melissa

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,90673,00.html

Evidence From Black Boxes in Cars Turns Up in Courts
No one disputes that Michelle Zimmermann (search) lost control of her 2002
GMC Yukon as she drove on a two-lane highway in Massachusetts one snowy
afternoon last January. Her friend died after the SUV slammed into a tree.
Zimmermann claims she was driving within the posted 40 mph speed limit, but
like millions of other Americans the 33-year-old didn't know that her
vehicle had a "black box." Monitoring her driving, it recorded the last few
seconds before the crash.

Bolstered by data that they say indicates Zimmermann was driving well above
the speed limit, prosecutors have charged the Beverly, Mass. woman with
negligent vehicular homicide. She has pleaded innocent and faces up to 2
1/2 years in jail if convicted.

An estimated 25 million automobiles in the United States now have so-called
event data recorders (search), a scaled-down version of the devices that
monitor cockpit activity in airplanes. Like aviation recorders, automobile
black boxes mainly receive attention after an accident.

What the devices record increasingly finds its way into courtrooms as
evidence in criminal and civil cases, leading some privacy advocates
(search) to question how the recorders came to be installed so widely with
so little public notice or debate.

"It's like having a government agent driving around in the back seat of
your car," said Bob Weiner, Zimmermann's defense attorney and a former
prosecutor. "I think it's a tremendous invasion of privacy."

Most people apparently don't even know whether the vehicles they drive are
equipped with event data recorders. Nearly two-thirds of people surveyed by
an insurance industry group knew nothing about them.

"The real issue is one of notice, and the problem arises from the fact that
information is being collected about people's driving behavior without them
knowing," said David Sobel, general counsel of the Electronic Privacy
Information Center (search). "If drivers knew about the device, they could
at least then begin asking questions."

Automakers and regulators have ignored basic privacy questions, leaving
individual courts to decide such issues as who owns the information and
whether a warrant is required to access it, he said. Some studies have
questioned the data's reliability and accuracy.

Prosecutors, police and accident reconstructionists say the boxes yield
information no different from what can be gleaned from crushed metal, skid
marks and other evidence at the scene. Now, they say, calculations can be
backed up.

"It's appearing in prosecutors' cases in support of the normal
reconstruction," said W.R. "Rusty" Haight, director of the Collision Safety
Institute.

A number of recent court cases across the country have involved event data
recorders.

In early June, Edwin Matos of Pembroke Pines, Fla., was sentenced to 30
years in prison for slamming his car into a vehicle driven by two teenage
girls, killing both. Data from the recorder showed he was driving more than
100 mph just seconds before the crash.

In April, Arlington Heights, Ill., police officer Charles Tiedje received a
$10 million settlement after data from the hearse that struck his squad car
contradicted claims that the driver blacked out. The device showed the
supposedly unconscious driver accelerated and braked in the moments before
the October 2000 crash.

The devices' primary function is to monitor various sensors and decide
whether to fire air bags. But secondary and more recently installed
features in many recorders store data from a few seconds before a crash.
Though capabilities vary widely among carmakers, most recorders store only
limited information on speed, seat belt use, physical forces, brakes and
other factors. Voices are not recorded.

General Motors Corp. has been using recording-capable devices, called
Sensing and Diagnostic Modules (search), since the 1990s to help improve
safety and gather statistics. GM spokesman Jim Schell said consumer privacy
has always been a top concern.

"We collect the data with the permission of the owner or the person who is
leasing the vehicle," he said. "When that data is collected, we take great
care to assure confidentiality."

The modules helped GM figure out why some air bags were deploying
inadvertently, leading to a recall in 1998 of more than 850,000 Cavaliers
and Sunfires.

But there's a lot more interest in the data beyond engineering - namely,
from lawyers.

GM and, more recently, Ford Motor Co. now allow outsiders to access the
data by buying a $2,500 reader built by Santa Barbara, Calif.-based
Vetronix Corp. The company says its primary customers are accident
reconstructionists, law enforcement and insurance companies.
So far, about 1,000 of the devices have been sold, primarily in the United
States and Canada. The company hopes to reach deals to cover data from
other car makers.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (search) has been
studying data recorders for years, trying to determine whether the auto
industry should standardize the equipment. Any decision could be years
away, and there's no guarantee privacy would be addressed then. Agency
spokesman Tim Hurd said state courts should decide what's admissible.
Haight, a former San Diego police officer, dismisses the privacy concerns
because driving - and crashes - are public.

