Black Box Data recorder convicts Montreal Driver

[dmcowen674]

10-24-2003 Car's 'black box' convicts Montreal driver

The black box or event data recorder (EDR), which automatically records a car's speed and other information, showed Eric Gauthier was driving at least 131 km/h (81 MPH) when he hit another car (Yacine Zinet, 19, was killed in the crash) in downtown Montreal in April of 2001.

There were no witnesses, but police used the black box in 20-year-old Gauthier's car to determine his speed and build a case against him.

Zinet's sister, Belinda Matthey, was unhappy with the outcome.

"It was possible to see the car, there was no obstruction of any buildings, so it's more than dangerous driving," she said.

But she's glad that the case has established the credibility of black-box evidence.

The EDR was built to determine why a car's air bag activated, but can now be used to reconstruct what happens in the seconds before an accident.

 

[FatJackSprat]

There a story in this month's Natl Geographic discussing how much our activities are monitored and how easily our privacy can be invaded. It's interesting how we all forfeit personal privacy because we feel the need to monitor others is more important. For example, the article states that there are more than four million closed-circuit television cameras in Great Britain, one for every fifteen people. It's strange how much we can be monitored now and how little most people seem to mind it.