Little digital secrets in your car’s ‘black box’

If you bought your car from around year 2000, or if it has an airbag, it most likely has an ‘event data recorder’ on board. FILE PHOTO |

What you need to know:

  • If you bought your car from around year 2000, or if it has an airbag, it most likely has an ‘event data recorder’ on board.

Most people associate black boxes with airplanes but they are no longer just the key tool in investigation of airplane accidents. The event data recorder, as the black box is officially called, is slowly gaining an important role in investigation of car accidents as well.

You might not know it but the car that you drive might have its own version of the black box. If you bought your car from around year 2000, or if your car has an airbag, it most likely has an event data recorder on board. If you were not aware of this, it is because the device itself is installed out of sight.

These boxes are small and under the seat or dashboard. Vehicle black boxes were originally created to determine the cause of airbags’ activation but they collect several data of the driver’s actions, including the speed. These data have made black boxes very useful for reconstruction of accidents.

In fact, the data recorded by black boxes has already been used as an important evidence in the courts. For example, a 19-year-old man was convicted in the United Kingdom in 2006 on the base of data obtained from the car’s black box, which has shown that he was driving way too fast.

VALUABLE INSIGHTS

A black box can act like an eyewitness to the events leading to the crash, giving investigators valuable insights into what really happened, and perhaps explain why an accident occurred.

Black boxes have the potential to point out safety lapses, which could help place liability to those who are responsible, or absolve one from liability. Most importantly, it can help prevent similar accidents in the future.

Virtually every car that has an air bag has some kind of recording ability.

The recorders capture information about how fast you were going and whether you slammed on the brakes in the seconds before and after a crash.

Most car manufacturers do not reveal what these black boxes do and what they record. And each car manufacturer has a different system from other car manufacturers.

So, one car brand might be recording a different set of data from another car brand.

Most of the data recorded come from the sensors that report to the electronic control modules. The electronic control modules are responsible for activating your antilock brake system, airbags, climate control management modules, cruise control, and a host of other features in your car.

A car black box has a GPS unit that records the time of day and the places you drive to. It also comes with motion sensors and detectors to record how you are driving your car and whether you are driving on bumpy or smooth roads.

It records sudden left or right turns, whether you have fastened your seatbelt, or if there was any technical malfunction of the vehicle in the seconds before the accident.

SEE WHAT'S WRONG

The black box continually records but overwrites its previous data, hence its memory is never full. It typically keeps five to 10 seconds of data before the collision.

Over the years, event data recorders have come to be equipped with diagnostics as well, which allows it to record your car’s performance issues, making it easier for mechanics to see what’s wrong with your vehicle.

Most importantly, a black box could provide the all-important digital record that could resolve the cause of a car crash that may have left other witnesses dead.

It is, therefore, important that, apart from the usual measures of curbing road accidents in Kenya — such as police checks and testing alcohol levels of drivers — that the Kenya Transport and Safety Authority puts in place the right technology and skill to read data from vehicle black boxes to aid in accident investigations.

Wambugu is a monitoring and evaluation specialist; [email protected]