In its ninth meeting this year, on Dec. 3 and 4, the companies would not allow the committee's co-chairmen to submit a progress report to the Department of Transportation, which is considering whether to impose a standard. It has requested public comment of the issue. Even if the agency were to decide to impose a standard, drafting and adopting it would take months.

Automakers Block Crash Data Recorders
Highway safety could be vastly improved if black boxes that record information about car crashes were standardized, experts say, but they contend that vehement objections from the automobile industry are thwarting efforts to set a standard.

About 25 million late-model cars and trucks, most built by General Motors and Ford, carry the boxes, which record crash information including how fast a vehicle was moving, whether the seat belts were buckled and how big a jolt the occupants suffered at impact.

Other manufacturers say they will install the boxes, small, inexpensive recording devices connected to the system that deploys the air bags. The companies use the data to determine how well the car safety systems work.

But safety and medical experts say benefits would be broader if the data were easier to collect. An immediate benefit, they say, would be fewer deaths.

Accessible data would enable ambulance crews to determine quickly whether a crash was likely to have caused serious internal injuries and help paramedics make more accurate lifesaving decisions, like whether to call for a medevac helicopter.

First, though, the industry needs a data standard, so ambulance crews will not have to carry a different cable and computer for each make of car. Without a standard, some data might be indecipherable except by the manufacturer.

Advocates of the standard say automakers are dragging their feet. The companies say they are defending the privacy of drivers.

"The privacy issues will have to be addressed," said Vann H. Wilber, director for safety and harmonization of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group. "That's something we think needs to be debated and resolved."

Legal experts, however, say that many of the privacy issues have been settled and that courts have concluded that data recorded in a crash are subject to the rules governing other evidence.

In a lawsuit, for example, the data are subject to pretrial discovery just as other physical evidence is. If the car is totaled, ownership of the data goes with the wrecked car, to the insurance company.

Concerns about the unauthorized use of the data can be met, safety experts say, and some have suggested that automobile industry executives are hiding their distaste for regulating a standard behind a feigned concern for drivers' privacy.

Beyond helping ambulance crews make better decisions, the safety researchers say, information from scores of data recorders could reveal design flaws and strengths.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29/national/29CRAS.html?pagewanted=all&position=top