Black Boxes in Cars Monitor How You Drive, Assist Fraud Investigations

Most people don’t know it, but there is a little black box in your car that tracks the way you drive.

According to a recent account in the Kansas City Star, the metal box, about the size of a carpenter’s tape measure, is now installed in about 70 percent of all new car models. The device is most often fitted under your dashboard or seat and linked to the deployment of your airbag.

Insurance groups have known about the black boxes, or event data recorders, for some time, but ninety percent of car owners aren’t aware of them. Privacy issues have made the black box or EDRs controversial.

Bob Smith, executive director for the Society of Collision Repair Specialists for Missouri and Kansas say that the EDRs can record information only in the 5 to 10 seconds before and after it senses a crash serious enough to deploy an airbag. He said the information recorded includes car speed, engine revolutions, braking and seat belt use. Smith’s organization represents crash reconstruction investigators.

Crash investigators, insurers, police and government researchers say such information is critical to learning how to build safer cars and save lives. Others such as privacy advocates see EDRs as a mechanism to be used by insurers, police and researchers to gain access to data that can be used to incriminate drivers.

The debate may be brought to light when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issues a new rule later this year requiring car makers to standardize black-box technology so data is recorded and stored the same way and is easier for researchers to harvest and compare. When that happens, it is expected that the privacy issue will be a hot topic again.

Car makers such as General Motors and Ford actually install the EDRs in most of their models, but make competing models. The proposed rule does not mandate black boxes be installed in all cars, but will require all auto makers to tell consumers that they exist.

Few states have addressed black boxes, and those that have addressed laws ensuring consumers’ ownership rights to the data. Neither Missouri nor Kansas has such laws. And there has been little federal discussion.

Insurers want to ease access to the data to set rates, some say, to reward good drivers and penalize the bad ones. Insurers have also indicated that the black boxes can aid in proving fraud cases that eventually go to court.

Possible future applications for black boxes are even more far-reaching. Technology already exists that would allow more information to be recorded about a driver’s acceleration and steering. It also could record the time and date of an accident and, using cell-phone technology, relay life-saving information to emergency crews.

Whether privacy issues will become a hot topic and continue to cloud the application of this device will probably be brought to the forefront after the NHTSA rule goes into effect later this year.

Topics Auto Fraud Kansas