House committee passes bill requiring black boxes, brake overide systems

[Poltergeist]

A massive auto safety overhaul bill has made its way out of committee and onto the floor of the House of Representatives for voting. According to Automotive News, the biggest changes that the bill proposes is the mandatory addition of black boxes and brake override mechanisms to all new cars and trucks. The event-data recorders would track information shortly before and after an accident for a specified period of time in order to help investigators determine the cause of an accident. Legislators and manufacturers alike began to push for the recorders in the wake of multiple accidents associated with Toyota's unintended acceleration woes.

Originally, the bill would have required the black boxes to record data for a total of 75 seconds, though the House Energy and Commerce committee changed the legislation to allow the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration to determine the length. The bill also deals with regulations concerning pushbutton starts, pedal placement and a number of other auto-safety issues. If the bill passes the House of Representatives, it will be sent to the Senate for a final vote before becoming law.

 

[juddski88]

do you have a link to the contents of the bill?

thanks

 

[KEVINL]

Cars already have black boxes.

The break override will make it tough to do burnouts:rofl:

 

[Poltergeist]

do you have a link to the contents of the bill?

thanks

Sorry I don't. Just found the article about it with no link. Will see if I can find one.

 

[duratothemax]

Big deal, this is nothing new.

Does everybody not realize that cars have had black boxes since they first started getting airbags in the early 1990's? Maybe the event data recording was more limited back then than it is now, but they still recorded basic info. It was mainly to protect the MFG from a lawsuit in the event of an accident without a deployment.

Brake override isnt anything new either. Its called brake torque managment, and every single car with electronic stability control has it, as do pretty much all the 2000+ GM trucks/SUV's.

Basically....I dont know why this is such a big deal and why people are getting all up in arms about it. Just drive the damn car and forget about it; if you rear end someone going 65 in a 30mph zone and the police pulls your SDM/EDR data and gives you a ticket, whos fault is that? People who are throwing up the "invasion of privacy" and "too much big brother" flags are stupid. Complaining about it isnt going to change anything so people should save their breath. If they dont like it they are more than welcome to ride a bicycle, or buy an old car without airbags.

JMO.

Ben

 

[THEFERMANATOR]

Yep, since OBD2 came out in 96 pretty much every car has had a data recorder that kept track of general data in the vehicle for about 60-90 seconds prior to an airbag deployment. The advent of the data bus in the vehicle made these black boxes easy to install as 1 or 2 wires could transmit basically all of the data from what is going on in the car and relay it to a recorder. The only thing I can see coming of this is them making it so that the NTSB and DOT would have easier access to this info as before the manufacturers were just about the only ones that could retrieve the data.

 

[DAVe3283]

do you have a link to the contents of the bill?

thanks

Cars already have black boxes.

The break override will make it tough to do burnouts:rofl:

Sorry I don't. Just found the article about it with no link. Will see if I can find one.

Basically....I dont know why this is such a big deal and why people are getting all up in arms about it.

Er, what? I didn't see people up in arms, they're just being curious.

Honestly, I don't care about the vehicle recording what I do. I do this intentionally nearly every time I drive (via the FlashScan V2) so I can optimize my tuning. Plus, cops can figure out pretty accurately how fast someone was going when they hit someone else, without a black box. I am in favor of them, anything to get people to drive a little safer, or punish the appropriate party in an accident or near miss.

I don't see any invasion in privacy, since you have to have already been in a wreck before they get the information. The only problem I have with this is my generic "do we really need another law?" argument, which I have with every new/proposed law.