Did you know -- We're being recorded in our Prius....

You mean the Prius has a 'black box' like data recorder?
I suppose this is either a plus or a negative depending on the data during any accident. This is an interesting concept. Imagine if every car sold in the US had a data recorder. The civil libertarian in me gets chills but it might be useful in cracking down on dangerous drivers.

 

Those are becoming quite common.

Here are excerpts from a fairly recent article in The Washington Post (Click here):

A rule the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposed last month would blow the cover on "black boxes" in cars, standardizing by 2008 the kinds of information they collect and requiring the data be disclosed to those who own or lease the vehicles.

Also known by the auto industry and regulators as "event data recorders," or EDRs, these devices are connected to a vehicle's air-bag system and are capable of detecting many things, including the speed of the vehicle, whether the driver was wearing a seat belt at the time of a crash and how the brakes were applied.

The leader in EDR technology is General Motors Corp. The car company, which has used the technology in a limited way since the 1970s, now equips all its models with the feature. Ford Motor Co. and Toyota have some of the capability. Chrysler has downplayed the recorders and said only a few of its models are collecting crash data.

Insurers, consumer groups and manufacturers have a variety of opinions about the usefulness of the data and how it should be used. Supporters of collecting the data think that safety research, car design and accident investigations would be enhanced by standardized information that one day could be centrally collected and analyzed.

Law enforcement officials regard it like DNA or a video camera in a bank -- it becomes a piece of valuable evidence. For example, an information dump from an event data recorder won a case for a prosecutor in Florida in 2003. It would have been hard to prove that the Pontiac Firebird was going 114 miles per hour without it.

The problematic issues are privacy and disclosure.

"If vehicle owners are not made aware of these systems, then potentially we have problems. By and large, the public is unaware they are in their vehicles," said Philip Haseltine, president of the Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety, a group funded by the automakers. Consumers Union told the agency that it is concerned that insurers will require the use of EDR information as a condition of coverage in the future.

GM has responded to these concerns by highlighting the black box in owner's manuals and making related information easier to find. The car company said it gets the permission of owners or lessees before it downloads information. Courts can order the release of the information, and search warrants can be issued to obtain it.

Debate in the states already is hot, particularly over who owns the information. California passed a law requiring disclosure that the device is in the vehicle and requiring the vehicle owner to give permission to download any of the data.

 

our insurance company, an arm of the government takes all the ABS computers in the case of an accident with deployed airbags and injurys because they claim the car is destroyed and as such is their property and as such they are free to do so. There has been one case where the driver was charged and convicted after the data was submitted in court.

 

nearly all new cars have them, many other ones starting about 1999 also have them. you might be surprised at some of the models included.

most of the initial cost of installing these devices were paid by the insurance companies and that explains the widespread use of the recorders.

left up to the car manufacturers, they most likely would not have bothered in anything but the more expensive lines.

 

i agree with you Tony 100%

a lot of people will hate this because they feel its a violation of their privacy... in truth they will hate it because they no longer will be able to "get away" with anything.

in the long run, the result of this technology will be much lower insurance rates for everyone. and the only ones hurt by this are people that drive erratically and are lucky enough to not be caught or ticketed.

having been a "victim" of being blamed for an accident that i felt was not my fault, i know exactly where you are coming from.

right now i pay probably one of the highest insurance rates in the country simply for being blamed for something i didnt do.

i pay $977 every six months. that is for the bare minimal coverage. that is all i can afford right now. that is

no collision
no uninsured motorist
no comprehesion

all i have is liability and property damage.

the quote above is the new one for the 6 months starting Oct 21 and reflects discounts for 4 wheel anti lock brakes (which my previous vehicle did not have) and returning customer discount thing.

next March, i will be getting full coverage for a mear $475 a month. that is with a $2500 deductible.

i wouldnt be putting up with any of this if i had the monitors on my car.

what is boils down to is that if there was no need for such technology, then it would not be subsidized by the insurance companies... i saw an insurance insider report (whoops wasnt supposed to tell) and although i wasnt allowed to read most of it, it does say that the cost is nearly $2,000 PER Vehicle to implement the program and monitor the vehicles for 10 years.

keep in mind, that many vehicles are tracked and recorded 24 hours a day by satellite and there is nothing you can do about it...

guess you know why that nav is so spendy now...

 

I am always interested to see the various reactions to the thought that your vehicle is taking data which could be used to explain a particular event, especially an accident. This has been going on for MUCH longer than people realize. Only recently did the lawyers and insurance companies figure out they could use the data to their potential advantage. In the late 80's we called these diagnostic event recorders. The intent was to provide service techicians with data so they could more easily track down intermittent failures in computer based systems. It was well known, however, that if someone hit a tree at 100 mph it was pretty easy to determine whether they hit it with the throttle wide open and never touched the brakes. The claims of survivors or their families that the cause was "unintended acceleration" and "the fancy ABS brakes didn't work" were quickly dismissed when the data showed the throttle position and brake switch states at the time of the crash and the self diagnostic status to prove the inputs were valid. Most air bag computers have had event recorders since the early 90's when they were first widely introduced. Its just better publicized now.

