Crash Data Recorder (Black Box)

[Explorerinil]

USAA safe driver program is an app you download to your cellphone and it uses the sensors in the phone, nothing is hooked to the vehicle And it can tell if you are driving or a passenger

You sir are correct. I have a different insurance company and I have a similar app on my phone. When I’m at work I don’t take my personal phone with, as it would severely harm my rate.

 

[BlueyDuty]

Can these trucks be taken over and controlled remotely?

No. Other vehicles, especially Tesla, can be. OnStar equipped vehicles and BMW among others can be remotely tracked and deactivated, but that has nothing to do with the ACM.

 

[Modman]

No. Other vehicles, especially Tesla, can be. OnStar equipped vehicles and BMW among others can be remotely tracked and deactivated, but that has nothing to do with the ACM.

Thanks @BlueyDuty ... Great info!

 

[Gus]

No. Other vehicles, especially Tesla, can be. OnStar equipped vehicles and BMW among others can be remotely tracked and deactivated, but that has nothing to do with the ACM.

How?

Link to information on this

 

[Explorerinil]

How?

Link to information on this

I’ve had a few vehicles stolen that are equipped with on star. The owner, on star and police will get on a three way call. On star will require owner consent and a police report number and the vehicle entered into leads as stolen. Once all these things are done, on star will track it and give the location on the stolen vehicle. I had one awhile back, on star gave the location, speed and direction. I was able to convey the jurisdiction it was in, once they got near it on star limited the speed of the vehicle and it was safely stopped and the scum that stole it were arrested. It actually works good for owners and law enforcement working together to get their property back. I can honestly say that on star works good, I’ve seen it recover allot of stolen vehicles, I’ve also seen it call in a crash that the driver was unconscious and ran off the road, we were able to get help there fast.

 

[edr curious]

No. Other vehicles, especially Tesla, can be. OnStar equipped vehicles and BMW among others can be remotely tracked and deactivated, but that has nothing to do with the ACM.

 

[edr curious]

@BlueyDuty great post. I did collision reconstruction for a number of years when I was on the job. Our DA embraced the technology; but had VERY strict rules over its use.

We usually only used it cases with felony charges and it could only be pulled with a search warrant. Before we could “read” the ACM we had to do the reconstruction using manual reconstruction math and get the report signed off. Then we could use the CDR data to support our work. The time stamps proved we did the work first and didn’t just do our reconstruction to support the computer data.

This way we could testify to the data and support where it came from. When I was doing it it seemed there were a lot of “expert” reconstructionists that the defense could hire and they came after the reconstructionist’s ability first.

A good reconstruction went a long way towards a conviction in those gruesome crashes where some people didn’t have the opportunity to tell their side of the story.

 

[edr curious]

Hmm……lots and lots of latitudinal Delta-V lol

 

[edr curious]

my car was involved in an accident. temperature was 13 degrees outside and there was new light precipitation within the hour . the account of both front seat passengers was that they going around 40 mph give or take. the account goes that they took a turn after a small stone bridge that had warmed of ice. once out of the turn the driver had no control over steering- turned the wheel and no movement. they ended up sliding along a guardrail and most likely spinning out hitting both the front and back of car into the guardrail in the crumble zones areas. the cage of the car was intact. . no rollover indicated necessarily. car ended up in all 4 tires across the road on wide shoulder. 3 different airbag deployments. here’s my question. the edr reads it as 85, 86, 87, 88 and the rest of the speeds after the first airbag deployment get lower until about 35 mph.
thank you for any input you may be able yo give.

 

[stubby]

How?

Link to information on this

Google for the jeep that was overtaken by ethical hackers doing an experiment while one was driving down the interstate. The canbus can also be used to unlock and if not secured properly start your vehicle.

Hackers Remotely Kill a Jeep on the Highway—With Me in It

I was driving 70 mph on the edge of downtown St. Louis when the exploit began to take hold.

www.wired.com

 

[mattdm]

Crash Data collection is nothing new. Manufacturers have been doing it for over a decade in some makes.

Just because the Data does exist, does not mean it is readily available or used frequently. The data is encrypted within the module and in many cases requires the manufacturers participation to recover the data in any meaningful way. Unless you are in a high profile fatal incident odds are high that data will never be recovered. Its simply not needed most of the time to find cause or fault.

 

[HeavyAssault]

With a recent accident with a BMW we learned quite a bit about what they "collect". They could see/view the vehicle and what was happening right up to the moment of impact. This data was NOT accessible by the vehicle owner for any reason, nor would BMW share the data. Everything they collect is used towards making the product better. At one point the representative noted she could see the vehicle was at the salvage yard or parking lot where it was being stored.

