Shift Magazine - June 3, 2019 - 22

last mile
WHO OWNS

CRASH DATA?

GOOD QUESTION

Black box info belongs to the consumer, but it
doesn't always give the full picture

BY PETE BIGELOW

utomobiles create and capture vast troves of data.
Some of it is kept on what are known as black boxes
and on other microcomputers in vehicles.
It's not always understood who owns this data as
well as other information flowing from vehicles. Nor is it clear
how the data is collected, stored and shared with third parties.
At a time when the number of connected cars on the road is
mushrooming, the confusion can be unsettling.
"Our big fear is that automakers get you to give away all your
data at the closing in the dealership," said Jeff Plungis, lead
automotive investigative reporter at Consumer Reports. "It's
one document in a giant stack that you are signing under pressure. ... Our contention is that because this is a sort of new
thing for motorists to deal with, they're not understanding all the
implications of what they're giving up."
A 2015 law tried to provide clarity. The Driver Privacy Act
affirmed that vehicle owners and lessees own data logged on
black boxes, officially called event data recorders, or EDRs,
which record information such as vehicle speed, crash forces
and braking events.
But the law is narrow in scope. It doesn't apply to other data
repositories in vehicles.
That's troublesome for two reasons, said Sean Kane, safety
researcher at Safety Research & Strategies Inc. One is that event
data recorders are not the telltale devices that offer comprehensive or conclusive portraits of crashes that people believe, he said.
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Second, information that can present a fuller picture of crashes or
vehicle condition is often not stored on the recorder and therefore
is more difficult for owners or their representatives to obtain.
"The concerning part is what the EDR data doesn't give you,"
Kane said. "It never gives you the full picture, and it's easily misunderstood. So you need the other data to get an idea of what
really happened - the level of detail that's stored on some of
these other modules can be much more granular, and in some
cases, it can tell a very different story than the EDR."
Crash data is one small subsection of available vehicular data.
Automakers can record, share and store information about diagnostics, location, a driver's entertainment preferences and more.
But safety-related data might be particularly valuable for both
automakers and insurance companies, and tussles over ownership and access have already occurred. In 2018, the National
Transportation Safety Board revoked Tesla's status as a party to
a crash investigation because it said the company had released
selective data that set early narratives about a fatal crash involving its Autopilot driver-assist system.
In 2014, 20 automakers agreed on privacy principles put
forth by their chief lobbying organization, the Alliance of
Automobile Manufacturers, that committed to providing consumers "clear, meaningful and prominent" notices when they
collected, used or shared location information, biometrics and
driver-behavior information.
Bottom line: Consumers should be wary. n

Shift Magazine - June 3, 2019

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