Should black boxes be put in cars?

They have black boxes in most newer vehicle. The computer for engine control on some cars includes; speed, braking and braking (ABS).

Here is a resource to find out if your car has a black box.

As of Sept. 1, 2014, every new vehicle in the US must have a black box installed.

You can lock the port.

Maybe… and cell phones should be taken out.

No maybe to it, @Pachy. Black boxes are the law since Sept. of last year.

Make cars as black boxes, survive any crash relatively intact, although it might take a while to find you.

As @ibsturbo correctly points out, they already do. GM has done so for about 20 years, and now it’s The Law.

One thing that is noteworthy is that they are specifically prohibited from collecting personal identifiers or GPS information and are restricted solely to the status of the vehicle; speed, steering wheel angle, whether brakes are applied, whether seatbelts are fastened… only stuff about the state of the vehicle at the time of the accident and the 20 seconds leading up to it.

@Pachy Taking cellphones out of cars is a bad idea. Many people (myself included) use out smartphones as GPS units, and sometimes also as MP3 players hooked to the speakers. Also, my cellphone came in pretty handy for calling 911 a few times, like that time an SUV spun out in front of my and I wound up driving under it’s rear end, or the few times I came upon someone else’s accident.
Removing cellphones will still allow stupid people to drive, like those that apply makeup at 70 MPH on the freeway. What you are asking for won’t solve a damn thing, especially not the REAL problem, and will cause more issues than it’s worth.

Don’t some insurance companies offer a discount for installing their version of the black box?

Yes, I get somewhat hounded, @rojo.

As @jerv noted they have been in cars for decades. The OBD II cars 1996+ made it easy to extract the data. but OBD I cars had it too. The ECM had keep alive memory where virtually every engine control variable over the previous few seconds was stored at will. Throttle position, manifold pressure, speed, engine temp, air temp, transmission gear, etc. Over 25 years ago we were asked to read ECM data that proved a driver was cruising at ~100 mph when he plowed into car stopped at a light. Fortunately the prosecutors did not need that evidence.

Not a question of should. They are already there.

The real question is: How should the data be used? Who has access to it? Can it be used against the driver as evidence? WHo owns the data – the car manufacturer, or the car owner?

Wow, I hate that. So freaking invasive. When will we get tickets and bills automatically for driving over 25 MPH, or enjoying driving?

@Zaku The engineers did it so they could evaluate the system and see if the hardware and software were working correctly. It helped us run rationality checks to see and understand how sensors and component interacted with each other. For example if the throttle is wide open and the vehicle speed is accelerating the MAP, Manifold Absolute Pressure must be near atmospheric pressure. If it is not then one of the sensors is incorrect. How far off will we allow? How much is too much? What variation can we expect in production? We can build and test 20 cars and run them for a million miles costing a few million dollars and have only a rough idea of the expected range. But if we include data collection software in production vehicle at not cost we can study the effects in millions of cars driving billions of miles. We did not care if you were speeding. We only cared about what the sensors said and how the computer interpreted them. That data has helped make cars more fuel efficient, with better performance, cleaner, with increased reliability. Thirty years ago it was rare to find a vehicle with over 80,000 miles. Now they are getting broken in at 100,000.
Mean age for automobiles on the road has steadily increased from 5.1 years in 1969 to 6.5 years in 1990, 9.4 years in 2007, 11.4 years in 2013 and will likely surpass 12 years this year.
Source

You want invasive? How about combining OnStar GPS data and the vehicle’s speed information so the head and tail lights flash automatically if the speed limit is exceeded by 5 mph. Easy!
~You’re welcome. :-)

@elbanditoroso Lawmakers are already on that. If memory serves, fourteen states already have explicit laws pertaining to who is allowed to access that data and under what circumstances; for those most part, it’s only law enforcement with probable cause, and I think we can agree that being in a car accident is sufficient probable cause to allow the investigators access to that info.

@zaku Honestly, modern cars would be totally unable to run without knowing at least engine speed, crankshaft position, throttle position, engine speed, vehicle speed, intake airflow mass and exhaust O2 levels.
Middle-aged cars like mine can fudge that data with manifold vacuum, vacuum advance on the distributor altering ignition timing under load, venturis getting the fuel/air ratio in the ballpark, a mechanical fuel pump ramping up fuel delivery as engine speed rises, etcetera, but it doesn’t work well.
To show you how poorly it works, my 1.6 liter engine has 74 horsepower and has an EPA rating of 26 MPG Highway while most modern cars around 1.6 liters make around 110–140 horsepower with 30–50 MPG with lower emissions.
Also, even without the cars, we have speed cameras and redlight cameras that already issue tickets with no human intervention, and just North of me we have this as well.

