Space Tycoon
06-27-2006, 04:40 PM
It's the secret spy in your car that you may not even know is there. (http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_1567.aspx)
It's estimated to be in millions of modern vehicles, including Ford and General Motors makes.
It's called an EDR and you may not have ever heard of it.
It stands for Event Data Recorder and it secretly keeps track of a lot of what's going on inside your automobile. It's part of the airbag deployment system and can be used by police and your insurance company to determine exactly what happened during an accident.
And some people call it an invasion of privacy.
The device is similar to a black box onboard a plane, but doesn't keep anywhere near as sophisticated a log of what happened before impact. But it can tell authorities how fast you were going, if you put your foot on the brake, which gear you were in and even if your seatbelt was buckled or not.
And while your owner's manual may say somewhere in its thousands of pages that you have an EDR watching your work on the road, most Canadians driving cars made after about 1994 have no idea that it's there at all.
The information is generally erased and refreshed every few seconds and the device only preserves what it 'sees' when there's a crash.
The catch - authorities or your insurance company aren't supposed to be able to use the data it keeps without your permission. But if they get a court order, they may be able to proceed whether you want them to or not.
"I almost look at it as the motor vehicle equivalent of DNA," observes Constable Brad Muir Sr. of the O.P.P. "That five seconds give us a little bit of a window or a snapshot. It will give us some of that underlying driver behaviour leading up to the moment of impact."
In an era where privacy is becoming an increasingly rare and controversial commodity, EDRs are a double-edged sword and there's continuing debate about who actually 'owns' the information they contain.
History shows why that can be important.
A landmark case in Montreal in 2001 helped prove that a driver who hit a man was actually going 157 kilometres an hour in a 50 km/h zone, and that he hit the gas just four seconds before impact.
In a separate case, a motorist was accused of running down a young child. But his EDR showed he was doing everything right.
"There are times, yes, it's going to be used to convict you, but equally we have a number of cases where it's been used to exonerate the other driver involved in the crash," argues Muir.
The issue of who has access to the data, who owns it and when it can be used is a matter for the courts and so far no one seems to be in agreement on anything.
Especially car owners, who don't seem to like the idea that something's monitoring their every move.
"Actually I think it's a little intrusive," comments Peter Mathieson. "Who's that information for? It's not for me particularly."
"You're not told that when you buy the car," adds Charles Cianchino. Told it's in the manual he replies the way many of us would. "Who reads that?" he wonders.
Carmakers are mostly mum on the subject, generally refusing to discuss the devices at all. And there's no standards for them, meaning one manufacturer's box doesn't act like another's, further confusing the issue.
The box is usually located under the driver or passenger's front seat, but you can't disable it without also destroying your air bag system.
In a U.S. study by the Transportation Research Board, here's just some of what's recorded on the EDRs of top selling Ford and G.M. models.
It's estimated to be in millions of modern vehicles, including Ford and General Motors makes.
It's called an EDR and you may not have ever heard of it.
It stands for Event Data Recorder and it secretly keeps track of a lot of what's going on inside your automobile. It's part of the airbag deployment system and can be used by police and your insurance company to determine exactly what happened during an accident.
And some people call it an invasion of privacy.
The device is similar to a black box onboard a plane, but doesn't keep anywhere near as sophisticated a log of what happened before impact. But it can tell authorities how fast you were going, if you put your foot on the brake, which gear you were in and even if your seatbelt was buckled or not.
And while your owner's manual may say somewhere in its thousands of pages that you have an EDR watching your work on the road, most Canadians driving cars made after about 1994 have no idea that it's there at all.
The information is generally erased and refreshed every few seconds and the device only preserves what it 'sees' when there's a crash.
The catch - authorities or your insurance company aren't supposed to be able to use the data it keeps without your permission. But if they get a court order, they may be able to proceed whether you want them to or not.
"I almost look at it as the motor vehicle equivalent of DNA," observes Constable Brad Muir Sr. of the O.P.P. "That five seconds give us a little bit of a window or a snapshot. It will give us some of that underlying driver behaviour leading up to the moment of impact."
In an era where privacy is becoming an increasingly rare and controversial commodity, EDRs are a double-edged sword and there's continuing debate about who actually 'owns' the information they contain.
History shows why that can be important.
A landmark case in Montreal in 2001 helped prove that a driver who hit a man was actually going 157 kilometres an hour in a 50 km/h zone, and that he hit the gas just four seconds before impact.
In a separate case, a motorist was accused of running down a young child. But his EDR showed he was doing everything right.
"There are times, yes, it's going to be used to convict you, but equally we have a number of cases where it's been used to exonerate the other driver involved in the crash," argues Muir.
The issue of who has access to the data, who owns it and when it can be used is a matter for the courts and so far no one seems to be in agreement on anything.
Especially car owners, who don't seem to like the idea that something's monitoring their every move.
"Actually I think it's a little intrusive," comments Peter Mathieson. "Who's that information for? It's not for me particularly."
"You're not told that when you buy the car," adds Charles Cianchino. Told it's in the manual he replies the way many of us would. "Who reads that?" he wonders.
Carmakers are mostly mum on the subject, generally refusing to discuss the devices at all. And there's no standards for them, meaning one manufacturer's box doesn't act like another's, further confusing the issue.
The box is usually located under the driver or passenger's front seat, but you can't disable it without also destroying your air bag system.
In a U.S. study by the Transportation Research Board, here's just some of what's recorded on the EDRs of top selling Ford and G.M. models.