The average vehicle owner may be totally unaware of the rapid developments in information recording that is being incorporated into their newer vehicles. While many large institutions such as government, police, insurers and researchers are taking advantage of this new technology the average vehicle owner’s knowledge and rights are being buried in their own distraction and apathy.
Collision recording capabilities began in 1999 when General Motors began installing event data recorders (EDRs) in some of their vehicles. Many other manufacturers soon followed. By 2006 the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) created rules governing what type of data was required of the manufacturers if they chose to install EDRs. These rules became effective in 2012. NHTSA estimated that by 2006 64 percent of new light vehicles were already equipped with EDRs and by 2022 they estimated that 99.5 percent of 2021 model vehicles were so equipped. But other developments have occurred up to the present time such that matters have become complicated.
Manufacturers began installing technology that could control some vehicle functions without driver intervention. These systems, more widely described as Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), were not in the general stream of vehicle development when NHTSA wrote their rules. A number of manufacturers make the functioning of ADAS available in the downloads of collision data but not all. And since NHTSA does not specify what manufacturers can or cannot record much of the recording about crash events is proprietary to the manufacturers and no one else can see it. All of this is ok so long as there are no defects in the ADAS, but that is obviously not guaranteed. If a malfunction exists that is not reported in standard EDR downloads it may be difficult to uproot.
Many modern light vehicles also record photos and video from their exterior cameras. Most of these are difficult to extract. One exception may be the video recordings on newer Teslas. Teslas provide the ability to record a full 10 minutes of video to a local USB storage stick if an event occurs that resembles a collision. A view of this ability is visible in the Tesla Dashcam which is reproduced below.
Overall vehicle owners would have difficulty gaining access to the standard EDR data let alone gaining access to any of the hidden data in ADAS or camera data. A download needs specialized equipment and an analyst who is capable of performing the download. And this costs money. More money than the average owner can afford even if they recognized the importance of collecting the data.
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