[IP] more on Automobile "Black Box" Data Usage
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Stephen D. Poe" <sdpoe@xxxxxxx>
Date: August 12, 2004 9:18:42 AM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [IP] Automobile "Black Box" Data Usage
Reply-To: sdpoe@xxxxxxx
Dave -
These have been around for quite a while. There's already some case law
regarding whether or not either the Government or the "other side" in a
lawsuit can compel the production of the information.
Two articles follow; the first discusses the data's usage in court; the
second describes how California is attempting to legislate its usage. A
search on [+"black box" +insurance +court +automobile] provides many
more.
Autos' Black-box Data Being Used In Court
FORT LAUDERDALE, May 16, 2003; Deborah Sharp
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?
words=Deborah%20Sharp> writing for USA TODAY reported that ''black
boxes,'' which have provided valuable information in determining what
has caused airliners to crash, are now being used to help tell what
happened in automobile accidents.
And information from the computerized devices is increasingly finding
its way into civil and criminal courtrooms, where judges and juries are
trying to determine who is at fault in car crashes.
Some prosecutors and defense lawyers say that the data from black
boxes, which are on about 40 million cars in the USA, provide an
unbiased account of accidents. But privacy advocates are raising
warnings about how information from the boxes is being used.
In a trial that opened here this week, , prosecutors hope that
measurements obtained from the black box on Edwin Matos
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?words=Edwin%20Matos>'
2002 Pontiac Trans Am
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?
words=Pontiac%20Trans%20Am> will tell what happened seconds before his
car slammed into another one occupied by two teenage girls.
Matos, 46, is accused of driving drunk when the collision occurred on
Aug. 17, 2002, in Pembroke Pines
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?
words=Pembroke%20Pines>, Fla
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?words=Fla>. The girls
were killed. Prosecutors say that black-box evidence will show Matos
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?words=Matos> was
driving four times the posted speed limit of 30 mph at the time of the
crash.
Matos has pleaded not guilty. His attorney, Roberto Stanziale
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?
words=Roberto%20Stanziale>, plans to call the black-box data into
question.
Black-box recorders have been used on airplanes since the dawn of
aviation. Wilbur and Orville Wright
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?
words=Orville%20Wright> used crude machines to record basic information
about flights. Starting in the jet era, flight data recorders became
integral to investigating crashes.
Most drivers unaware of them
Initially, they tracked an airplane's movements so investigators could
piece together an aircraft's final moments. Steady improvements have
broadened the amount of information these recorders store. The latest
models record thousands of measurements, from engine temperature
readings to the positions of switches in the cockpit.
Surveys indicate most motorists don't know that cars have black boxes.
But their use is on the rise.
Unlike the aviation models, which are required by federal law to be on
aircraft, the black boxes in autos are used in safety investigations
only as an afterthought. They were installed on newer-model cars to
trigger air bags. Because they are not required, no exact figures exist
on their use. But experts say that most U.S. automakers began
installing some forms of the device in the 1990s. They have found
information from the boxes valuable in product-liability lawsuits and
in designing safer cars.
And, while a black box on a jet can store data on dozens of flights,
the boxes on motor vehicles vary widely in how much information they
record and in how accessible it is to anyone other than manufacturers.
Only General Motors
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?
words=General%20Motors>, and to a lesser extent, Ford
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?words=Ford>, have
made information from their boxes easily accessible to third parties.
The boxes are usually silver, not black, and about the size of a pack
of cigarettes. Depending on their sophistication, they may constantly
monitor speed, braking, seat-belt use and other factors. Recordings are
made in five-second spans. What's captured is the final five seconds
leading up to a crash, or to the instant the car's electronic brain
determines an air bag should deploy.
Similar technology has been used to create other car data recorders,
such as those that now monitor crash forces felt by NASCAR (news - web
sites) drivers. And several private firms have also begun marketing
devices that can be added to vehicles to measure on-road performance of
teens, taxi drivers and ambulance crews.
GM gave a California
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?words=California>
company permission in 2000 to sell a computer program to download data.
Since then, information from black boxes has been showing up more
frequently in accident investigations and in court:
* In January in Fort Myers
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?words=Fort%20Myers>,
Fla <http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?words=Fla>., a
black box caused jurors to question the prosecution's argument that
John Robert Walker
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?
words=John%20Robert%20Walker> was speeding recklessly before a head-on
crash with another vehicle. Two people died. Walker was found not
guilty after a defense expert testified his truck's black box showed he
was driving about 60 mph at the time -- not above 90 mph, as a witness
said.
* In April, Charles Tiedje
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?
words=Charles%20Tiedje>, a police officer in Arlington Heights
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?
words=Arlington%20Heights>, Ill
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?words=Ill>., won a
$10 million settlement for severe injuries he suffered when a hearse
struck his squad car on Oct. 13, 2000. The hearse driver, Aleksandr
Babayev
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?
words=Aleksandr%20Babayev>, claimed a medical condition caused him to
black out before he hit Tiedje
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?words=Tiedje>'s car.
