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Crashed car.
Someday your car will give you recommendations on where to eat, suggest more efficient routes between home and work, and even
monitor your health. But for now it's just keeping tabs on your driving habits,
recording your behavior in case it needs to be reconstructed after an accident.
Federal officials are poised to announce next month that all cars must contain a black box, similar to that installed on airplanes, to give authorities a glimpse of your activities in the event of a car wreck. The devices could help pin down what happened in the moments before a crash, helping authorities determine who is at fault for what, and eliminating uncertainty from human witnesses.
Many cars with airbags and other systems already use electronic data recorders, but there are no clear federal rules about how the data can or should be used, as Wired's
Autopia blog points out. Some states allow automobile black box data to be used in court, but others do not. Automakers have different, proprietary data storage systems, and there is no clearly defined method to retrieve it.
Comment: The reader should ask the same question as the following Flashback article does: What are they hiding? Flight 447 and Tunguska Type Events