All cars may soon get eyes
For about $300, drivers can buy cameras to record everything on the road
Consider the following scenarios:
A bomb goes off in a public place and the movements of culprits before, during and after the blast are witnessed by scores of cameras in vehicles parked and passing by.
There’s a car accident. It’s almost im- possible for the hit-and-run driver to get away unseen as autos heading in all directions capture the collision and a car’s departure on video, revealing its model, colour and licence plate
There’s no hiding if all vehicles have built-in eyes perpetually gazing and recording in a continuous loop, as is happening more and more these days.
For $300, drivers can buy cameras to record video and audio inside and outside vehicles, provide GPS locations and record G-force changes and speeds.
Nearly all North American cars and trucks have had built-in event data re- corders (EDR) since the mid-1990s, logging factors from the car’s speed and direction to seatbelt use in the seconds before airbags deploy.
With today’s technology, video and audio data could also be recorded — but doing it is restricted for a variety of reasons, civil and legal.
Orwellian to those who think it would infringe on our privacy rights if we were constantly being monitored in public, but many victims would welcome the scrutiny if it spared them pain and loss.
“As a police organization wanting to protect citizens from people who would do them harm, I can see the value of that,” says Sgt. Pierre Chamberland, media relations coordinator with the OPP.
“Would it be an advantage to police investigations? Absolutely. Would it present new challenges? Absolutely. Would we cope with those challenges in time? Absolutely.”
Chamberland points out how useful dash video cams are for police, as are licence-recognition cameras that automatically identify stolen vehicles and invalid plates.
Like it or not the technology’s here and car cameras will be standard equipment in vehicles of the future.
“GM has integrated cameras into many safety innovations, such as backup cameras and forwardlooking cameras, into our vehicles to provide additional visibility and control,” says Faye Roberts, communications director with GM Canada. “However, video recording has not been utilized.”
So, for now, the only mobile cams recording what happens on the road are in police cruisers, transit vehicles and those owned by private citizens and businesses.
“When one or two individuals go out and buy (car) cameras, that’s not going to have a societal impact,” says Abby Deshman, public safety director for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. “But when we’re talking about standardized surveillance technology in cars, used by millions and millions of people, we’re talking about a wider impact.”
“I think we have to be extremely wary of any proposals to widely equip surveillance technology into everyday objects and components in our lives.”
Deshman says studies have shown surveillance cameras don’t have much effect on overall crime rates, since people doing wrong don’t consider the consequences. She wonders if inescapable surveillance would make us any safer.
“There are a lot of really basic questions we need to ask: Whether we want this technology, what it would be used for, who would have access to it and what the actual impact would be,” she says.
Airplane flight recorders are only accessed in emergencies, but dash cam data can be replayed, copied and uploaded at any time. They capture people’s actions, identities, locations, time and date and are controlled by the owner. However, with a search warrant, authorities can seize video data. In some U.S. states, EDR data is the property of car owners but it belongs to automakers in Canada, as stated in vehicle owner manuals. “Technically the device belongs to the vehicle. The software and data recorded theoretically belongs to the (auto) manufacturer, but the operator creates the event,” explains Const. Clint Stibbe of Toronto Police traffic services. Police have a crash data retrieval tool to access black box information in serious accident investigations. EDRs record in a continuous loop, backing up a few seconds prior to an airbag deployment, while police cruiser cams go back 30 seconds.
“I see you go through a stop sign and I hit the button on the recorder, or turn on the lights or siren, and the camera records before I engaged it. No matter what you do, your start time is 30 seconds earlier,” says Stibbe.
A collision will also activate the camera, which can record about 17 hours of video.
“That’s more than enough to cover the10-hour shift and, as we come into (range of ) the station, everything is wirelessly downloaded from the car,” says Stibbe.
Chamberland suggests the OPP would find in-car video cameras useful if they become widespread.
“We would never act on video evidence alone, because it is only one piece of the puzzle or only one angle of view, but it’s obviously one of the tools that would be useful to us.
“We’re not going to make a case for (auto) manufacturers, but we would use the technology as any other organization or business does. You have to keep in touch with all new developments.” wheels@thestar.com