big brother is at it again...

[jims69camaro]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/biztech....ap/index.html

i guess it would be good for rates if those of us with sports cars could prove to them that we are not all lead-foots. or would that be lead-feets? leed-feats? lood-feats? i know both of my feet are heavy, but would that go for the rest of you?

i can take it easy, and obviously would if i had one of those gadgets attached to my car (ha, it probably plugs into the computer, but i don't have one - i just thought of that...)

i wonder if it's a boon for the insurance industry or just another way for them to try and charge us more?

[Tru2Chevy]

Yea, I just read through the article....sounds like an OBD II only thing. Guess we're out of luck, huh?

- Justin

[j0n]

uhm yea if they threw that thing in my car i'd be dropped in about 3 hours

[ar0ck]

Actually I think its in alot of cars already. I remember watching a thing on ABC about it. A dude in Florida in a 00 Trans Am, was doing 110 on a florida road, and tagged two girls in a car reversing into the street. Killing all three instantly. And the computer from the T/A recorded when he was at Full Throttle to the almost instant stop.

[V]

my 95 caddy STS had a feature you could select on the digital lower part of the gauge cluster that would display "average mph", you can reset it at will though, I'd reset it then hit the highway, that always gave interesting info... "AVERAGE MPH = 118 mph" . lol and in addition to that...if i had low fuel, a warning would come on saying "check fuel Gage"(i always thought it was gauge, lol) and if my dash lights were off and i had low fuel, it would say "fuel level very very low"...leave it to GM and cadillac.

[Tru2Chevy]

Originally Posted by TransAm4Life

Actually I think its in alot of cars already. I remember watching a thing on ABC about it. A dude in Florida in a 00 Trans Am, was doing 110 on a florida road, and tagged two girls in a car reversing into the street. Killing all three instantly. And the computer from the T/A recorded when he was at Full Throttle to the almost instant stop.

Yea, I have seen a few articles about the "black boxes" too. Lots of controversy over who has the right to have access to that information.

- Justin

[ar0ck]

P.S why do you think the DMV wants to tap into your computer soon? So they can see your top speeds and ticket you accordingly.

[SpeakersGoBoom]

Originally, i believe they were put into cars so that auto dealers could see what kinda punishment the car had been through when people traded them in for something new. As a way to say, well, you only did 30k, but u beat the **** out of this car, so were only going to give u $X instead of $Y.

[BigAls87Z28]

I had a customer that told me that he got nailed by EZ Pass for going too fast.
Also a reason I wont ever get On Star in a car that I drive for "sport".

[Fasterthanyou]

Actually you don't "need" a black box to record the speeds and what not. All of that is stored in the pcm. The pcm uses lag filtered inputs for various mods, highway mode (open loop lean) needs to determine how long you've been above the threshold speed (like 50mph per say). So that's all in the memory with counters, etc. That's just for an old OBDI late 80's computer!!! Imagine the stuff stored in the newer ecms that have like 100x the memory and processing power.
If I wanted too I bet I could find exactly how fast any of you guys were driving the last couple minutes before a wreak. It would just take some hacking skills. I can only do it with the OBDI and the first few years of OBDII, the later years like 97 and newer I'm not familiar with. It's only a matter of time somebody hacks into one.

[NJSPEEDER]

Originally Posted by BigAls87Z28

I had a customer that told me that he got nailed by EZ Pass for going too fast. .

EZ Pass lanes have radar guns and cameras, no black box or anyting else is involved.

as fara as the black box thing goes i have only heard about anyone trying to use it against an owner once. it was a vette owner who had jsut left the drag strip and running and was hit by a car pulling out of a side street.
apparently some of the info contained is an average speed over X amount of driving time. his insurance adn teh cops both apparently tried to hold it against him and he won in both cases.

later
tim

[Oddball]

To clarify some points. The "black box" is a rolling set of data for the last few seconds. It is only used after crashes to help determine what happened. If you get pulled over for speeding your data will be overwritten before you get ot the side of the road.

If the newer systems store it for a longer period there will probably be big legal issues as well as an aftermarket to clear or reprogram it before you try to trade.