Gadgetory

the first disappointment is this silver box is a black box there really aren't any black boxes it's kind of like in airliners and what this really is is the air bag controller from a 2003 Camry you see air bags can only work if they know what's been happening to the vehicle so they can predict if they need to blow the bags in the next few milliseconds this becomes a data recorder for that purpose and a data processor hence its existence now here's the business end of it what do you see all those connectors in there couple dozen maybe three dozen metal connectors this is where the sensors are wired in from all over the car that this thing is monitoring and recording and those sensors can include a lot of different things including G forces that are acting on the car the accelerator and brake pedal position steering wheel angle what where you pointed wheel rotation and vehicle speed kind of the same thing but not always depending on the traction situation and whether the seat belts were buckled and even if you had someone in the passenger's seat there's a lot of information coming in here now what's not coming in as far as I know none of these devices yet record GPS coordinates or cell phone status were you on the phone texting what have you but probably it's a matter of time oh by the way in addition to these sensors and many more Mercedes cars even capture the position of the sunroof because in an imminent rollover they close the windows and the sunroof thanks to the computations of their black box now what's inside the black box it's basically one circuit board that has got several processors but what's key about all these processors is they also have storage attached to them and that's where this thing can record some degree of look-back of all those sensors we talked about it could be a few seconds up to as much as 30 seconds I understand now about 96% of all new cars sold in the US have a black box right now but the US government's on the verge of requiring every car have one going forward which brings up four interesting questions first of all what data points will be required they want to conform that so every car makers gathering the same stuff how long of a snapshot is going to be held of those data points what kind of technology software or hardware is needed to read what's in here there's no USB port believe me and most importantly who has the right to that data and when and under what conditions now at the state level in the u.s. about 13 states have laws that specifically govern who can get the information off these memory chips on a black box in your car after an accident it's a very contentious issue another 12 states or so are considering laws the rest are if you will a black box the ownership of this thing is interesting it's in your car so it belongs to you but the rules of investigation under Criminal Code will often trump that and then what if your car is totaled it just got bought from you by your insurance company now it's there black box