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NHTSA to Impose Data Recorders Next Month

Slowly, as a more or less direct consequence of the massive Toyota recall of 2010, the need for data recorders in vehicles has become so stringent that the US government already announced its intention of making EDRs, as they’re called, mandatory. According to the latest rumor in the industry, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) will make the official announcement on the EDR next month.

The bill that would make EDRs mandatory was proposed by Senator Tom Udall last year, and has been quickly embraced by the American manufacturers, who regard them as a necessary step towards a better understanding of crashes and how they take place.

Officially, EDRs, a sort of black boxes for vehicles, only record data in the period that starts just before the crash and ends subsequently. The crash information stored in the EDR will be provided to state authorities, if they request it. The data will also improve the National Highway and Traffic Safety Association real-world statistics. Critics, however, already started expressing their Big Brother phobias.

“Until recently, there has been no industry-standard or recommended practice governing EDR format, method of retrieval, or procedure for archival,” Tom Kowalick, the head of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers said, according to Wired.

“Even for a given automaker, there may not be standardized format. This lack of standardization has been an impediment to national-level studies of vehicle and roadside crash safety.”

The details of the NHTSA EDR announcement are not yet known. Further details on the matter are likely to surface in the following week.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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