Cars’ black boxes pit privacy against safety

What if the black box in your new car becomes a tool to invade your privacy? What if, on the other hand, it winds up saving your life after an accident? Those are some of the questions being raised this week over black box data event recorders in cars.

Privacy advocates voiced concerns Thursday that the data could be misused. Safety advocates argued Friday that a watered-down version of the recorders would slow safety innovations.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which champions privacy rights in the digital world, offered this scenario: The friend you lent your BMW to creates his own ultimate driving experience, and your insurance rises because of his 120 mph freeway jaunt.

The foundation, based in San Francisco, is worried because the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in December that it wants to make black box event data recorders mandatory for all cars.

Nathan D. Cardozo, staff attorney for the foundation, said the black boxes track accelerator pedal position, brake pedal position, engine revolutions per minute, vehicle speed and acceleration, seat belt connections, air bag deployment and more.

The foundation is concerned that there is no cap on the amount of data collected and no limits on the kind of data that will be gathered, Cardozo said.

“The car manufacturers can use that data at will, including location, which has significant privacy implications,” he said. That friend’s joy ride, for instance, could find its way into the hands of an auto insurance company.

“The car owner should be the one controlling access to the data,” Cardozo said.

But others praise the black boxes as probable lifesavers that could have prevented many tragedies and shortened many safety investigations in the past had the technology been available sooner.

“If we had these event data recorders, we would have picked up on child deaths from air bags much sooner,” said Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety.

Ditlow said it took the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration more than three decades to set a standard for better interior padding in cars to prevent injury, noting that black boxes would have zeroed in on the problem quickly. He also said problems involved in auto safety recalls, which often track a hazard over several model years, would be discovered much faster.

“They will have a huge safety payoff,” he said. “If you can combine crash recorder data with auto crash notification systems ... if you can get medical care delivered faster, you will save lives.”