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Such fears have prompted 10 states, beginning with California in 2004, to pass laws obliging automakers to tell buyers if their vehicles have recorders; the laws also restrict the downloading of data without car owners' consent. Eleven other states are considering similar legislation.
Meanwhile, in Congress, Representatives Mary Bono, a Republican from California, and Massachusetts Democrat Michael Capuano are sponsoring a House bill that would allow people to turn off their recorders--a provision that would require a complex redesign of air-bag systems. If EDRs are eventually installed in cars that can retain more than several seconds of data, says Bono, "information could be collected about our driving habits, and we might not even know it is happening."
Actually, such electronic snooping is already occurring in a limited way. Some transport companies equip their trucks with black boxes that can continuously record the hours and driving patterns of employees. Similar monitors are used by fleet owners for company cars. And parents can purchase devices for their teenagers' cars that capture up to 300 hours of data, downloadable onto a personal computer. Even more intrusively, the software can trigger alarms when the teenager exceeds a certain speed. But automakers would find it too expensive and unpopular to routinely install long-term recorders, insists W.R. Haight, an EDR expert and the director of San Diego's Collision Safety Institute: "Only paranoid alarmist pinheads suggest this technology could be expanded to spy on our everyday driving."
Nonetheless, privacy advocates are concerned that black boxes combined with global positioning systems, which will soon be common in automobiles, could lead to real-time surveillance, with police issuing speeding tickets for infractions never witnessed in person and insurance companies raising rates based on electronically supervised driving patterns. In what some see as a slippery slope, Ohio-based Progressive Insurance has offered 3.6 million customers the possibility of a $100 annual rebate if they install black boxes that gather six months of data and share that information. The theory: drivers proven safe should pay lower premiums.
But what if companies eventually demand access to EDR data before insuring your car? Last year North Dakota and Arkansas passed laws barring the use of black boxes to set rates or settle claims. What's important is to have a choice of whether to be monitored, says Robert Talley of the National Motorists Association. "Sometimes you just like the idea of being free in a free country."
But while politicians debate exactly how to deploy the devices, police and prosecutors are embracing them as a revolutionary tool. And in at least 19 states, judges have admitted the data as evidence in criminal trials. In Arizona, a Roman Catholic bishop was convicted in a hit-and-run accident after his car's black box showed that he had braked before impact, indicating that he had seen the pedestrian. A Massachusetts woman was sentenced to two years in prison after her SUV skidded on ice and hit a tree, killing her passenger. The car's recorder proved she was traveling 58 m.p.h. in a 40 m.p.h. zone. In Georgia, after a train hit a car, the lone auto survivor sued the railroad for $12 million. But a jury threw out the case when the car's EDR revealed it had halted on the tracks before the crash.