But the hearse's black box showed he had been an active driver who
accelerated to 63 mph -- about 20 miles over the posted limit --
seconds before he approached the intersection, then slammed his brakes
one second before impact. Tiedje's attorney, Robert Clifford
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?
words=Robert%20Clifford>, says the black-box information ''was an
unbiased witness to the crash.''
Data showed air bag not at fault
One of the earliest courtroom appearances of a car's black box came
after the high-profile crash that killed pro football player Jerome
Brown
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?words=Jerome%20Brown>
in 1992. Brown's survivors filed a $30 million civil suit that claimed
that the air bag on Brown
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?words=Brown>'s
high-performance Corvette
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?words=Corvette> went
off after he hit a pothole and caused him to hit a tree. Data from the
black box showed the air bag deployed on impact as designed, and the
survivors lost the case.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?
words=National%20Highway%20Traffic%20Safety%20Administration> (NHTSA)
has been studying black boxes and collecting public comment in a
lengthy effort to determine whether to regulate their presence in
Americans' vehicles. It could be months -- or years --before such a
decision is made.
Meanwhile, experts say the courtroom profile of car black boxes will
continue to rise. The devices are most useful in concert with more
traditional investigative methods. And there are limits to their
usefulness. When NHTSA studied nearly 700 crashes in which vehicles had
data recorders, there were problems retrieving the data in almost 40%
of the cases.
Among the glitches: Crash-related failures of car electrical systems,
software problems, and investigators inadequately trained in retrieving
the data.
''They're very promising,'' says Susan Ferguson
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?
words=Susan%20Ferguson>, a research vice president with the Insurance
Institute
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?
words=Insurance%20Institute> for Highway Safety
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?
words=Highway%20Safety>. But, ''they're not infallible.''
And not everyone is happy to see their use, especially in courtrooms.
''It's only partly about privacy. It's mostly about fairness,'' says
Marc Rotenberg
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?
words=Marc%20Rotenberg>, executive director of the Electronic Privacy
Information Center
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?
words=Electronic%20Privacy%20Information%20Center> in Washington
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?words=Washington>,
D.C. ''Invariably
<http://www.theautochannel.com/search/search.html?words=Invariably>,
the information is used against the driver.''
- http://www.theautochannel.com/news/2003/05/18/161529.html
-------------------------------------
Law guards use of vehicle data
Carmakers installing 'black boxes' to get accident information
Michael Cabanatuan, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
A little-publicized privacy bill signed into law Monday aims to protect
California motorists from a little-known device dubbed the "black box"
that records data on how a vehicle was being driven just before an
accident.
The legislation, the first of its kind in the nation, prevents the
recorded data from being obtained by police or others without the
vehicle owner's consent or a court order -- except in cases of safety
research in which the owner's identity is protected.
The law, which takes effect July 1, 2004, also requires automakers to
disclose the presence of the devices in the owner's manual.
"Most people don't even know these devices exist," said Kevin O'Neill,
legislative director for Assemblyman Tim Leslie, R-Tahoe City, author
of the bill. "That was why we did this bill."
Known as event data recorders or sensing and diagnostic modules in the
auto industry, the devices record information about how a vehicle was
being driven just before a crash. Among the information recorded are
speed, whether -- and how hard -- the brakes are applied, the angle of
the steering wheel, the position of the accelerator, direction of
travel and whether or not seat belts were being used.
The devices, which record information on a continuous loop that
rewrites itself every few seconds, lock the information in place only
after an accident that deploys an air-bag. Data from the recorders can
be downloaded only after a crash.
Automakers started using the devices as a way to collect accident
information for safety purposes such as preventing the unnecessary
deployment of air-bags.
General Motors -- the main user of the devices -- began installing the
boxes in some cars as early as the 1970s, said O'Neill, and now
installs them in every new car. Ford also installs recorders in some of
its vehicles, he said, but most other automakers don't yet use them.
In recent years, O'Neill said, data from the the devices has found its
way into court -- primarily to defend automakers in cases where
consumers claimed a vehicle malfunctioned. In at least one case, the
recorded data was used as evidence in a vehicle accident.
Recently, South Dakota police tried to get data to show whether Rep.
Bill Janklow had run a stop sign before he struck and killed a
motorcyclist.
"With the ability of law enforcement to get this information, and other
people to get this information, we thought consumers needed protection
about how (these devices) could be used," O'Neill said.
Leslie said in a written statement that the legislation was necessary
because the recorders were installed in vehicles without the owners'
consent. He likened use of the devices to wiretaps, and said that, to
protect motorists against illegal search and seizure, a court order
should be required to download data from the devices.
The law, he said in a letter urging Gov. Gray Davis to sign the bill,
"will give consumers the knowledge they currently lack concerning the
presence of 'black boxes' as well as empower them as to how and when
the information can be retrieved and used."
- http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/09/23/BA3674.DTL
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