Article: Does Your Car Have a Spy in the Engine?

The New York Times is running, in the Auto section, an article on event data recorders that record the last few seconds before an airbag deployment. These are the so-called black boxes that are increasingly becoming useful in litigation and insurance claims. Some claim that it amounts to "big brother onbaord":

The New York Times > Automobiles > Does Your Car Have a Spy in the Engine?:

"AFTER Danny G. Hopkins's Cadillac CTS rear-ended Lindsay Kyle's Dodge Neon at a traffic light in Rochester a year ago, witnesses said Mr. Hopkins had been zooming down the road, and crash investigators who examined the condition and location of the wreckage estimated that Mr. Hopkins was traveling 65 to 70 miles an hour at the point of impact.

But in a trial that ended on Oct. 7, a witness emerged with more to say: that four seconds before the crash, it had been traveling 106 m.p.h."