Black Box

The recording devices would monitor when driverless systems are active, when a human takes over, and when the computers call for human intervention.

Drivers are one step safer to having improved privacy behind the wheel. The Senate Commerce Committee has granted bipartisan approval to legislation that aims to protect the information on automotive Event Data Recorders (EDR), also known as black boxes. The committee concluded that the vehicle owner is the one who owns the information stored on the device.

If you thought police tracking your movements via license plate scanners was creepy, you may want to check your owner's manual to see if your own car has been spying on you for decades.

There are, as they say, two sides to every story, so after we posted a video on Monday showing what an owner claimed to be a case of unintended acceleration causing her Toyota Highlander to crash into a house twice, Toyota reached out to us revealing some additional information about the incident.

WASHINGTON – Many motorists don't know it, but it's likely that every time they get behind the wheel, there's a snitch along for the ride.

More Honda Fit models, mandatory black boxes, too many GM pickups, Jeep Grand Cherokee diesel

Black boxes have helped investigators solve the causes of plane crashes for decades. Now authorities hope they can shed light on causes of car accidents.

At present, over 90 percent of all new vehicles sold in the United States today are equipped with event data recorders, more commonly known as black boxes. If the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration gets its way, that already high figure will swell to a full 100 percent in short order.

A bill approved by both houses of Congress that doubles fines on vehicles not recalled in a timely fashion also weighs-in on several additional safety measures. What was once a $17-million penalty has now jumped to $35 million. In spite of these fines, The Detroit News reports that many new safety requirements were left out of the bill. One of the few requirements to make it through is the mandate for rear seat belt buckle chime systems – much like the alert system

The Association of Scottish Police Superintendents (ASPS) is asking the government to help them slow down drivers. Despite Scotland recording its lowest traffic fatalities since they began keeping track of the statistic, Transport Minister Keith Brown says, "... one death on our roads is one too many as far as I am concerned."

Judge James V. Selna has warned jurors in a wrongful death suit about suspicions surrounding Toyota. According to Inside Line, the warning comes tied to the automaker's conduct during an investigation of a 2008 Camry involved in a fatal crash allegedly caused by unintended a

Autocar reports Toyota and Subaru are working on ways to sharpen the GT 86, BRZ and Scion FR-S triplets. While that may mean buyers could see a convertible version of the sports coupe as soon as 2014

Congress is gearing up for a comprehensive overhaul of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, implementing some significant safety measures for automobiles along the way. The campaign, encouraged by safety advocates for over a year now, has gained significant ground as the Senate Commerce Committee endorsed a series of measures which it will seek to incorporate into a highway reauthorization

According to The Daily Telegraph, young drivers in Britain can pay as much as £546 per month for auto insurance. That's around $890/month at current conversion rates. The report indicates that UK drivers between the ages of 17 and 22 years old pay an average of £5,957 – around $9,640.

Are you ready for a black box to be installed in your car? The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration apparently is. According to a new report from Wired, NHTSA is expected to rule next month that all new cars will need to carry just such a device.

Takeshi Uchiyamada, Toyota executive vice president in charge of research and development, has confirmed that a software glitch has caused the company's event data recorder readers to misinterpret speeds during accidents. According to Automotive News, the executive admits that his company had previously underscored the fact that it couldn't say whether or not there was a problem with the black boxes themselves. The software bug in the r

Big Brother really wants to get into your future vehicle. Intel is currently hard at work on the next generation of vehicle event data recorders, the infamous black boxes that Zach Bowman

When word first came down that Congress was looking to mandate that all new vehicles to be sold with Event Data Recorders, we knew that the added tech was going to be pricey. According to Automotive News, if legislators have their way, the new automotive black boxes wil

Long before shows like CSI misled the public about how long a DNA test takes and introduced the mythical world of "zoom and enhance," airplane black boxes were making people think you could minutely recreate an air disaster if you could just get the box. Not so. Turns out that quite a few cars sold in the U.S. have black boxes as well, with the same limitations: you can retrieve a certain set of data from them, but its quality and usefulness varies.

Due to the ongoing NHTSA investigation and several lawsuits involving Toyota, the automaker's in-car "black box" data is coming into the spotlight. However, the Associated Press has conducted an investigation of its own, finding that Toyota has, for years, blocked access to event data recorder (EDR) information, and that the automaker has been inconsistent in revealing exactly what these devices do and do not record.