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Black Box

Electronic Black Boxes and GPS Devices Installed in Vehicles

Most vehicles manufactured today have basic data recorders in them that tell the driver what is going on in the vehicle on a heads up display or on your typical dashboard. The extent to which this data is captured and preserved at the time of the impact or accident involved depends on the make, model and date of the vehicle. This report details some of the things that may be recorded and "could" possibly be preserved in an electronic recording device that is also known as a black box or "event data recorder". If you are involved in an accident and there is a question about the speed or relative positions of the vehicles, then you should find out if there are any of these types of devices on your vehicle or the other driver's vehicle that could prove your case. Unfortunately, most of the sophisticated and helpful black boxes are only installed on the expensive vehicles or on the semi trucks driving our goods to market. Nevertheless, you need to ask your attorney to take the following steps to preserve evidence where necessary and where it could prove to be helpful in making a winning case:

1. Your attorney may want to try to preserve this evidence by sending a letter to the company or person that possesses the car and warning them about destroying or

tampering with the evidence that is in these black boxes;

2. Your attorney may want to file a temporary restraining order with the court asking that this

evidence be preserved;

3. Your attorney may want to get an expert computer technician in the area of electronics to

"take a look at the box" and see if it has any useful information in it;

4. Your attorney may want to take actual possession of the black box or get it in the hands of

a reliable and trusted person so that the evidence is preserved.

Your attorney may want to do all of these things because the evidence that is now available through some of these black boxes includes:

1. GPS data tracking the location of the vehicle and times at each location;

2. The speed of the vehicle immediately before impact and after brakes are applied;

3. The braking pattern before the accident and after the accident;

4. The steering direction before and after the accident;

5. The accelerator patterns before the accident;

6. Trip times and locations;

7. RPM's and transmission data before and after the accident;

8. Airbag deployment and other electronic warning or safety features deployed at the time of

the accident.

When and if all vehicles are properly fitted with "Black Boxes" securing data, like the data recorders on an airliner, then we will see some real time useful data recovered in almost all accidents. When that recovery can be simply and economically accessed, the real accident investigation data will come from these small onboard computers instead of the investigating officer's conclusions as to what happened in the accident. In today's accident environment, most vehicles don't have enough data stored in their onboard systems to make it worthwhile to recover and most accidents aren't serious enough to have an attorney hire an expert and pay that expert $2,000 to $4,000.00 to gather the data from these computers and preserve the evidence. If you have a serious accident involving a later model vehicle or involving a semi truck and you have a significant physical injury, you need toget to an attorney and talk to them about preserving this possible evidence.


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