Pandora's box is black!
There is a little man in a box under your car's seat. His name is Ed and he records your driving habits for the police. Welcome to the real-life Big Brother that could become our reality.
There are some questions whose answers define a person. Are you an Elvis fan or a Beatles fan? Do you prefer Holden or Ford? And would you like the police to know exactly where you are every day and how you drive?
For me there are three very black and white answers: "Elvis", "Ford", and "Not a damn chance!"
Surprisingly, many of our cars today have been fitted with devices that record some of our driving data. Peter Brock had one in his Cobra Daytona and it is now being used to determine what happened in his crash. Unfortunately most of us don't even know about them.
These devices are called Event Data Recorders (EDRs) and if you drive a recent model American or Australian car, chances are you have one lying under your seat.
These EDRs are very similar to black box flight recorders in that they log information about a car's activity before and during an accident.
They are connected to the car's computer system and check the speed that the car was going at the time of the crash, where the brake and throttle pedals were placed, and the force of the impact. This data can then be used to determine who in the crash, if anyone, was at fault.
The argument for their use is that they help car manufacturers develop better systems to deal with accidents and help authorities determine who is to blame for an accident. In the case of Peter Brock an EDR being used to separate the facts of the crash from the unsure eyewitness accounts.
If they are so useful why then are we not told about them? Perhaps they are not as perfect a solution as the installers would have us believe.
One detail that points directly to this claim is the fact that Holden Australia places EDRs in all of their new car models but Ford Australia does not. This seems to be a remarkable dissimilarity between the two fiercely competitive brands.
Holden Australia's argument is that, "Our primary concern is that people are protected in the event of an accident. We have spent a lot of money and time on research developing this safety system to prevent injury to the passengers. Event Data Recorders have been installed in the new Commodore and will continue to be."
But Ford disagrees. "There is nothing in our vehicles that records this type of data. In terms of importance we at Ford feel it is better to prevent accidents in the first place rather than find out why they happened."
So who is right and what are the problems associated with this technology?
One glaringly obvious discrepancy is how the EDR manages to record data before an event that it doesn't know is going to happen. How does something record information from before an event if it does not start recording until after the event?
"It is not running all the time." says Holden. "It records about two seconds of data in the period leading up to an event."
Apparently changes in driving conditions can trigger the EDR to start recording but it is most likely that it chronicles everything that the driver does during a period of driving.
No concrete explanation has been given for this psychic box.
Perhaps the biggest problem surrounding these black boxes though is the issue of invasion of privacy. People should be told who owns the data that is recorded, how it is retrieved, and how it can be used in legal proceedings. At the moment most of us have no idea.
According to Holden, the data belongs to the owner of the car. "No information can be retrieved without the owner's consent and it requires physical access so it is easy to police." But in the US there are actually no laws in place regarding the ownership of the data.
This privacy issue could also be another nail in the coffin of trust between teenagers and their suspicious parents.
With EDRs it would easily be possible for mistrusting parents to monitor their children's driving habits simply because they own the family car. It could be argued that EDRs are in the same category as polygraph machines and parent-administered recreational drug testing for fostering a general culture of mistrust.
Finally, and perhaps most alarmingly, there is some talk of attaching GPS tracking devices to the EDRs so that 24 hour monitoring of peoples' speeds and locations by authorities would be possible. It is possible to do now but much discussion will be required before it comes into effect. The idea draws parallels to George Orwell's concept of a Big Brother society.
But shouldn't we be focusing not on our own personal disadvantages and instead be concentrating on the benefits for others? Professor Brian Fildes, Chair of Road Safety at Monash University, believes it has to be a trade-off.
"It is a case of infringement of peoples' privacy versus the greater benefit of society. The greater good must prevail. If the data helps us develop better ways of managing accidents then we should embrace it. It really is a critical balance."
I suppose the entire issue depends on whether we are willing to sacrifice our freedom and anonymity for the overall benefit of a few.
Maybe things wouldn't be so bad if we all knew what was going on. Unfortunately the answers to those three big questions are something like: "Elvis", "Ford", and "what the hell are you talking about?"
