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Would you believe your car may be able to spy on you, even a little?  You've heard of a black box in an airplane but how about a version of that in your car?

"It's in there, yes it is," Richard Clarke tells me.

I'm inside a garage in Braselton, Georgia, about an hour north of Atlanta. Clarke is an engineer and now owns Clarke Automotive Consultants, a company that reconstructs accidents.  His clients are mostly attorneys.

He educates me about the EDR (Event Data Recorder.)  He believes the devices, which are in an estimated 40 million vehicles, are helpful in accident investigations.

"It's good for everybody, if there's going to be some kind of an allegation whether it's against the manufacturer or against the driver for say a criminal investigation." Clarke says. 

EDRs are located in various places in vehicles, often under the dashboard or front seat.  The device is a mini-computer that is connected to the sensors in a vehicle's air bags.  If there's an accident and the air bag deploys, the EDR will record up to five seconds of information.  (Not audio or video, but data that can indicate whether the driver was wearing a seat belt, and in some cases, how fast the driver was going on impact.)

Using a 1999 Chevy pickup, Clarke shows me equipment that allows him to hook up a laptop to the EDR inside the vehicle.  Immediately, the date and time the connection is made pops up on the laptop.  Because there hasn't been an accident and the airbags have not deployed, there isn't much more to see.

Clarke then shows me data obtained from an actual  "car black box" obtained in 2005 following an accident that killed the female driver.  It shows the woman was driving about 64 miles per hour, that she braked and within five seconds lowered her speed down to 25 miles per.  It also show she was not buckled in at the time of impact.

"Her family says she was not an avid seat belt wearer," Clarke says.

Clarke believes that information from an EDR provide missing pieces in an investigation. The EDR records for only about five seconds, maybe ten at the most.  But Clarke still thinks the information can be helpful."It's going to give you a good story of what's going on," he says.  "And it will show you if you made a mistake."

Thomas Kowalick, a professor at Sandhills Community College in Pinehurst, North Carolina is the nation's leading researcher on the black box devices.  He has published four books on the subject and is writing a fifth.  He also believes it can aid accident investigations.  "Before the EDR it was a he said, she said, every time something crashes, but now you have objective, scientific information," Kowalick says.  "So the EDR's simply speak for the victim and they tell the truth."

Kowalick says the EDR may be the most important safety device since the seat belt.  Yet he does believe that the government and auto makers need to inform consumers the devices are in their vehicles.  Kowalick has consulted with the National Transportation Highway Safety Administration on the EDR.  By 2011, NHTSA says all vehicles that contain an EDR must list the device in the vehicle's owner's manual.

Kowalick acknowledges that the debate about EDR's continues.  At a public hearing last fall in Pennsylvania, he spoke before a panel of state lawmakers debating whether that state should have stricter laws about how information from the device could be obtained and used against a motorist in court.

"We are at a crossroads, without consumer acceptance of these lifesaving technologies we will not reduce injuries and fatalities," Kowalick told the panel.  Later he also did a demonstration, clapping his hands and saying "that's the amount of time the EDR is recording, just seconds."

Timothy Kidd, a Pittsburgh attorney testified at that hearing, saying seconds should not be enough to convict an innocent driver.  "My client was so close to going to prison based on data from a (black box) and nothing else," Kidd told the lawmakers. "For the life of me I can't figure out how this got into a court of law. 

When I contacted Kidd he told me there was little physical evidence in the case he had talked about, few skid marks for example and no eye witnesses.  Kidd is among the group of critics who are concerned about  the use of EDRs, not only because of privacy issues for consumers but because they question the reliability of the boxes.

Perry Zucker, an engineer in New York state who also does accident reconstruction told me he thinks the ERD is "junk science".  Zucker says little, if any testing has been done to determine the accuracy of the devices or if they are affected by conditions such as cold or humidity.  Zucker says he has tested several EDR's and found as much as a 10 mile per hour discrepancy in speed. 

Critics also say the devices are not calibrated on a regular basis like other traffic equipment such as radar.

But Richard Clarke, who spent about ten years working at General Motors responded with "these (boxes) are manufactured to a very tight tolerance and they're manufactured and calibrated at their assembly facility. To my knowledge it cannot come out of calibration," he says.

Still, Clarke says it might be possible that once engaged, the EDR could make a mistake.  "It can give you false data, it's a computer. You can have certain things where there's an interrupt, a hiccup in the system where it can give you erroneous data."

Clarke also says that false readings may be possible depending on how the box is handled.  He says the ideal is to have a trained professional read the EDR while it's still in the car.  He says if the box is removed, that it must be handled carefully and that jiggling the box for example, might affect the readout.

Clarke has a listing of hundreds of cars that have EDRS and the list even indicates where the boxes are located inside the cars.  But he's not sure how many drivers know about them.  "I  think the average consumer realizes they have an air bag but I don't know if they know an EDR is in the vehicle.," he says.

Newer cars Clarke says, have better technology and with better technology there's a higher level of information that's being stored in that system .

Even though he supports the devices, Clarke does say he knows some drivers may have privacy concerns.  "But I would think there is a certain point where people feel like Big Brother's looking at them," he says. "But my personal feeling is if you've got nothing to hide, it's not going to hurt you."

Chip Mixon of Savannah is getting out of his 2006 Ford Explorer at a drug store parking lot when I ask him if he has ever hear of an Event Data Recorder? 

"I think so, but I don't  know that much about it," he tells me.

We find the EDR listed in his owner's manual. Mixon reads about the device.  "Whether or not driver or passenger was wearing a seat belts, whether the brake pedal was used, how fast the vehicle was traveling," he says.  "Well now that you brought it to my attention I'd like to do some research."

Michael Sugarman who has an older model Ford Explorer says he'd be concerned about someone using his own car against him.  "I  guess in case of dispute that I could see some positives (with an EDR)," he says.  "But I would be much more concerned about how much information that would be released as a result of the accident to people who did not need to know anything  about it."

Like other drivers, Sugarman may have to get used to the idea of the boxes.  Clarke says all new cars have them and have better technology and with better technology there's a higher level of information that's being stored in that system.

Some critics say that information from the box should only be retrieved with a court order.  In many states now, law enforcement and attorneys can get the box with a search warrant or subpoena.

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