@LuckyGuy That is actually part of why OBDIII got nixed. Another reason is this; you know how excessive emissions can trip a Check Engine light when the O2 sensor detects improper emissions? Imagine if instead of tripping the CEL, it shut off the engine instead. Even worse, it it could be shut down remotely… maybe by police, maybe by hackers.
As for Mean Age of Automobiles increasing, look at the prices on new cars and how the economy has been, and you’ll see why more people are driving old “Craigslist specials” than you used to.

@jerv Oh it could have been much worse. We already had top speed limiters. We could have limited vehicle speed to x over state limit. There are cars already equipped with immobilizers that can cut fuel and slowly stop the car via control from a central station. Onstar and others have the capability now.
.
As for cars living longer, it is not just the poor economy. Cars really are living longer. When adjusted for inflation car prices have not changed much or have decreased. You can find lots of sources ITh Model T sold for $850. In todays money that is 22,000. and look at all the features you get now. Do a quick search for price of cars adjusted for inflation. The Dept of energy has a good chart.
Remember when you had to change or clean you spark plugs every 12,000 miles, adjusted or replaced points, set timing, etc. Now plugs last 100,000. Look how the fuel economy has increased. Look at performance and handling. You can anecdotally find a few examples in either direction but on average the engine controls really increased reliability and life. Remember back in the day when you carried a tool box in your trunk so you could help people on the side of the road? How often do you see disabled cars now? Nowhere near as many. Cars are lasting much longer. That data shows it.

@LuckyGuy That would put my favorite car ever, the ‘84–87 Corolla Sedan, along with mid-80s Toyota pickups in the realm of “statistical outlier”. Sure, it’s slower and not quite as efficient as my wife’s ‘98 Escort, and requires a little more TLC, but it’s cost of maintenance is cheaper overall.

“How often do you see disabled cars now?”

Daily. On I-5, I generally see at least one every 15 miles. Yes, that means that on my way to my old job, I would see 2–3 in under an hour. I’ve also seem OBDII cars break in ways that can only be described as “interesting” whereas the failure modes of older cars like mine tend to be rather ho-hum.

@jerv. Don’t include cars that are there for flat tires or gasoline. I used to carry a kit: a dwell meter, file, points for GB, Ford and Chrysler, screwdrivers and a small tube of lubricant. That got many people on the road again in minutes. Now your ECM will make a determination of the error and respond. If the failure is:
Is the failure only emissions related? – Turn on service engine soon light and continue driving.
Is there enough rationality data to continue? Disable adaptive learning and set vehicle calibration to limp home mode.
Not enough data to run vehicle with no damage? Set vehicle to walk home mode.
Etc.
The decision tree is actually much more complicated but you get the idea.

@LuckyGuy Tires are rare, and I doubt that many people are unobservant about gas. I mean, we’re talking about 20 miles of metroplex before thinning out to gas stations every 2–5 miles.
I am familiar with “limp home” mode, but the problems I’ve had had more to do with a lack of build quality in the ‘90s with OBDII being coincidental rather than causal, most commonly transmission issues in mid-sized US cars (or foreign cars using US transmissions, like the Mazda 626). What can the ECM do about a hole in the bell housing the size/shape of a Dorito? Or melting a plastic gear in the differential because you not only exceeded the design parameters of the transmission (certain parts of a 2400 pound car don’t hold up well in cars that weigh 3000 pounds), but also skimped by omitting a tranny cooler? The fact that there was a period of craptacularity for much of the nineties kind of skews the numbers on longevity.

It’s a good example of “just because you can do it, doesn’t mean you should do it.”

If it were optional, great if people want it, and it can be useful for the fuel efficiency data LuckyGuy mentions, or for collision data for safety purposes.

What isn’t great is making it a law that everyone has to have one in all cars, and that they can’t opt out.

What I hate, is that this is clearly leading us further down the path where everyone may end up being tracked by multiple devices at all time. Laws that were accepted as ok when it required a witness to testify and police or prosecutors to press charges and so on before they would be enforced, can now be automatically enforced immediately by computers, and in some cases are already being done that way, starting with the ones that are easy to sell, such as 20 MPH school zones.

Eventually this could get to everyone expecting to have a computer knowing where they are or were at all times, and penalties applied for lame infractions, impacts on insurance fees, etc bla bla bla.

I don’t want to live under involuntary observation and monitoring and recording at all times.