Autos' black-box data turning up in courtrooms
Deborah Sharp USA
TODAY
FORT LAUDERDALE
-- So-called ''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' 2002 Pontiac Trans Am 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, Fla. The girls were killed. Prosecutors say that black-box evidence
will show 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, 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 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,
and to a lesser extent, 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
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, Fla., a black box caused jurors to question the prosecution's
argument that John Robert Walker 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, a police officer in Arlington Heights, 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,
claimed a medical condition caused him to black out before he hit
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,
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 in 1992. Brown's
survivors filed a$30 million civil suit that claimed that the air bag
on Brown's high-performance 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 (news - web sites) (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, a research vice president with the Insurance Institute
for Highway Safety (news - web sites). 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, executive
director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington,
D.C. ''Invariably, the information is used against the driver.''
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