THE two teenagers were killed instantly when Edwin Matos smashed his 2002 Pontiac Trans Am Firehawk into their car in Pembroke Pines, Florida. At his trial in May, Matos鈥檚 defence team claimed he had been travelling at 80 to 100 kilometres per hour. But it was his car that found him out. An on-board memory in the airbag unit recorded how the vehicle was being driven in the last few seconds before the crash. It showed that Matos was driving at 180 km/h, more than three times the speed limit, at the time of the crash. He was sentenced to 30 years in jail for vehicular homicide and manslaughter.
鈥淏lack boxes鈥� that record the condition of an aircraft prior to a crash have been common for years, but only recently have car makers begun building similar devices in to their vehicles. They take advantage of the increasing number of sensors built into modern cars that measure everything from the engine running speed to whether seat belts are properly fastened. The most advanced black boxes take the form of a memory in the car鈥檚 airbag unit that collects data from these sensors and holds the last 5 seconds鈥� worth in a buffer. If the airbag is deployed, this data is stored for later retrieval.
But while police forces and safety experts have welcomed the technology, manufacturers cannot decide whether to embrace it, and drivers are questioning who should have access to the data 鈥� and even whether it should be collected at all.
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This data collection has clear benefits. In recent years car crashes have become increasingly difficult to reconstruct because of advances such as anti-lock brakes, which prevent wheels locking and leaving telltale skid marks from which investigators can estimate speed. 鈥淓very new generation of cars makes the problem bigger,鈥� says Ad Hellemons, director of European affairs for the Dutch police and president of the European Traffic Police Network (TISPOL). The black box data is a godsend for crash investigators.
But in Europe the data is difficult to come by. While most new cars collect data of some kind, many do not yet store it in a central memory unit. There is no agreement over what should be stored or any easy way to download the data without the help of the manufacturers 鈥� which in Europe they appear reluctant to provide. 鈥淭here鈥檚 always the potential for a conflict of interest,鈥� says Jim Hammond of Sussex police in the UK, an expert in vehicle technology for the Association of Chief Police Officers. The association fears a consumer backlash if drivers think their car will rat on them after a crash.
That is why TISPOL wants to force the issue. It is pushing for a European directive that would force manufacturers in Europe to fit cars with a standard device that records data about the final seconds before a crash. It plans to produce detailed recommendations this year and hopes for a directive by 2007 that will ensure that all new cars will be fitted with standardised black boxes from 2012 onwards.
This approach contrasts sharply with the way black boxes are being used in the US. General Motors, which sells roughly 1 in 3 passenger vehicles in the US, includes a black box in all its cars in the US (but not in Europe). Ford and Isuzu have introduced them in some of their American models, and Toyota is thought to be following suit for its US vehicles. GM, Ford and Isuzu have licensed the software for decoding the data to a company called Ventronix in Santa Barbara, California, which sells a $2500 device known as the Crash Data Retrieval System that downloads data from its cars.
This eagerness to make crash data accessible reflects a legal environment that is different from Europe鈥檚. US car makers have long looked for ways to counter claims from drivers that electronic faults such as airbag deployment have caused an accident. And to the delight of accident investigators, GM has brushed aside privacy concerns, citing a recent ruling by a New Jersey court that the collection of data was not an invasion of privacy. Trevor Newbury, a crash reconstruction expert at MacInnis Engineering in Kirkland, Washington, does not believe there are any justifiable privacy issues. 鈥淵ou are on a public highway, not in your own house,鈥� he points out.
GM鈥檚 stance could yet backfire. Some customers now want the option to disconnect the memory unit, something the company discourages. 鈥淚t would be foolish to say we haven鈥檛 lost sales connected with it,鈥� a GM spokesman says. But for accident investigators, this is a small price to pay for improving their ability to build cases against drivers like Matos.
Who鈥檚 tracking you?
It鈥檚 not just the police and accident investigators that could benefit from putting black boxes in cars 鈥� worried parents and insurance companies could too, not to mention companies that hope to sell devices to collect and process the data. Last year, Road Safety International, an engineering firm in Thousand Oaks, California, launched a $280 device that can be fitted to any modern car and collects data such as speed, acceleration and seat belt use, and broadcasts it by cellphone to a computer. The owner can then use it to track a teenage driver for example, or to reassure an insurance company that the car is being driven sensibly in return for lower premiums. The technology is a cut-down version of a device that is becoming popular with fleet managers, who use it to keep track of how the company鈥檚 vehicles are being driven.
