There was an accident in my city yesterday where a guy was test driving a new Dodge Challenger and crashed it on the test drive and killed 2 people in the car they hit.

Supposedly, the dealer told him to speed, trying out the cars power. Police say the "data recorder" recovered from the car reported a speed of 101MPH 1 second before impact.

This got me wondering, do our cars have this "data recorder?" Mines an 09, I wonder if maybe only the newer ones have it?

 

I heard about this a while go and was told that all new cars are starting to have this. But don't quote me on that

 

maybe but your spedo will show your speed at the time of impact...most of the time, or they can tell by special calculations with all the skid marks and stuff.

 

I think it does. It will take a "snap shot" when you hit the brakes hard and other things. I am pretty sure since 1999 they have been putting them in cars. I forget all of it but there are articles about it on the web. It was tell you things like speed, throttle position, brake pedal position.

 

our cars do...yes

just like dealers can see up to somewhere around the last 15 seconds of your cars use...

so if you blow the motor they can see rpm/gear/speed/etc.

 

Well out of curiosity, is it built into the ecu or is it a separate unit?

 

it is probably a separate unit since it toyota would want it to be unaffected by something like disconnecting the battery.

as i recall in the owner's manual, it is really there so that toyota can collect data in the event of a crash so they can see the speed, rpm, gear, and throttle/brake input. so they can try and get an idea of what the driver was doing.

 

interesting...didnt know these things existed.

 

Hmm, Big Brother?!

 

yes our cars do have this the sales person actually warned me about it

 

I did a 40 page paper on this when i was in college. Its called an event data recorder and its found on almost every new car since 2000. Its part of the airbag computer system which means you cant really remove it without doing some major modifications to the wiring. it is always recording on a loop so the oldest data is overwritten with the newest and when an 'event' happens, such as an air bag deployment, it freezes the old data and continues to record for a few more seconds. It records quite a bit on info and i have found out that the information can be used against the driver in court. in some states, it is the law that the dealership discloses the fact that there is a recorder in the vehicle at time of purchase but i doubt that many abide by it.

If you got any questions about it, let me know. I spent about 1.5 years working on this topic.

state statutes
http://www.harristechnical.com/cdr7.htm

More info can be found here
http://www.harristechnical.com/cdr.htm