Tag: recorders

Report: Google self-driving cars should have data recorders, says US official

Filed under: Government/Legal, Safety, Technology

Driverless Cars from Google

Fears over domestic spying operations and privacy concerns have been splattered across the headlines with alarming frequency, and now it appears that even the auto industry isn’t immune. According to a report from The Huffington Post, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, Deborah Hersman, has argued that black boxes should be mandatory in self-driving cars, like those that Google and Nissan have been working on.

“Data capture is going to help you understand if there is a vehicle problem, or if it’s a human factors issue,” Hersman told the Post. The fear behind black boxing cars, though, has always been one of individual privacy being compromised. That isn’t likely to change regardless of whether a car is controlled by man or machine, as evidenced by an Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers survey, which claimed that nearly three-quarters of participants were worried about driverless cars recording personal information. Adding to that, 70 percent of respondents feared their info being accessed by the government, according to the HuffPo report.

Those arguments aren’t enough for Hersman, though. “When you have a driverless car, you have to demonstrate on the front end that you have the data that shows it’s safe. But we would also say, you need to make sure you have good data recording capabilities, so when there is an event, you can understand what happened.”

Google self-driving cars should have data recorders, says US official originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 13:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Report: Toyota’s event data recorders have a history of problems

Filed under: Safety, Technology, Toyota

Toyota shadow logo with parked Camry

According to a report in The Washington Post, the event data recorders the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration used to investigate claims of unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles have a history of problems. In one incident, a Toyota pickup that struck a tree in a single car accident was recorded as going 177 mph – far faster than any T100 we’ve ever seen. A separate reading from the same device put the truck’s speed at a more feasible 75 mph. The article even says that Toyota itself has warned about the reliability of data collected from the so-called black boxes by stressing that the recorders were not intended to be used as crash-reconstruction devices. In the recent past, Toyota has already been accused of being ‘secretive’ about providing access to their black box data.

The EDRs in question apparently also have a history of being inaccurate about more than just speed. In another case, the device onboard recorded that both passengers had their seat belts unbuckled at the time of impact when in reality, one individual was safely buckled in.

Unfortunately, government researchers have little other recourse when it comes to substantiating or refuting claims of runaway Toyota products. NHTSA just recently released a preliminary report saying that over half of the instances in which the vehicles seemed out of control were actually attributable to the driver applying the wrong pedal at the wrong time. The Washington Post has indicated that the unreliability of the EDRs leaves some question as to the validity of those findings. They may have a point. Thanks for the tip, FYI!

[Source: The Washington Post | Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty]

Report: Toyota’s event data recorders have a history of problems originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 20 Aug 2010 11:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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