robrow65

There has been a lot of talk today on the Neil Boortz show about so called "Black Box" or Electronic Recorder Device being mandated on new cars built in America.

I was wondering.....
Is there one on the 04TL?

Repecat

Not to the best of my knowledge.........I think they may be found mostly on GM cars.

J RIDE 81

Not in our cars!!

vtechbrain

As far as I know Honda does not use that technology.

Perziankabob

how does that work?

does it record since day 1?

or

does it record from when the car is turned on to the time it is turned off. and every reboot erases everything except the previous 4 times?

VTEC=happiness

Good article about this issue in a recent autoweek

yano_jl

Mandated? I was under the impression that the technology, although available, was not required.

I may be incorrect.

vtechbrain

Not mandated yet. Munufacturers use it for quality improvement (they really need it) but occasionally law enforcement agencies have tried to get their sticky fingers on them for accident investigations since it records speed braking and other parameters. As far as I know they only store a few minutes of info.

04TLMan

I know BMW uses one. My friend said the BMW service manager noticed that he hit the 123 MPH limiter after a service call. My friend said once or twice ;o)

ITL

search.....I think I remember reading somewhere that there is a black box but it only stores the last 10 seconds of data (in case there is an accident)

Novice

vtechbrain:

How did get so many red dots under your name?!

Now, back to the topic... NO WAY! Too expensive for Acura to do so.

Brewmaster

Although I think it was like 30 seconds, but in any respect I don't think they currently have the ability to identify that "you went 128mph on August 6 and therefore your warrantee is void".

Road Rage

There are no laws governing this, but there will be. I wrote an article on thwe topic years ago - who owns the data? How is authorization given to access it?

I also postulated this - electronic speedometers we have - all that would be needed to create a police state for speed enforcement would be a transponder on the side of the road, and a transmitter in the car. If the car exceeds the speed on the transponder, it would send back the VIN of the car, the time, its speed, etc. Like photo radar, but even more sinister.

Some states, and provinces in Canada, already have photo radar - it is widely used in Europe, where giving away rights of privacy are cultural history - I mean, Europeans committing genocide in the 20th century twice? Germany, then Bosnia?

I have an idea for a device that will attach to your ALDL, and allow you to wipe out any data in certain "sensitive" fields with binary low and high values - that is, 00000000 and 11111111. Adios, snoopy dealers and insurance companies. Of course, then the insurance companies will lobby their cronies in the state legislatures to make that illegal, and the game will be on again. So if any EE's want to collaborate and patent something, let's hook up. I have software to read chips and turn off things like top speed limiters - also to advance the spark, etc. How hard could it be to target some registries or tables to be written over with masking data like lo/hi values? Or even just a large EM pulse, which will destroy the ECM altogether - oops, how did that happen?

I see this ending up in State and Federal Courts - could go all the way to the Supreme Court! And yes, BMW is one of the worst - they encourage you to buy a high pereformance car, then note if you go 1 RPM over redline, so they can walk away from a repair. I had several run-ins with BMW NA with my M3, and decided they were a crappy organization. I also saw lots of data on their I-4 head gasket blower, and the infamous "rotting cylinder walls" in the 4.0L (which BMW blamed on "lousy US gas", then put in the cylidner liners everyone else uses.

I am not sure how much data Honda grabs, but it surely has some. The SRS hasa data, so do the ECM and the TCM, and all stability control systems need to know yaw, speed, angle of the steering wheel, etc. It is merely a question of how much is retained, for how long?

Pro Street

All TL's have a Black Box - just open your trunk and look down to the right!!!

Pull out the disk before they record everything you do and say in the car!!!!

GunnmeTaLCURA04

what if i dont have NAv?

92NSX

Any vehicle that has airbags DOES have these 'black boxes'. However, they are not all black but rather some are aluminum in color. I have seen plenty of them.

JetJock

Big Brother is reading everything we post!!!! BEWARE

GoBig

Absolutelt right! There's a recorder that initiates as soon as the airbag records.
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/200...lackbox06.html

fast-tl

Gobig, if it records AFTER the airbags, it's not much use.

TLXLR8S

it recoerds have long it take the airbag to deploy after an impact, how fast u were going info about the brake use gas use and stuff like that right before an impact.

