Big Brother: soon to be mobile
8 Responses to “Big Brother: soon to be mobile”
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May 25th, 2011 at 9:21 am
Those could be fun to hack. I bet you could piggyback a module that would multiply everything that the box receives… Could list the car as hit from all 6 sides while traveling at 6000 mph with the brakes on….
May 25th, 2011 at 9:51 am
Just wait until the insurance companies start demanding access. Of course, it will be for our own safety.
May 25th, 2011 at 10:16 am
Chances are that I was never going to be able to afford a brand new car. Now I don’t even want one.
May 25th, 2011 at 11:52 am
I recall a bill in the TN legislature recently that made the black boxes the SOLE property of the registered owner, and the data could not be accessed without written permission.
I don’t know if that passed or not. My 1996 Saturn had one of these boxes.
May 25th, 2011 at 12:02 pm
And this is why I will be driving my cars for another five years in lieu of purchasing a new one… Great way to stall the economy!
May 25th, 2011 at 2:01 pm
http://www.allcartech.com/news/1060403_want-cheaper-car-insurance-take-a-snapshot-pay-as-you-go
May 25th, 2011 at 4:04 pm
As Wizardpc says, this is not new.
I frankly don’t see the problem with recording pre-crash data and storing it in the box in the car; I could understand concerns if it was to be transmitted live and at all times, however.
Being able to prove – after a deadly or damaging crash – that you were obeying the law and driving safely and that the other guy was being a reckless idiot sounds like a win to me – or a loss, if you’re the reckless idiot, I suppose.
And I similarly don’t really have a problem with the mandate; not only does it serve a genuinely useful goal (of collecting actually useful data about performance and action of the car during a crash), but it passes constitutional muster on the grounds that automobiles are in practice always made and sold in interstate (often international) commerce, and thus clearly under Congress’ power to regulate.
(Indeed, I suspect that whatever NHTSA rule comes out of it would exempt kit-cars, the same as they’re exempt from crash testing. And kit-cars are about the only thing that’s not in bona fide intestate commerce, in the car creation world.)
May 25th, 2011 at 4:53 pm
Being able to prove – after a deadly or damaging crash – that you were obeying the law and driving safely and that the other guy was being a reckless idiot sounds like a win to me – or a loss, if you’re the reckless idiot, I suppose.
Unless you hit a cop. Then, suddenly all that data that proves you were going the speed limit and slammed on your brakes when the patrol car pulled out in front of you is unreliable.
I know this, because it happened here in Nashville to a trucker who killed a police officer that was parked halfway in the fast lane of I-40, just beyond the crest of a hill. Black box data showed the trucker was going under the speed limit (because he was in a fully loaded truck and had just topped a hill), and slammed on his brakes when he saw the car. The prosecutor announced on local tv that witnesses said he was “flying” and “didnt even attempt to stop after he hit the police car.”
Naturally, the judge in the case ruled the black box data was inadmissible because…well just because. That guy ended up spending two years in state prison, IIRC. It’s also the reason we have that stupid “you have to give emergency vehicles an extra lane” law.