Black Box

One aspect of improving vehicle safety would be to record all the actions of a car to a "black box" in the car itself. Most of the data is being collected, just not being preserved: acceleration, braking and steering decisions, whether they are using the integrated hands-free phone, pressing buttons on the music player, lighting/indicator status, etc. All known, but discarded. A car could collect this and automatically preserve it whenever an emergency braking situation (ABS event) was detected, or an air-bag event occurred. and you could keep a 24-48 hour rolling log which the police could take with a warrant. The data is there, just not being retained. there

We don't just want black boxes for cars though. We want them for pedestrians, recording their iPod tracks and where they were looking, and phone usage. By strapping their iPhone to their forehead they could record this and have a head mounted camera at the same time.

Same for bikes: they could record what they were up to just before the crash.

Here then is an experimental black box recording of someone doing the Ashton Court quarry route and getting things wrong.

They make two mistakes. First, too slow. Second, failing to avoid the vegetation. That green stuff, it is meant to go to either side of the camera.