While at an IAM meeting yesterday, the guest speaker, a leading firefighter of 14 years experience said that the police are trying to persuade firemen not to cut the battery cables on crashed cars.
Apparantly, they can tell if the car was braking and what speed amoungst other bits of info.
Is this true?
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Assuming the computer has a memory ie one that records everything that has taken place.Which these days it is possible
it would need its own power source to hold the memory in order to find out what happened.the reason the battery terminals are cut is to prevent sparks occuring while a rescue is taking place
cannot blame them for that.I think it will be down to manufacturer to use a seperate power supply ie battery inserted
in the ecu to maintain any memory it has so it can be looked at at a later stage.I think it would be a good idea anyway
but as the ecu is opperated by the standard battery the ecu will lose its memory when power is taken away.it may be true of new cars.but as risk is there of explosion can see why firemen don`t risk it.
I would like to hear from anyone that knows more about this
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There was a legal case in the USA where data was extracted from an airbag control unit after an accident. Driver said he was doing something like 30mph and airbag said 50mph just before impact.
Don't have the link to hand, but if anyone really needs it...
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Thanks for that.I reckon all cars should have a black box fitted
would hopefully put off tailgaitors and the like?
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The technology is there, but i don't think it will be useable for a while yet, since the manufacturers may think that it would put people off buying them if they think that they could be incriminated by their own vehicle.
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Up to government to make it standard for new cars then..
Noone would buy a new car, everyone wld but second hand, and the congestion problems would not get any worse!!
Problem solved!!
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I fly for a living and although our 747's are fitted with the "black box" (which is fluorescent orange) and a cockpit voice recorder, these would only be played in the event of an accident. What my employer does is fit an optical disc recorder too and this records vital data plus a load of parameters that trigger as "exceedances", eg flap selected at too high or low a speed, gear selected down below certain height etc. Every single tape of every single flight is played back and scanned for any exceedance, however "minor" (the equivalent of doing 31 in a 30 limit for example).
I am told exactly how to fly the plane and big brother watches to make sure that not one of the several hundred parameters are exceeded during my employment else I get a phone call and an invite to the office for a meeting without coffee and biscuits!
It's a shame car drivers aren't more accountable for their actions especially when they affect other people be it by closing a major UK road for 24 hours or worse, causing death or injury of an innocent person. Within 10-15 years we will have black boxes in our cars without doubt.
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Absolutely agree with you Colin. The number one priority for my helicopter company is safety.
Everyone , not just pilots are accountable for their actions and as you say , anyone breaching guidelines has serious questions to answer and any breach which compromises safety will result in dismissal.
I was disgusted by the attitude of some people in the thread on using mobiles at petrol stations( or on planes).
These people did not seem to care about the consequences of their actions on others.
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I have thought for a long time that cars could, and should, be fitted with black boxes. With todays technology it should be achievable and affordable.
The fact that it is potentially incriminating is presumably the reason few people are shouting out for it, but it is not something sensible and law abiding motorists would need to fear.
I would have thought it would make it much easier to investiagate accidents or prove driving offences. It might even reduce accidents and poor driving, but that might be a little to optimistic.
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Point 1
In the event of a serious crash, and I am trapped in my petrol soaked car, then I want the firebrigade to disconnect the battery black box
Point 2
Most modern cars are halfway there. The computing power contained within holds a lot of very useful information about what the car was doing before the crash.
Point 3
It needs to be standardised. It also needs to be treated as forensic evidence. So procedures and tools need to be drawn up before it can be extracted and used or be of any legal value.
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Point 1 In the event of a serious crash, and I am trapped in my petrol soaked car, then I want the firebrigade to disconnect the battery black box
Wouldn't cutting the cables be more hazardous? Leaking petrol and a spark from a cut cable is the last thing you need. Reminds me of the old advert about smelling leaking gas in the home - under no circumstances turn on or off lights as the spark from the on/off switch could ignite it.
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AH thats why i said "disconnect"
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Damn, I drive a diesel (oh for an edit button)
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point DD mentioned is right I would have thought as a cut out for fuel pump was/is installed in a lot of cars why not a master cutout of battery no chance of spark then.apart from static which cannot be overcome?
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"black box" (which is fluorescent orange)
Most of the ones I worked on were not boxes either. Bright orange balls. (ok its a box when its taken out of its orange cocoon)
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Disconnecting the battery also minimises the risk of an air bag "going off" while the rescue is taking place. I am pretty sure that a firefighter in Germany was killed when the pop up roll bar on a Mercedes activated and hit him while he was tending to the casualty.
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The firefighter also mentioned airbags, they have to keep their wits about them especially with airbags and pretensioners in the pillars and roof nowadays.
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Not only is the technology there, it is very easy to do... even to design an aftermarket add on to do the job. Not only to record parameters prior to impact but also to record general driving trends, how many miles on what type of roads at what times.... then you could get true pay as you go insurance... pay more for rush hour traffic less for other times etc. It could also have a gsm/gprs module to upload the data periodically.
As for cutting the battery, there are plenty of NVRAM (non volatile RAM i.e. memory is retained with power removed) solutions out there, from the simple on board batt backup as per your PC time clock, to Flash memory and EEPROM. This is basic stuff, so the fire brigade should not be asked to compromise safety, if this data is so important it should be stored properly within the ECU.
Note to self though, if I ever smack the car while doing something I shouldn't providing I am able I will disconnect the battery ;o)
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I believe from reading an article a few weeks ago that information is constantly being recorded by the airbag management computer. It loops 5 seconds or so and then stops recording when the airbags are triggered. Usually, it knows speed, brakes, throttle etc.
TBH, it's more than possible to record onto Flash memory which won't lose its contents during power loss. I wouldn't worry about disconnecting the battery.
(Actually, just read Big Vern's post which says the same thing as mine - sorry! Should read more carefully in future.)
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As an aside,I think it is called a Black Box because it was invented by a man called Black.
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