Beginning next month, new cars equipped with so-called black boxes — instruments that record crash information — must meet certain criteria for categories of data captured, accuracy and crash survivability. But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is still working on a rule that would require all new cars sold to contain the devices in the first place.
The units are properly called event data recorders, but are popularly known by the same term that is used to describe the data recorders used in aircraft. “Black box” is a mechanic’s shorthand for a component that should not be opened because it can be serviced only by a specialist, and the units on aircraft are a regulation shade of orange. The units in cars, in contrast, actually are often black, or occasionally sliver. They contain a circuit board with a memory chip and a data jack, and standard procedure is to image, or download, their data, rather than remove them.
General Motors began installing black boxes in various vehicles in the early ’90s, and N.H.T.S.A. estimated that 92 percent of 2010-model-year vehicles that weighed up to 3,855 kilograms, or 8,481 pounds, contained them. They are installed by automakers, often for the manufacturers’ legal benefit, to capture data in the last few seconds before a crash, recording how fast the wheels were turning, whether the brake was applied, whether the seatbelts were buckled and the force of the impact. This information can subsequently be used in court to counter claims that death or injury resulted from poor design or equipment malfunction. In their simplest form, they record the information that triggered the air bag to deploy.
The new requirements are intended to standardize this data in a way that would make it easier to process by manufacturers as well as by parties involved in legal actions.
The boxes are generally in a well-protected area, like under the center console or driver’s seat, as well as in the transmission tunnel. A Web site run by Media General, the broadcast and interactive communications company, lists the location of the box for some models of cars.
“Air bags are sophisticated, and you’re talking about having to deploy them within milliseconds,’’ Clarence Ditlow, the director of the Center for Auto Safety, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group, said in a telephone interview. “If you’re too quick or too slow to deploy, it can result in injury to the occupants,’’ he said. Black boxes are imperative because they enable automakers and parties in lawsuits “to see what’s happening in the real world.”
The devices receive a constant stream of data from sensors in the car, with new data continuously replacing the old. If the motion sensors register a shock that makes the air bags deploy, the black box shuts down and captures the previous few seconds in its memory.
Congress this year considered a provision that would require black boxes in all new cars, but it was defeated in the House. Mr. Ditlow said the provision ran afoul of conservative Republicans who saw it as an intrusion on privacy.
In fact, data ownership typically goes hand-in-hand with ownership of the car, which may pass from the driver to the insurance company. The data can be subpoenaed in a lawsuit.
The rules are taking effect because the federal safety agency, in a notice published in the Federal Register on Aug. 9, turned down a petition by major automakers for a one-year delay on the standardization rules. The rules state that the data must be retrievable and specify how precisely the sensors must measure parameters like the impact jolt in the sideways or forward-and-back direction; the engine speed and throttle position; the steering input; and the speed of air-bag deployment.
Ahead for legislators is a decision on mandating black boxes for all new cars. In a statement, Lynda Tran, a spokeswoman for N.H.T.S.A, said, “The agency has made it a priority to work toward a proposed standard that would mandate these devices on all passenger vehicles on the nation’s roadways.”
The data, she argued, would help vehicle engineers understand “the dynamics involved in a crash and the performance or failures by safety systems.”
