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NOVEMBER 7, 2003
A Flight Data Recorder for Your Car Airline-like "black boxes" are about to become a reality in Ireland and across Europe. The U.S. may not be too far behind Imagine you're in your car driving to the grocery store. You're accelerating away from a stop sign when suddenly -- BANG! -- you're hit from behind by a speeding car that never even slowed down. Badly shaken, you stumble out. The police arrive on the scene just minutes after the crash. Plus, they already seem know that you stopped, and the other guy -- who's being arrested -- didn't. And moments later, your cell phone starts ringing. It's your insurance agent, who also has accident details and is calling to reassure you that it looks like a quick decision. How do the police and your insurer know what happened? Because a "black box" in each of the cars told them so, the instant it happened. This system is closer to reality than you may think. It's being built today in Ireland and is expected to spread across Europe over the next few years before taking root in the U.S. Insurance companies like the idea because computer-generated data about the crash will help prevent fraudulent claims and cut insurance costs. Emergency responders will be aided, too, thanks to faster, more detailed information about the exact location and scope of an accident. NATIONAL NETWORK. Automakers recognize that they could identify dangerous defects by mining accident data for telltale signs of component failure. The auto data recorder might even prevent another Ford-Firestone debacle. And it's a relatively simple scheme -- indeed, all the necessary technologies already exist -- with tantalizing promise. On Nov. 6, Ireland's Transportation Minister announced an agreement to outfit the nation's vehicles with black-box data recorders and link them to an emergency notification system. Under the agreement, Safety Intelligence Systems (SIS), a private New York-based company, will partner with IBM (IBM ) as its exclusive information-technology provider, to supply the boxes and build a comprehensive crash-data network. The system "has the potential to make a significant contribution to this country's determined efforts to reduce deaths and injuries," said Transport Minister Séamus Brennan in a prepared statement. The deal is part of a broader European Union effort to develop "telematics" -- or in-vehicle data systems -- solutions to improve road safety. EASY TO INSTALL. At the center of Ireland's plan is a rather modest black box, packed with sensors that can tell when an accident has happened. A scaled-down cousin of airplane flight recorders, the box is about the size of two decks of playing cards, side-by-side, and is installed unobtrusively in the car's cabin or under the hood. The units, which will go on sale by mid-2004, are being built by Toronto's Celestica (CLS ) and will retail for around $300. Once sales volumes rise, says Pierre-Henri Gabriel, IBM's director of Automotive Telematics Solutions in Europe, the price could fall by half. Except for a power connection, the black box isn't attached to any of the car's systems. This makes it easy to install, and more foolproof in the case of an accident, says Gabriel. Inside, the box has enough memory to store the last 10 or 20 seconds of driving data. A global-positioning-system device tracks vehicle location and can interpolate speed, acceleration, and deceleration by calculating changes in location over time. Miniaturized gyroscopic sensors similar to those now used to trigger airbags detect the sudden sharp shocks that indicate an accident. The unit's brain is a microprocessor that decides when an accident has happened and then sends a distress signal over a standard cellular link.
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