Flight recorders, also known as black boxes, are mandatory in the European Union starting July 2024. Starting from the M1 class, passenger cars can accommodate up to eight seats, and commercial vehicles categorized as N1 class, including pickup trucks and vans not exceeding 3,500 kilograms, will also have an "Event Data Recorder" as a standard feature. However, no type approvals have been given to automakers seeking to homologate new cars in the EU since July 2022. The EU comprises 27 countries, including Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic / Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden.
Black boxes or in-vehicle data recorders are devices used in cars and commercial transport to monitor or validate new safety technology, establish human tolerance limits, and record impact speeds. They can also influence driving behavior and facilitate automatic policing, tracking offenders more easily and fined automatically through devices like Electronic Vehicle Identification (EVI). These devices can reward safe behavior and reduce insurance premiums.
Two types of in-vehicle data recorders are crash data recorders and journey data recorders. Crash data recorders collect data before and after a crash, often based on the airbag control module. They address road safety problems such as increased quality of accident data, increased accuracy, better evaluation of new safety technology, knowledge of injury thresholds for crashworthy road transport systems, better understanding of injury causes and mechanisms, influence on accident involvement risk, legal aspects (insurance), information used for "e-Call" systems, pre-crash data to investigate collision causation, evaluation of active safety systems, crash data to investigate crashworthiness, evaluation of interior safety systems, calculation of injury risk versus impact severity, and crash reconstruction.
Data recorders are effective enforcement devices, leading to an average reduction of 20% on the number of crashes and damage. They provide reliable information on vehicle crash causation, provide wireless format for further processing by certified experts, and serve dedicated road safety, legal, security, and crime fighting applications. The increasing use of intelligent systems makes it increasingly difficult to assess the performance of systems in crashes.
In the Netherlands, the benefits and cost ratios of Crash Data Recorders have been estimated.
Crash Data Recorders have been used in cars and commercial transport for many years, with GM in the US using them since the 1970s to evaluate airbag performance in crashes. In the UK, police fleet cars are fitted with black boxes, and in Germany, the UDS crash recorder by Mannesmann/VDO has been on the market for over 15 years.
The EC project VERONICA recommended the standardization of procedures and tools for retrieving data, the use of the collected data for crash research, and questions concerning data ownership. It recommended targeting various road user groups, starting with the commercial transport sector, and establishing a UN ECE Working Group to prepare a technical specification. The EU should introduce a Directive rather than a Regulation to give Member States flexibility in implementing Crash Data Recorders.
Journey data recorders collect data during driving, providing information regarding driving behavior, law infringements, insurance costs, traffic management purposes, and research data on traffic risks and traffic conflicts. The Netherlands has an estimated 20:1 benefit and cost ratio for Journey Data Recorders.
Tachographs are used in commercial vehicle use to monitor drivers' hours of work, speeds, and track cargo. The SAGA system developed in Iceland allows for monitoring and reporting on vehicle position and use, speeds relative to posted limits, and other aspects of driver behavior. The OECD and ECMT concluded that economic incentives such as lower insurance premiums could be employed to encourage the use of journey data recorders to reduce young driver risk. Parents may also insist on certain technology being placed in vehicles used by their children.
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