So all those cameras and sensors are used for more than what you expect.

 

[4wheels and a hitch]

Big Brother is closer than you think.

 

[edr curious]

my car was involved in an accident. temperature was 13 degrees outside and there was new light precipitation within the hour . the account of both front seat passengers was that they going around 40 mph give or take. the account goes that they took a turn after a small stone bridge that had warmed of ice. once out of the turn the driver had no control over steering- turned the wheel and no movement. they ended up sliding along a guardrail and most likely spinning out hitting both the front and back of car into the guardrail in the crumble zones areas. the cage of the car was intact. . no rollover indicated necessarily. car ended up in all 4 tires across the road on wide shoulder. 3 different airbag deployments. here’s my question. the edr reads it as 85, 86, 87, 88 and the rest of the speeds after the first airbag deployment get lower until about 35 mph.
thank you for any input you may be able yo give.

could the edr be wrong?

 

[edr curious]

TL;DR: there’s a box in your car that can tell us lots of information.

If you’ve ever gotten in a bad enough wreck in your truck (or almost any other modern passenger vehicle since the late 90’s), there’s a good chance it has deployed one or more airbags. The module that controls those airbags is, in our trucks, a little module called the ACM, or Airbag Control Module. Located under the center instrument stack, the ACM works in conjunction with the PCM to detect exactly what is going on during a very short period of time….ten thousandths of one second or shorter. If the data being given to the ACM, with its own accelerometer, wakes up the algorithm inside the ACM and says “something very bad is happening!” then pop goes the airbag.

Inside the ACM (speaking specifically of our trucks, it can be elsewhere in other vehicles) is what is called an Event Data Recorder, or EDR. At the moment of algorithm wake up, the EDR records a lot of information in the form of hexadecimal data (code). This data can then be read by manufacturers, law enforcement, insurance companies, private collision investigators and their lawyer clients, or basically anyone with the equipment, access, and knowledge to image (download) the EDR.

The vast majority of vehicles run the Bosh CDR software and hardware. Some, like Tesla, KIA and Hyundai have their own hardware and software. Ford trucks have always used Bosch since EDR began being recorded. The basic Bosch CANPlus CDR tool costs about $2k, with a $1200 software license. Cables are not cheap, and there’s a never ending supply of cables and other tools to expand imaging capabilities. My setup at work has just about every imaginable piece of equipment- somewhere in the neighborhood of $50k.

Airbags do not have to deploy in order for the algorithm to wake up and begin recording. Some ACM’s like Toyotas, will record with events as mild as a 2.5g change in velocity. These non-deployment events can be overwritten by subsequent events. Deployment events, in modern vehicles, usually will not be overwritten.

Originally, I had the data sheets detailing all of the available information that could be pulled from EDR on these trucks. Turns out, the data sheets from Bosch are copyright under license. But, some of the relavent data includes:

-Longitudinal and Lateral Delta-V: Change in velocity front to back and side to side. Used in conjunction, this can also determine (with quick mafs) principle direction of force on your vehicle, for instance, did you get hit left front or right rear? Head on? T-Bone? Etc.

-Vehicle Indicated Speed: every half second up to algorithm wake up, what did your speedometer say? Now this is not over-the-ground speed. I’ve had airborne vehicles indicate 4 seconds at 124 mph. Because they were traveling through the air at 70mph but their drive wheels were going 124+. Ice, dirt, spinning tires, sliding tires, and larger than OEM tires can affect this, but it can be accounted for.

-Seatbelt status: was the seatbelt buckled?
-Front Passenger Status Class: was the person in the passenger seat a child, adult that is small as a child, big as a full grown man? Coded data, not available without the proper resources.
-Engine RPM
-Throttle %
-ABS Activity
-Accelerator pedal %full
-All current Digital Yrouble Codes -DTC’s
-Maximum Delta-V and times

Tons of other information is available, not all of it is always useful in reading the crash sequence. Some of it is irrelevant to most parties.

Now I know some will look at this with disdain. If, like me, you don’t like the idea of Big Brother, this can seem like something you don’t want keeping track of your vehicle’s behavior shortly before a bad event. But I want you to consider this: the information in an EDR can help you as much as it could hurt you. For instance, you are t-boned at a stop sign, leading to a deployment event. It can easily be determined that you stopped at the stop sign. Further, by analyzing your change in velocity and taking into account variables such as weight of the other vehicle, an investigator can determine the speed of the other vehicle, even if it isn’t equipped with an EDR. In the above example, we could determine that the other idiot ran the stop sign. Since we can often use your EDR to determine what the other driver was doing, it can support a determination of negligence or recklessness, which can be used to get you the compensation you deserve, assuming you were in the right.