But Sobel argues that drivers at the very least have a right to know that
their actions might be recorded. He also fears that data recorders will
converge with other devices - such as locators and voice recorders - now
finding their way into cars.

"It's hard to say that there is general public acceptance of this when the
public has no idea about it," he said.


--
Yours In Liberty, Melissa - Colorado, U.S.A.

West Denver area -> Shaolin-based Martial arts, Rock music, Sci-Fi, Chess,
Libertarian, Objectivist, Chess, RKBA & Shooting.
Guns PROTECT life and liberty, plus they're a LOT of fun to shoot!
REGISTER REPORTERS, NOT GUNS!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Fans_of_Melissa/
http://www.dimensional.com/~melissa/readinglist.htm
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GunsSaveLives
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Women_To_Arms/
Spread the American Revolution: http://www.UPAlliance.org/
I'm interested in Persuader or Para .45 LDA local at really good price.

melissa

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,90673,00.html

Evidence From Black Boxes in Cars Turns Up in Courts
No one disputes that Michelle Zimmermann (search) lost control of her 2002
GMC Yukon as she drove on a two-lane highway in Massachusetts one snowy
afternoon last January. Her friend died after the SUV slammed into a tree.
Zimmermann claims she was driving within the posted 40 mph speed limit, but
like millions of other Americans the 33-year-old didn't know that her
vehicle had a "black box." Monitoring her driving, it recorded the last few
seconds before the crash.

Bolstered by data that they say indicates Zimmermann was driving well above
the speed limit, prosecutors have charged the Beverly, Mass. woman with
negligent vehicular homicide. She has pleaded innocent and faces up to 2
1/2 years in jail if convicted.

An estimated 25 million automobiles in the United States now have so-called
event data recorders (search), a scaled-down version of the devices that
monitor cockpit activity in airplanes. Like aviation recorders, automobile
black boxes mainly receive attention after an accident.

What the devices record increasingly finds its way into courtrooms as
evidence in criminal and civil cases, leading some privacy advocates
(search) to question how the recorders came to be installed so widely with
so little public notice or debate.

"It's like having a government agent driving around in the back seat of
your car," said Bob Weiner, Zimmermann's defense attorney and a former
prosecutor. "I think it's a tremendous invasion of privacy."

Most people apparently don't even know whether the vehicles they drive are
equipped with event data recorders. Nearly two-thirds of people surveyed by
an insurance industry group knew nothing about them.

"The real issue is one of notice, and the problem arises from the fact that
information is being collected about people's driving behavior without them
knowing," said David Sobel, general counsel of the Electronic Privacy
Information Center (search). "If drivers knew about the device, they could
at least then begin asking questions."

Automakers and regulators have ignored basic privacy questions, leaving
individual courts to decide such issues as who owns the information and
whether a warrant is required to access it, he said. Some studies have
questioned the data's reliability and accuracy.

Prosecutors, police and accident reconstructionists say the boxes yield
information no different from what can be gleaned from crushed metal, skid
marks and other evidence at the scene. Now, they say, calculations can be
backed up.

"It's appearing in prosecutors' cases in support of the normal
reconstruction," said W.R. "Rusty" Haight, director of the Collision Safety
Institute.

A number of recent court cases across the country have involved event data
recorders.

In early June, Edwin Matos of Pembroke Pines, Fla., was sentenced to 30
years in prison for slamming his car into a vehicle driven by two teenage
girls, killing both. Data from the recorder showed he was driving more than
100 mph just seconds before the crash.

In April, Arlington Heights, Ill., police officer Charles Tiedje received a
$10 million settlement after data from the hearse that struck his squad car
contradicted claims that the driver blacked out. The device showed the
supposedly unconscious driver accelerated and braked in the moments before
the October 2000 crash.

The devices' primary function is to monitor various sensors and decide
whether to fire air bags. But secondary and more recently installed
features in many recorders store data from a few seconds before a crash.
Though capabilities vary widely among carmakers, most recorders store only
limited information on speed, seat belt use, physical forces, brakes and
other factors. Voices are not recorded.

General Motors Corp. has been using recording-capable devices, called
Sensing and Diagnostic Modules (search), since the 1990s to help improve
safety and gather statistics. GM spokesman Jim Schell said consumer privacy
has always been a top concern.

"We collect the data with the permission of the owner or the person who is
leasing the vehicle," he said. "When that data is collected, we take great
care to assure confidentiality."

The modules helped GM figure out why some air bags were deploying
inadvertently, leading to a recall in 1998 of more than 850,000 Cavaliers
and Sunfires.