SouthernBoy

Road Rage;

Sounds like the thoughts of a fellow Virginian. It's a Southern thing. We just don't like people (government) sticking their noses in our business or telling us what to do. We now have traffic light cameras at a number of intersections where there has been a history of accidents or a high incidence of red light running. Suppose you take your car to a dealer for service and the technician runs a red light when road testing his repairs? You get the ticket and now have to prove it wasn't you. Seems to me that flies in the face of the concept of "presumed innocence".

Now I really hate to see people run red lights and stop signs. Along with failing to issue proper turn signals, those are my main pet peeves about my fellow drivers. I believe the primary reason why people run red lights is because of the use of delayed green signals. Drivers know the opposing light is not going to turn green for several seconds, so they continue through the red light. I have noticed that in those intersections where there is no delayed green, there are VERY few red light runners, though I haven't seen such an intersection for serveral years, now.

And seat belt laws. Where does government get off telling me I have to use a seat belt? I won't even move my car out of my garage without a seat belt on.. I surely don't need some government weenie telling me to do this.

I remember in 1965, an older cousin on mine telling me some interesting things I found hard to imagine at the time. He was a mechanic at a local Cadillac dealership. He also built some interesting cars on the side. And as a teenager and into his early twenties, he raced boats he built (over 120 wins to his credit). Anyway, he told me that there would come a day when backyard mechanics would no longer be able to work on their cars they used on the street. That government regulations would become so tight, that to attempt to do such would actually become an arrestible activity. I thought he was nuts. But then in the '90s under the Clinton administration, we had Carol Browner as head of the EPA. There were moves a foot to force auto companies to be able to guarantee that the engines in the cars they made would meet emissions mandates for 100,000 miles. Well we all know that once a car is sold, the auto company has no control over what the owner does with it. And if he lives in a state where there are no emissions tests (like a good part of Virginia) then he can remove the cats and do whatever. So there were suggestions that the auto companies lock the hoods on the cars sold so that only the dealer and certified shops could get under there to do maintenance and repairs. Get this.. you buy and own the car, yet you do no have full (called quiet) use of your property.

Yep, black boxes are bad and evil. And if they do become law, Road Rage could stand to make a killing.

92NSX

Not true. As the previous posts points out, it records all of the vitals of the car that are affected by a crash and then stores it.
Keep in mind, it's not a tape recorder or CD burner or somthing. There are no moving parts in side of it to be able to record then erase info.
On older model cars, roughly '96-'01 or so there are normally three airbag sensors in the front end of the car. Obviously one on left, right and the center. When a collision is detected by any of those sensors, the monitor then takes many calculations into consideration and then deploys the bags.
On later models and on more advanced systems, the monitor is located near the center of the vehicle and does away with all the external front sensors. It now has the ability of determine the force of impact and determine the severity and can deploy the bags at a slower speed so if someone is real small in one of the seats they don't need a full speed deploy because it could end up injuring them more. This is determined by the sensors mounted in the seats and usually goes on the weight in the seat. Also helps insurance so the passenger bag doesn't blow if nobody is sitting in it. These are called dual stage airbags.

GaleForce

I'd like to know what specifically the dealer can take from a 3G TL and from how long ago. Anyone work at a dealership who can ask the service department or something?

92NSX

Once an accident has occured the monitor keeps all the information permanently. Therefore you can't reuse that same part when repairing the car. Have to use a new one. Otherwise it will continue to throw and air bag code in vehicle and not recognize that the system has been repaired.

Road Rage

SouthernBoy:

Good stuff - read and agree with every word.

I remember Carol Browder - i also remember Joan Claybrook, another anti-driving leftie.

You may also recall that it was SEMA who fought for the right for the little guys to get a hold of OBD-II code - the mfrs were trying to secure it as "proprietary", which only dealers could access - they intended to wipe-out the small corner station (which they have done) and the independent auto specialist (which they have not done).

And yes, if they try to grab my black box, they will find it strangely devoid of the means to self-incriminate me. I take accountability for my actions, but let's play fair. If I get wasted and drive like a madman through a school zone, that is one thing. But if I hit 100 mph at 2 a.m. on I-64 west, whose business is that but my own?

