Does your car have a "black box"?
If it's a recent GM or Saturn model, it likely does. While GM isn't widely advertising the program, they have been putting these Event Data Recorders on most of their cars beginning in 1996. Evidence from these data recorders is available to insurance companies, police, courts and may be used against the driver in civil proceedings. This may put the affected driver at a legal disadvantage if the other driver's car is not similarly equipped.
Information recorded includes:
- Vehicle speed (five seconds before impact)
- Engine speed (five seconds before impact)
- Brake status (five seconds before impact)
- Throttle position (five seconds before impact)
- State of driver's seat belt switch (On/Off)
- Passenger's airbag (On/Off)
- IR Warning Lamp status (On/Off)
- Time from vehicle impact to airbag deployment
- Ignition cycle count at event time
- Ignition cycle count at investigation
- Maximum velocity for near-deployment event
- Velocity vs. time for frontal airbag deployment event
- Time from vehicle impact to time of maximum velocity
- Time between near-deploy and deploy event (if within five seconds)
UPDATE: From a comment, here is a
company that specializes in accessing GM Black Box data, along with technical info on the boxes themselves.
A list of affected GM models for 2002 follows:
- Buick Century
- Buick LeSabre
- Buick Park Avenue
- Buick Regal
- Buick Rendezvous
- Cadillac Commercial Special
- Cadillac Deville
- Cadillac Eldorado
- Cadillac Escalade
- Cadillac Seville
- Chevrolet Avalanche
- Chevrolet Astro
- Chevrolet Blazer
- Chevrolet Camaro
- Chevrolet Cavalier
- Chevrolet Corvette
- Chevrolet Express
- Chevrolet Impala
- Chevrolet Lumina
- Chevrolet Malibu
- Chevrolet S10
- Chevrolet Silverado
- Chevrolet Suburban
- Chevrolet Tahoe
- Chevrolet TrailBlazer
- GMC Envoy
- GMC Safari
- GMC Savana
- GMC Sierra
- GMC Sonoma
- GMC Yukon
- Isuzu Hombre
- Oldsmobile Alero
- Oldsmobile Aurora
- Oldsmobile Bravada
- Oldsmobile Intrigue
- Pontiac Aztec
- Pontiac Bonneville
- Pontiac Firebird
- Pontiac Grand Am
- Pontiac Grand Prix
- Pontiac Sunfire
- All Saturns except the LS
Posted by Kevin Murphy at November 17, 2004 10:03 AM
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We actually have the Vetronix CDR equipment that can collect the 'black box' crash data from the GM air bag module. GM dealers are not able to recover the crash data.
You can see the equipment, air bag module info, location of the air bag 'black box' module, etc..
It can be seen here-
http://www.airbagcrash.com
Any questions about the equipment etc we will try to answer.