Highway Safety at the National Transportation Safety Board
(NTSB) in Washington. That was the case when an elderly man killed 20 people
when his Buick plowed into a farmers market in Santa Monica, Calif. in
2000. The driver said he was braking. Witnesses and investigators said
he was accelerating.
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- While what exactly happened in the moments before the
tragedy remains a mystery, the NTSB went on record afterward saying EDRs
should be mandatory in all cars sold in the United States.
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- The NTSB, however, doesn't have the authority to mandate
black boxes. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration does. It
proposes that the recorders become standard equipment starting in 2009
models, retain the last eight seconds of data before a crash, and include
added data from electronic stability control and antilock braking systems.
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- Civil libertarians worry that such data will be used
more broadly in the future.
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- "This is another example of where technology has
outstripped the law and certain assumptions of how the world works,"
says Jay Stanley, director of communications for the Technology and Liberty
Project at the American Civil Liberties Union in New York.
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- Some safety experts also worry about the wrong people
using the data. While Mr. Osterman of the NTSB favors police investigators
using black-box data in criminal investigations, he worries that private
experts hired in civil litigation may have biases and could take the data
at face value instead of cross-checking it.
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- "The data can be misleading if you're not a seasoned
accident reconstructionist," adds Bob Kreeb, an engineer at Booz Allen
Hamilton in Washington who chaired a committee of the Society of Automotive
Engineers to set standards for the data gathered from black boxes. "So
it needs to be interpreted and validated."
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- Installing black boxes with five seconds worth of memory
was as simple as adding a memory chip to existing computer systems in cars.
Increasing the memory to several months' worth of data would not be difficult
at all, Mr. Stanley says. "If GM decided tomorrow to track three months
of data instead of five seconds, there's nothing that would make them have
to tell anybody," he adds.
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- Tracking the teens
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- In fact, Davis Instruments of Hayward, Calif., sells
a black box called CarChip that will record throttle position and engine
parameters for up to 300 hours of driving. Parents can use it to monitor
their teenagers' driving habits, for example.
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- Progressive, an auto-insurance company, is running a
pilot program with 5,000 drivers in Minnesota using a device similar to
CarChip. It records up to six months of driving data, including vehicle
mileage, time of day, and speed. The program, called TripSense, lets drivers
choose whether to hand over data from their recorders to the insurer. Based
on their habits behind the wheel, they can get discounts on their premiums
of 5 to 25%.
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- But once any data is collected, some worry that it might
be subpoenaed. If a police officer pulls you over while you're not speeding,
"will your EDR tell him that five miles or five days earlier you were?"
asked AutoWeek magazine's Bob Gritzinger in a November article.
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- Recorder data may also present problems for drivers with
automobile warranties. Some wonder if vehicle manufacturers are using safety
data to void warranties. Some people in Internet chat rooms have alleged
Mitsubishi is doing just that to those who drive its racy Evolution VIII
in amateur weekend races.
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- Even if not true, the existence of such stories shows
people's concerns about this kind of technology, says Stanley. "If
it's not controlled, it allows powerful institutions to increase their
control over ordinary individuals," he says.
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- For example: When AutoWeek conducted handling tests on
a mundane Chevy Malibu Maxx hatchback earlier this year, the recorder automatically
alerted GM OnStar officials, who called the car to make sure the driver
was OK after a particularly severe cornering maneuver. The driver was,
but later said he resented the intrusion.
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