It saddens me that Virginia, the cradle of democracy that gave the world Washington and Jefferson, also was the cradle of the Civil War, and now is one of 2 states that ban radar detectors.

For a state that prides itself if civil liberty and justice, we seem to have an awful lot of laws that are on the wrong side of those values.

Did you know that the wonderful, insurance lobby managed to get the DMV to give 6 points for "conviction of using a radar detector"? That is the same points as reckless driving, and it is the only points ever given for a non-moving violation. I was part of a group that successfully lobbied the General Assembly to call the DMV to the wood shed for a good smackdown - we successfully beat that one. The corruption of the insurance industry was that under the banner of "saving people from speeders", they could surcharge insurees for years and make a bundle.

And of course, that wonderful agency, the Insurance Insitute for Highway Safety (the crash test dummies as I call them), is not an independent group, but a funded arm of the insurance cartel. It was the IIHS that issued cheap hand-held X-band radar guns to many LEA's, on the premise of highway safety. Again, nabbing speeders is good for surcharges. We all know that speed enforcement on the Interstates is bogus, and speed per se is seldom the prximate cause of accidents. I enforce the 25 MPH limit in our sub-division becaue it makes sense. Getting a ticket for 70 MPH in a 65 MPH zone designed for 80 does not.

Yes, i am a civil libertarian, but not a whacko - I mean a libertarian as defined in the Federalist Papers - required reading for everyone who pretends to understand what the framers of The Constitution (mostly Virginians such as Jefferson and George Mason, and that Yankee, Hamilton) were thinking. Esp[ecially on the 2nd Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

Vanwall

I have read two articles in the past couple weeks on this issue. Scary stuff!!! Read about what Progressive insurance is planning. Data recorders in cars they insure for reduced rates (at the users option). How long before they (all major insurance companies) will not insure your car with out a recorder?

We will need the hacks!!!

Do you trust OnStar??? How much data is being sent to GM???

Big Brother is closer than you think!!!!

Road Rage

The thing Huxley did not consider is the basic drive of the human spirit to be free, and that technology has as much power, perhaps even more, in the hands of the individual than in the hands of government. Of course, BB is an allegorical figure which could represent a number of "supreme beings" - the State, the Deity, Mammon, etc.

Note that I am ever optimistic about freedom for those reasons - as long as we never become complacent, sparks of freedom will be forever kindled. We lose freedoms gradually, not in a sudden power grab.*

That is why I believe we should fight to retain our rights - sometimes physically, sometimes by using our brains. In the case of our car's data recording technology, I am quite sure that folks like me, and others more talented, will always be one step ahead of Big Brother.
************************************************** *************
*Let's prove T.S. Eliot wrong - let's not become the Hollow Men of which he eloquently wrote - and let's for sure make sure we do not let our freedoms be seized, a little at a time, and that the free world does not end - neither with a bang, nor with a whimper.

http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~evans/hollow.html

SouthernBoy

To Road Rage;

Glad to see we're on the same page, my friend.

Seat belt laws. Child "safety" seat laws. Red light cameras. Radar detectors. Anti-smoking laws. One-gun-a-month laws (thankfully we got rid of that for CCW holders). All examples of the nanny state mentality. Our Founders are turning over in their graves.

As for the Federalist Papers, there is a new book out that uses comtemporary English (as if that is really necessary) in "translation" of the original work (of which I have a paperback). I bought this new book at the NRA headquarters building in Fairfax last summer.

As for the Second Amendment.. I am a VERY strong supporter of the entire Bill of Rights, especially the Second Amendment. I've had a number of letters on the subject published in two of our local newspapers (The Washington Times and the Arlington County Journal). The first was called, "It's not a Buffet of Rights".

The Founders knew exactly what they were doing and why. It is vanity in the absurd to think we know better than them. They knew that all governments are inherently evil and that the only way to insure government remains in check is for the people to hold the power and to hold the government in fear of them using it should the need ever arise. We are the only country in history in which the people have reserved unto themselves the right and the duty to use armed force if necessary to remove a sitting, despotic government. Tell a contemporary American that and they'll think you're nuts.