Posted on 08/26/2002 5:00:37 PM PDT by USA21
Big Brother hiding inside cars’ airbags
The 1999 Pontiac Trans Am had to be flying, said officer Robert Cairo, a traffic crash investigator with the Trotwood Police Department.
The car skidded sideways off Union Road on Feb. 11, went airborne for 110 feet, landed in a field and bounced "like a stone across a lake" before it struck a utility pole, according to police. The impact ejected the driver, who broke his neck, and a passenger, who broke his spine.
"I knew high speed was a factor," he said, "but there weren't a lot of road marks, because by the first one, he was already going sideways on the road."
Cairo said he conservatively estimated the speed at less than 80 mph, "the minimal speed I could work out."
An electronic device on board the Pontiac, however, told police exactly how fast the car had been going — 124 mph in a 40 mph zone. And it enabled Trotwood to join the growing number of police departments and insurance companies across the country experimenting with data stored on computers, originally designed and installed on cars and trucks to control air bags, to determine what happened in the seconds leading up to accidents.
Called a Sensing Diagnostic Module, the electronic "brains" behind an airbag were developed by General Motors and are now manufactured by its spin-off company Delphi at an electronics plant in Kokomo, Ind. GM's air bags are made in Vandalia at Delphi's Interior & Lighting Systems plant and are later hooked up to the black boxes on assembly lines for GM and other auto companies.
Since 2000, it's become possible with the right computer decoding software to retrieve and read information stored in the SDM's electronic memory. Though GM designed the sensing modules to capture information about accidents that could be studied for ways to make cars safer, police and insurance investigators discovered that the data can also be used to help make a case about who caused the accident.
There are more than 500 Crash Data Retrieval Systems in use across the country, including 12 in Ohio, said James Kerr, program manager for Vetronics Corp., maker of the computer decoder. Among the Ohio buyers are the Dayton Police Special Investigations Division, Butler County Sheriff's Department and the State Farm Insurance Co., Kerr said.
The SDM, sometimes referred to as the automobile version of the "black box" found on commercial airliners, is also called an accelerometer or Event Data Recorder. General Motors' module is the most advanced, said Phil Haseltine, president of the Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety.
The sensor in GM cars is installed either under the radio in the dashboard or on the floor under the passenger seat. Data stored in the SDM includes the engine revolution speed, whether the brakes or throttle were used, the speed of the vehicle andwhether seat belts were worn.
In a collision, sensors close an electrical circuit and send a signal to the airbag, which inflates in 1/20th of a second.
Meanwhile, readings taken during the last five seconds before the airbags deploy become the SDM's last testament.
Opponents of the data retrieval include the national American Civil Liberties Union, which objects to the SDMs being installed without a consumer's knowledge.
Members of Ohio's chapter of the ACLU in Cleveland said "it isn't a concern" at this point, and statistics showing the number of times data from the black boxes has been used in court against drivers in Ohio or in other states is not available. In one early challenge to the use of SDMs, a lawsuit filed in 2001 in New Jersey against General Motors complained about the lack of disclosure of the SDM to car buyers. A judge dismissed the case.
The air bag monitoring modules have evolved since 1997 when the National Transportation Safety Board recommended vehicle manufacturers and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration team up to gather information on vehicle accidents using on-board collision sensing and recording devices. Officials at GM, which first offered air bags in 1974 on its Oldsmobile Tornado, say the information is used only for safety research, and poses no threat to consumers' privacy.
SDM data has been used in court — always with a court-ordered search warrant — to back up the findings from traditional police investigations.
In the Miami Valley, police officers said they acquire a search warrant signed by a judge before retrieving the SDM from wrecked vehicles.
Data obtained from a SDM after the February crash in Trotwood investigated by Cairo is expected to be entered as evidence in Dayton Municipal Court. The driver is charged with two counts of aggravated vehicular assault. Alcohol was a contributing factor in addition to high speed, police said. The car's black box also told police that the men were not wearing seatbelts, according to Cairo.
Cairo said he was unaware of the data device until a prosecutor suggested he check to see if the wrecked Trans Am had one. A Dayton police investigator trained to used the decoding computer helped Cairo download the contents of the SDM.
This was Cairo's first retrieval of SDM data, but Montgomery County Sheriff Deputy Ron Thayer has tried to use the black boxes in at least six cases — including four times in the past six months. He's been an accident reconstruction investigator for 12 years and has mixed feelings about the value of the SDMs.
In one instance, a module manufactured in 1999 was in a 2000 automobile and no data was available, he said, because it was a misfit. In another case, the SDM was smashed in the crash.
In addition, he said, the decoder can only be used in crashes involving certain makes of newer cars "and I'm still seeing a lot of '86 Fords," Thayer said. "We're going to be doing it the old-fashioned way for a while, I think. They can't take the human being out of the job. We're important."
Cairo and Thayer acknowledge that the use of the black boxes by accident investigators raises questions about privacy.
The issue isn't going to go away.
"Smart airbags" or "advanced airbags" are in development that that will include sensors detecting how big the occupants are, how far away from the airbag they're sitting and other factors, Haseltine said. Manufacturers are looking for ways to gather more information about crashes, but believe the "ownership" of data belongs to the consumer, said Haseltine, whose coalition represents auto companies.
"I think they're pretty much unanimous on that, other than with a court order," Haseltine said. "I'm sure police departments would love to download the data in any fender-bender, but I think that's wrong."
In April, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association began working to create the first standard for motor vehicle event data records. The standard would define what data should be captured, including time, date, location, velocity, number of occupants and seat belt usage. Now, GM's black boxes gather information that's different from the way Ford, Chrysler and other companies' devices work.
Thayer said that people also are just starting to think about how data from SDMs can be and should be used to investigate auto accidents. There are questions about how the information is gathered, what it means and whether it's reliable enough for evidence about who's guilty or innocent.
Jason Alexander, Vetronics Corp. marketing communications manager, backs the recordings and their retrieval.
"You know, everybody had the scare put on them recently, thinking it's another 'big brother' out there, but what it is is a fair witness. It shows what physically happened in that car just before the accident."
Thayer said credibility of the SDM data remains to be seen.
"We have to go to the courts and show them it's valid," he said. "It's like when radar first came out. We had to go in there and validate (radar), that it does what it says it does. It will take a while to validate this, too."
Contact Cathy Mong at 225-2353 or by e-mail at cathy_mong@coxohio.com
How can the police lawfully download information from my cars computer without first receiving my consent or serving me with a signed court order.
I'm no lawyer but my guess is that crashing a car and causing property damage and/or death and/or injuries would pass the test for probable cause.
Detroit, you just outsmarted yourself. You just gave lots of Americans one more reason to avoid buying a new car this year!
Do you know what street spy cameras look like - and what their weak point is?
The designers of your mid-50s MG probably never heard the word "module" in their entire lives.
<)B^)
Look where this is leading to in the future.
Mr. Hotshot Highway Patrolman-type-trooper pulls up to your rear bumper or blind spot as you're going down the freeway. He pulls out his tv remote-type gizmo and aims it at your SAE, IEEE standard, federally-mandated sensor-transmitter located in the standard location on the rear of your car. He presses the button and instantly receives all the data on seat belts, locations, times, speeds along certain roads, stop signs and red lights run etc.
Anything out of kilter is instantly computer-analysed (computers don't lie, you know) and if a ticketable offense shows up, you are screwed.
If your sensor-transmitter is disabled, you're arrested, car towed, and you ride back to the big house in cuffs.
Remember, I warned you about it first.
Simple, they can condition your privledge to drive on public roads with your prior consent to this 'search'.
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