But there's a lot more interest in the data beyond engineering - namely,
from lawyers.

GM and, more recently, Ford Motor Co. now allow outsiders to access the
data by buying a $2,500 reader built by Santa Barbara, Calif.-based
Vetronix Corp. The company says its primary customers are accident
reconstructionists, law enforcement and insurance companies.
So far, about 1,000 of the devices have been sold, primarily in the United
States and Canada. The company hopes to reach deals to cover data from
other car makers.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (search) has been
studying data recorders for years, trying to determine whether the auto
industry should standardize the equipment. Any decision could be years
away, and there's no guarantee privacy would be addressed then. Agency
spokesman Tim Hurd said state courts should decide what's admissible.
Haight, a former San Diego police officer, dismisses the privacy concerns
because driving - and crashes - are public.

But Sobel argues that drivers at the very least have a right to know that
their actions might be recorded. He also fears that data recorders will
converge with other devices - such as locators and voice recorders - now
finding their way into cars.

"It's hard to say that there is general public acceptance of this when the
public has no idea about it," he said.


--
Yours In Liberty, Melissa - Colorado, U.S.A.

West Denver area -> Shaolin-based Martial arts, Rock music, Sci-Fi, Chess,
Libertarian, Objectivist, Chess, RKBA & Shooting.
Guns PROTECT life and liberty, plus they're a LOT of fun to shoot!
REGISTER REPORTERS, NOT GUNS!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Fans_of_Melissa/
http://www.dimensional.com/~melissa/readinglist.htm
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GunsSaveLives
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Women_To_Arms/
Spread the American Revolution: http://www.UPAlliance.org/
I'm interested in Persuader or Para .45 LDA local at really good price.

mage

by


I would be 99% don't even know how an internal comusbion engine works...

Most likely, less than 50% would even know that that is what powers their
car...


that

them


Safety


than

a

car


privacy

william a. levinson

What happens if you just cut the wires if you find one? (Not the wires
that control the air bags, of course, but all other wires.)

--Bill

http://www.stentorian.com/2ndamend/

jason gallas

Perhaps somebody should write a book and make millions on how to remove a
black box from your car?

Chess,

vlj

"Melissa" <Melissa@pagan.nket> sez:

<snip>

so-called


Look for the manufacturers to be recording "abuse" codes as well that will
be logged in non-volatile memory. If you exceed predetermined thresholds
and have telling periodicities of those exceeded thresholds, your warranty
will turn into a pumpkin ...

In addition, the emerging OBD III (On-Board Diagnostics) specification may
include roadside telemetry (snitchware) that will rat you out if your
emissions are not up to snuff and put your location, time, date and VIN on
the dirty list or signal some flunky parked at the monitoring station to
take off after you in hot pursuit.

See
<http://anon.user.anonymizer.com/http...ay/obd_iii_new.
cfm>

Even the broke Kalifornia legislators almost came on themselves when they
found out that it could also report your odometer reading to the roadside
tracking stations so they could automatically send the vehicle owner a tax
bill in the mail based on their driven miles.

Nice, eh?

VLJ

mage

by


I would be 99% don't even know how an internal comusbion engine works...

Most likely, less than 50% would even know that that is what powers their
car...


that

them


Safety


than

a

car


privacy

william a. levinson

What happens if you just cut the wires if you find one? (Not the wires
that control the air bags, of course, but all other wires.)

--Bill

http://www.stentorian.com/2ndamend/

jason gallas

Perhaps somebody should write a book and make millions on how to remove a
black box from your car?

Chess,

vlj

"Melissa" <Melissa@pagan.nket> sez:

<snip>

so-called


Look for the manufacturers to be recording "abuse" codes as well that will
be logged in non-volatile memory. If you exceed predetermined thresholds
and have telling periodicities of those exceeded thresholds, your warranty
will turn into a pumpkin ...

In addition, the emerging OBD III (On-Board Diagnostics) specification may
include roadside telemetry (snitchware) that will rat you out if your
emissions are not up to snuff and put your location, time, date and VIN on
the dirty list or signal some flunky parked at the monitoring station to
take off after you in hot pursuit.

See
<http://anon.user.anonymizer.com/http...ay/obd_iii_new.
cfm>

Even the broke Kalifornia legislators almost came on themselves when they
found out that it could also report your odometer reading to the roadside
tracking stations so they could automatically send the vehicle owner a tax
bill in the mail based on their driven miles.

Nice, eh?

VLJ