The European Union continues its mission of increasing road safety and in order to do so it has made a series of systems in cars launched from July 2022 onwards mandatory. One of these is the data recording system, the “black box of cars” and is one of the most discussions has motivated.
Inspired by the system long used on planes, it has been the target of dissenting voices alleging the existence of a potential breach of data protection law.
But from next year this system will be mandatory. To dispel the doubts that still exist about the “black box” that will be found in cars, in this article we explain what it consists of and how it works.
The registered data
First of all, it is important to dispel the myth that this system will have the ability to record the conversations that take place inside the car. If it is true that this happens in planes, the “black box” used by cars will, in certain aspects, resemble a little more the tachograph used in heavy vehicles (a sort of 21st century tachograph).The data logging system will have the ability to record, above all, what we know as telemetry data.
- Throttle pressure or engine revs;
- Turn angle and angular velocity in degrees;
- The speed in the last 5 seconds;
- The use of brakes;
- The duration of Delta V (positive or negative acceleration);
- Activation of airbags and belt pretensioners;
- The use of seat belts and the dimensions of the occupants;
- The variation in speed to which the vehicle was subjected after impact;
- Longitudinal acceleration in meters per second squared.
The main objective of this system is to allow the “reconstruction” of road accidents, in order to facilitate the determination of responsibilities.
End impunity
While, currently, to understand whether a driver was speeding before an accident, it is necessary to resort to a series of measurements and surveys, in the future it will be enough to access the "black box" and the car itself will provide this information .
Even more useful will be the possibility of knowing whether passengers were wearing their seat belts, something that is currently not easy to ascertain. In addition to all this, there are those who argue that this data can also help car brands to improve safety systems.
The Volvo Car Accident Research Team analyzes data from some accidents in which the Scandinavian brand's models were involved, to improve the safety of future models. With this system, the work of Swedish technicians will be much simpler than it is today, as you can recall in this article.
As for privacy concerns, the European Union only wants these data to be consulted in the event of an accident. Furthermore, there is nothing to indicate that these devices will be able to transmit the registered data, serving instead to store them for when the consultation is necessary.