Is That a 'Black Box' in Your Car?

Feb. 22, 2010— -- Just a few miles east of Los Angeles International Airport, a Chevy Tahoe barreled its way through a residential neighborhood on a Sunday evening. The driver lost control of the SUV, slid into the opposite lane and plowed head-on into another car, killing the driver, a 64-year-old woman.

The Tahoe flipped over and caught fire but the 40-year-old driver was able to get out and flee. When he turned himself in the next morning, he was arrested on suspicion of vehicular homicide with gross negligence.

California Highway Patrol investigators analyzed the scene of the August 2009 accident and found physical evidence on the road of the vehicle's high speed. But officials also had another tool to use in their investigation, a device within the car itself. The SUV's Event Data Recorder (EDR), part of the air-bag system, had captured its exact speed -- 81 mph -- acceleration, braking and other data in the five seconds leading up to the crash.

The EDR is known commonly as a black box and has been installed in some vehicles since 1996. About 60 million vehicles now have them and 85 percent of new cars this year will come standard with a "black box," according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates.

The agency does not mandate that manufacturers install these data recorders. But NHTSA is requiring that cars with EDRs store at least 15 kinds of data and have the information easily accessible by Sept. 1, 2012. Automakers, including BMW, Ford, Mercedes-Benz and Toyota, want to delay that for a year.

"People have a tendency to think of a 'black box' as they think of a flight-data recorder," Officer John Grindey of the Highway Patrol's Multidisciplinary Accident Investigation Team said. "They think everything they say in the car is being recorded. None of that information is in there."

Some drivers may not know they have an EDR, although automakers typically disclose that information in the owner's manual. Retrieving the data, however, requires a special software to collect speed, engine rpm, brake and throttle data, among other things.