Is Your Black Box Spying On You? And is That a Bad Thing?
For most of us, “black boxes” are the good guys. In case of a plane crash, they record much of the data necessary to piece together more accurately exactly what happened, and therefore can be useful in making sure whatever went wrong doesn’t happen again. It makes sense then that having the same black box in your car would likewise be helpful, assisting the police in their investigation and keeping everyone honest.
And this is precisely the reason many drivers don’t like the idea of big brother watching over them, therefore there has been some resistance to “Event Data Recorders”, or EDRs. Last year, it was estimated that approximately 64 percent of passenger vehicles sold came with an EDR. Now, a year later, that percentage will have climbed significantly, plus the devices are advancing in capability with every installation.
In the U.S., manufacturers are required to inform new owners about the EDR in the owner’s manual thanks to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), information that it turns out has long been in owners’ manuals. Few new car buyers, mind you, read it.
At this juncture it’s important to point out what an EDR records, and more importantly what it doesn’t. It can’t record conversations, for instance, but due to a digital setup that is more like a tape loop that constantly runs, it is able to record the last few seconds before a crash, capturing information regarding vehicle speed, braking severity, the direction of skid, etc, helping analysts reconstruct the crash.
Proponents of the black box highlight potential life-saving information that could be compiled to assess the performance of a vehicle’s safety systems, such as airbag deployment or ABS functionality, plus the ability to research unusual MVA scenarios.
Still, despite this positive spin, many new vehicle owners aren’t too happy about having their own car spy on them, acting as an electronic polygraph or DNA test, a more accurate relay of information than their own unbiased memories at time of impact. If you have nothing to hide, or hold honesty sacrosanct amongst your personal character traits, then you will have little need to read on, other than for interest’s sake alone. Although, by law we’re taught that we needn’t, no shouldn’t self incriminate ourselves, therefore the discussion might be more in-depth than that of honesty. After all, the law has often experienced two honest witnesses who remember things in very different ways.
So, which cars use EDRs and which ones don’t? Well, suffice to say the information you’re about to hear will either make you feel safer for having one or have you running out to buy a classic, or beater. Basically, if you’ve purchased a car in the past two or three years you most likely have one installed already, and being that General Motors sells more cars globally than any other automaker, and that it has included EDRs in every car it has made since 1999 (Ford since 2000), makes it the purveyor of good fortune or mistrust, depending on how you view the subject at hand. Don’t just blame or herald GM, mind you, as Ford and Toyota also include black boxes in most of their cars, and have for years.
If you want to find out whether your car has an EDR or not, just look it up in the index of the owner’s manual under “Event Data Recorder.” Your manual should also tell you what type of data the EDR collects, and interestingly this info varies from manufacturer to manufacturer. As mentioned, the data will cover the car’s movements, such as speed, braking power and any skidding involved in the accident, but it should also record driver input, such as steering wheel movement, reaction time to the throttle or brake pedal, etc, a few seconds before the MVA and a few seconds after.
So far, EDRs haven’t been tied in with navigational or GPS systems, such as GM’s OnStar, to inform investigators of where the crash took place, but it is entirely possible to do so and could be quite useful for solving hit-and-run cases.
What’s important here is to realize that this same black box that could prove you at fault, could also witness your innocence. For instance, if you were involved in an MVA where a bypassing witness told investigators information that implicated you as the faulty driver, the EDR could corroborate your witness’s story or nullify it. After all, depending on this person’s angle, memory or relationship with the other driver, it’s possible for human error to enter the picture. The EDR will only tell investigators the facts based on raw data. As long as the investigator knows how to make sense of the extracted data, then the truth will unfold, substantiating a witness’s testimony or quashing it.
Case in point: According to a report in the Canada Safety Council, “in 2001, a speeding Montreal driver smashed into a car, killing a young man. Without skid marks there was no way to calculate the car’s speed before impact, and only the suspect’s testimony about his own actions. The EDR showed that the vehicle was traveling 157 km/h (in a 50 km/h zone), that four seconds before impact the driver floored the gas pedal, and that just before impact he took his foot off the gas but did not brake. Despite the EDR evidence, the driver was acquitted of criminal negligence causing death, and convicted instead on the lesser charge of dangerous driving causing death.”
The Canada Safety Council cited another case where the information in the EDR was used to prove the innocence of an Ontario driver who had witnesses claim he was speeding. “When a chain-reaction crash on an Ontario highway ended in the death of a child, witnesses blamed a speeding car,” the report states. “The driver of that car gave police permission to download the data on his EDR, which showed he was driving slowly and quite properly.”
As you’re reading this information, you’re either feeling comforted knowing that someone up there is watching over you, keeping other drivers and witnesses honest, or appalled that regulators have the power to extrapolate information from a car that is your private property, and therefore information that is also your private property.
That in mind, is it possible to remove or disable an EDR? No, sorry you can’t. A number of sensors, such as those that control the ABS and electronic stability control make it impossible. Data recording functionality is thoroughly integrated throughout the car’s network of electronic systems that any tampering would shut down the car’s safety features, and therefore doing so, if at all possible, would violate the law.
The good news is that the NHTSA’s recent regulation, which will no doubt affect cars being sold in Canada and influence a similar regulation north of the 49th, will standardize what data is measured and how, which will make productive analysis easier, plus such information will only be downloadable with the vehicle owner’s permission. Therefore, by having these devices in your car you won’t necessarily be incriminating yourself if at fault for an accident, although the possibility for such regulations to be overturned still exists.
So who can gain access as it stands? With GM’s system, law enforcement professionals and investigators can gain access directly, a civil liberty openness from the Land of the Free that ironically is one-upped by Japan’s Toyota which only allows access for its own use at the manufacturer level. It’s also good to know that, in the U.S. at least, several states have instituted laws that state a car’s owner or lessee owns the information contained on his/her car’s EDR. Also, Ford, GM, Toyota and other automakers have said that they have always respected that a car’s data is the car owner’s property, and that each would never download information from a customer’s vehicle without first getting their permission or having received a court order requiring them to.
In the end, digital information is only as reliable as the investigator that’s translating it, and would only be used to corroborate other more conventional investigating methods. How you deal with the knowledge that Big Brother is watching over you through your car will depend a great deal on how you view submitting to your government, and its intentions. You can fight it or embrace it, depending on what such intervention means to you. Either way, we’re all better off knowing as much as we can about the systems that could positively or negatively affect our lives.
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