http://www.anandtech.com/#21338

???
lemme know =)

 

A few years back, I read about rent-a-car companies using them to keep customers from speeding, but a lawsuit required them to be more open (i.e. not just fine print) in informing the customers of such devices and any penalties related to them. If by chance there are black boxes inside our cars, we could file lawsuits regarding infringement of rights, ownership of such a device, etc. I doubt car manufacturers would be willing to risk such a class action suit, but even if they did, the information is not incriminating in all cases, except in certain investigations (for example, I have driven over 100 mph on a race track before, so a black box saying I drove fast on that date would not prove any illegal actions), so I'm not too worried about it.

And my final conclusion is, I don't know.

 

I remember seeing something on 20/20 or some show like that, that starting in like 1999 or 2000 like every car would havea "black box" if there was an acciednt and they coudlnt figure out who was at fault, they could look at the black box and see who was really to blame. It has like your speeds, turns, how fast u made the turn, how hard u pressed the break and so forth.

So, does our car have one, not sure but wouldnt doubt or disagree if i heard we did.

 

I don't think we do. My adjuster didn't look for anything a few weeks back..

 

Highly unlikely. If we did, we'd probably have pocket loggers coming out the ying-yang.

EDIT: Though we must have an EDR of some sort, even if it's only internal, because we have learning ECU's. Values have to be recorded and stored somewhere.

BTW, Anandatech's a great site. Used to read it all the time.

 

Some GM cars (and prolly others as well) do have a black box. There was a case in the papers a while back where a guy was in an accident in a Camaro and he claimed he was not speeding, yadda, yadda.. The authorities got the info from the black box which recorded his speed at the time of the accident to be over100 mph Since the accident involved fatalities (I believe), the guy was screwed and they threw the book at him.
While I do not condone reckless driving and the killing of innocent (or guilty) parties, I do think it's kinda scary how much big brother is already in place......
Oh yeah, some car rental companies were indeed recording their customers driving speeds, etc. and they did narc on them to the authorities as well as imposing fines of their own.....

 

Well, all OBD-II equipped cars have a "Snapshot" feature that captures all the information for the snapshot window when an ECU Code is triggered.. in theory, its possible that the snapeshot data is saved when the airbags or fuel system inertia switch (if we have one) triggers a CEL (a catastrophic failure such as an MVA (Car accident) in theory could easily capture a snapshot.. The evo for example has G Sensors for the EBD system.. nothing saying that an "off the scale" reading couldn't trigger a snapshot.

 

and OBD-III car has the ability to log, record and save all data from your car, such as speeds, changes to emissions systems etc. Also proposed is an integrated cell transmitter to relay that data back to the manufacturer. Obviously this is highly debated on legality as well as need for big brother and such. So just something to look out for.

As a side note, the Ralliart Lancer's ECU is OBD-III, without the cell transmitter.

 

i just bought a palm and am confused whether to get that Auterra Dynoscan TSwift sells or the Pocketlogger that many of the DSM'ers use...

 

I've got the pocketlogger..... It does work, but you need to know how to do it and how to interpret the data....

 

Hey I was just gonna say that...I too heard this story and was under the impression that GM did this......

 

You can also get AutoTap instead of pocket logger. It will log data, identify codes, show you meters, clear CEL's, dyno your car, and a host of other things. My brother just bought it and we are starting to use it with our cars.. very impressie little bit of software!

 

On my Evo its under the center arm rest/cubby, mounted on driveline tunnel, and yes they can down load info on how fast and how many G's occured in a wreak.

 

They are always mounted in the center of the car.

 

I think only GM cars have this. It is part of the airbag deployment system and records the last 5 seconds of data prior to the airbag going off. It's been on GM cars for several years but isn't on other brands as far as I know.