My view on all this, having been involved in the design of several of these systems, is that everyone has the right to freely express themselves during their driving experiences. However, the right to drive is predicated on compliance with local, state, and federal laws, and driving outside of these limits subjects each of us to the chance of being caught. Looking in one's home windows is one thing, driving on a public funded roadway where your actions affect each and every other user is another. Unless you are breaking the law AND get caught, you have nothing to worry about.

 

well if anyone is worried about their driving habits and own a GM car 1999 or newer... i strongly suggest you sell your car.

 

Now Im wondering about the 2004...
I was in an accident back in May... I asked the guy at the shop for the read out from the "black box" but he told me that there wasnt one. I wonder if the informaiton that it contains is legally the property of the car owner or of the car manufactuor. It seems that if there is a defective product that the manufacture would not want the consumer to have it. In fact, I can see no reason why the car company wants the car owner to have it. Anyway.. just something to chew on.

 

>"Dinger" I wonder if the informaiton that it contains
>is legally the property of the car owner or of the car
> manufactuor.

If I own the car, I own the black box too. If the manufacturer wants part of it back, they can make
me an offer.

 

actually since the "black box" technology was funded heavily by the insurance industry, the black box info is not yours.

you simply license it and the insurance company retains all rights to the technology including any information that maybe generated by the technology. if you think this is illegal, you should take a look at the computer software industry.

btw, there have been several unsucessful chalenges in court over it. i believe that in some cases, someone has the right to get of copy of the data, but in no cases were they able to control access to the information itself.

 

Count me in with the group that thinks this is a great idea. I have nothing to hide, they can access all the data they want. In the even of an accident, such as the one I had a couple weeks ago, it will come in handy. It would have been nice to be able to check whether or not he hit his brakes, because I know he did not, but he said he did. Basically traffic stopped ahead of me. I stopped completely. I looked in my rear view mirror and saw him coming at full speed with his head turned to the left. He didn't see that we had stopped until I honked at him. He hit me and as a result the two cars in front of me were also hit. In an instance like this, information from the black box would be invaluable.

 

although it is a violation of privacy in a sense (i say in a sense because you are only allowed so much privacy while traveling on a public road... something most dont seem to consider)

it will result in lower insurance costs for those who deserve the lower rates. for those who dont, im sure they will be upset by this.

but cant make everyone happy.

 

This is the only thread on the EDR that I could find here. I suppose I should have looked in the Acronyms now that I've written it as EDR. Page (iv) of the 2005 owners manual describes it and I wasn't so sure I liked the idea much. A bit too Orwellian for my Baby Boomer sensibilities I guess......especially the part about sharing the information. They say they will not disclose the data to a third party except when they do. Did "Wild Bill" write this? "It all depends on what your definition of is is." Is there a way to disable? Doc?
Peace,
Paul

 

Except for those like the uninsured guy who rear ended my wife who stopped when the light went yellow. What WAS she thinking? Stop for a light that will be red before you get there? Sheesh ;-)

I'm with the "If I am not guilty, I am not concerned" crowd. It would be GREAT if the police had the tools to pull the codes off all cars at an accident site. Who what sitting still, who slammed on the brakes 2' before rear-ending the other at 35 MPH. Even better if they could also know the state of the traffic lights at the time but unless every computer had atomic clock sync, I don't think it is possible. Make the data available to the ins companies and the drivers.

Sure, there are computer gliches, and lawyers that will try to twist any piece of data their way, but in general hard facts are difficult to argue against.

 

In Prius Owners Manual

I am fairly sure I read in the Owners manual about the 'black box' with some associated language about by who and when this data can be accessed. I don't have the manual with me, perhaps someone can post the specifics. (I am not suggesting that it is legally binding language, just the languge that Toyota provides)

Al

 

EVENT DATA RECORDER

Your vehicle has computers that monitor and control certain aspects of your vehicle. These computers assist in driving and maintaining optimal vehicle performance. Besides storing data useful for troubleshooting, there is a system to record data in a crash or near car car crash event. This is called the Event Data Recorder (EDR)

The SRS airbag sesnor assembly contains the EDR. In a crash or near car crash event this device records some or all of the following information:

-- Engine speed.
-- Whether the brake pedal was applied or not
-- Vehicle speed
-- To what extent the accelerator pedal was depressed
-- Position of the transmission selector lever
-- Whether the driver and front passenger wore the seat belts or not
-- Driver's seat position
-- Front passenger occupant classification
-- SRS airbag deployment data
-- SRS airbag system diagnostic data

The information above is intended to be used for the purpose of improving vehicle safety performance. Unlike general data recorders, the EDR does not record sound data such as convesation between passengers.

Toyota will not disclose the data recorded in the EDR to a third party except when:

-- An agreement from the vehicle's owner (or the leasing company for a leased vehicle) is obtained
-- Officially requested by the police or other authorities
-- Used as a defence for Toyota in a law suit
-- Ordered by the court

However, if necessary Toyota will:
-- Use the data for research on Toyota vehicle safety performance
-- Disclose the data to a third party for research purposes without disclosing details of the vehicle owner, and only when it is deemed necessary
-- Disclose summarized data cleared of vehicle identification toa non-Toyota organization for research purposes.

 

Are insurance companies "authorities" ? I don't really trust insurance companies any longer. I think that any information from a black box should go to the owner, driver, police if requested by an insurance company so that everyone has equal access to the data.