Vehicle Tracking

Sounds paranoid but your car is recording your driving habits and performance and in most states you don't own that information. Apparently this "black box" started out as the onboard computers in your car that deploys the airbag. To properly judge when and how to deploy the airbag, the car's computer needed to make assessments that required more & more sensors. This means your car is programmed to collect and analyze data on: force of impact, seat belt use, steering input, engine speed, vehicle speed, throttle position, braking status and finally air bag deployment. All well and good if it is being used to save your life, but what if this information is being used to sue you or not pay an insurance claim?

The same type of Event Data Recorder (EDR), or "black box," is used in air crashes to reconstruct the crash and find the causative factors, or in a driver's case, to assign blame. When you are involved in an accident, this information can be used in court and has been used to convict drivers found to be negligent, based on the data taken from their own cars!

What you don't know can hurt you

The problem is two-fold, you most likely did not know your car was collecting this data and you did not know it could be used against you in a court of law. With this revelation, came concern for individual privacy and States are working on laws that allow the car's owner to control the data rather than the insurance companies. California led the way and so far 15 states have legislation trying to protect a driver's privacy. In those states, the driver has to give permission for the data to be collected from the car, OR there has to be a court order to obtain it.

Insurance companies are hedging their bets by offering policies that circumvent these laws, offering you a discounted rate if you allow them to collect data from your car's Event Data Recorder to learn about your driving habits and distances traveled.

Car rental companies are using them to find out if you took the car out of the "rental area" though some states have laws preventing them from using this data to charge you penalties.

What are our choices?

As more high-tech equipment becomes ensconced in our everyday lives, we need to be vigilant in guarding our eroding rights and privacy. These onboard computers are now so integrated into our cars, they can not run without them and disabling the recording features disables the airbag which is illegal. Legislation to give ownership to the car's owner and to determine how this information may be used will preempt court cases establishing the law. They may also establish new requirements that the data not be collected, only used. Event Data Recorders may have slipped into our cars without our knowledge but they store the information, not just utilize and dump it. This storing of data without our knowledge and the ambiguity regarding who owns the information is the privacy concern. It allows it to be collected and used in ways we can not anticipate, especially if we do not even know it's there.