All this becomes especially important if you’re dead or incapacitated. I’m sure your family would appreciate that.

Last thing I’ll say on the topic is specific to some of our trucks. It seems that for a stupidly long time, ACM’s were being installed and shipped with the EDR turned OFF. So the airbags and all safety systems work, but the vehicle records no data. Affected trucks were built 18 February 2019- 10 July 2021. A fix is available and may have already been applied to your truck without your knowledge through Customer Satisfaction Program 21P19.

I’m sure this info isn’t particularly useful or helpful, but I figured some of y’all might be interested since it’s not a topic oft-discussed.

Blueyduty. you mentioned you can account for ice with a speed that is recorded high. Did this happen often and how did you go about that?

 

[BlueyDuty]

Blueyduty. you mentioned you can account for ice with a speed that is recorded high. Did this happen often and how did you go about that?

First, let me just state that this 1) is not legal advice, and 2) there are many, many variables that go into analyzing an EDR report. Without the full report and without more information (which, since I’m not consulting, I don’t want), a whole picture of the wreck is not possible.

That said, when recording speeds, EDR’s *usually* go based off wheel speed sensors. Some also record RPM’s, transmission gear, etc. Comparing recorded Delta-V, that is, change in velocity, to on scene evidence can give a better picture of true speed.

Imagine a vehicle sliding on ice. The speed of its wheels, which are likely what the vehicle EDR is recording, could be far slower, far faster, or the same as what is called “over the ground” speed. Another example for instance, I had a case where a vehicle went airborn, with the wheel speed being in the mid-100’s, which was the maximum recordable speed for that EDR. I know it was not going that fast at impact, so I made the determination that while it was airborn, the drivetrain suddenly accelerated when they lost all rolling resistance.

Every download has what is called a data limitation. These data limitations would tell whether or not it recorded in mph or kph.

However, also keep in mind that 40mph is only 64-ish kph. So that conversion doesn’t quite make sense.

 

[BlueyDuty]

Crash Data collection is nothing new. Manufacturers have been doing it for over a decade in some makes.

Just because the Data does exist, does not mean it is readily available or used frequently. The data is encrypted within the module and in many cases requires the manufacturers participation to recover the data in any meaningful way. Unless you are in a high profile fatal incident odds are high that data will never be recovered. Its simply not needed most of the time to find cause or fault.

Insurance companies and attorneys are increasingly getting these reports for non-fatal and non-serious injury cases. Law Enforcement may not do it for more minor cases, but there is a ton of good information for anybody who has a vested interest ($$$) in the outcome of a wreck.

 

[edr curious]

First, let me just state that this 1) is not legal advice, and 2) there are many, many variables that go into analyzing an EDR report. Without the full report and without more information (which, since I’m not consulting, I don’t want), a whole picture of the wreck is not possible.

That said, when recording speeds, EDR’s *usually* go based off wheel speed sensors. Some also record RPM’s, transmission gear, etc. Comparing recorded Delta-V, that is, change in velocity, to on scene evidence can give a better picture of true speed.

Imagine a vehicle sliding on ice. The speed of its wheels, which are likely what the vehicle EDR is recording, could be far slower, far faster, or the same as what is called “over the ground” speed. Another example for instance, I had a case where a vehicle went airborn, with the wheel speed being in the mid-100’s, which was the maximum recordable speed for that EDR. I know it was not going that fast at impact, so I made the determination that while it was airborn, the drivetrain suddenly accelerated when they lost all rolling resistance.

Every download has what is called a data limitation. These data limitations would tell whether or not it recorded in mph or kph.

However, also keep in mind that 40mph is only 64-ish kph. So that conversion doesn’t quite make sense.

thank you

 

[edr curious]

thank you

i have one more question. if my car was set to use kph instead of mph (because i had manually switched it one day when i was messing around with the confusing inteface) would an edr download expert notice the readings were being given in kph? would it affect things?
thanks for input. i’m just trying to gather as much data as i can.

 

[BlueyDuty]

i have one more question. if my car was set to use kph instead of mph (because i had manually switched it one day when i was messing around with the confusing inteface) would an edr download expert notice the readings were being given in kph? would it affect things?
thanks for input. i’m just trying to gather as much data as i can.

Changing the user interface of the vehicle’s displays wouldn’t change the way that the EDR records data. As I mentioned, the data limitations included in the EDR report will explain if the given values are in kph or mph. And any EDR analyst worth his salt should absolutely know if he’s reading kph or mph.