NHTSA Expected To Require Black Boxes In All Light Vehicles

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is expected to propose sometime in December a rule requiring event data recorders -- the so-called black boxes in vehicles that record crash data -- in all new light vehicles.

The White House Office of Management Budget completed a review of the proposal on December 6, clearing the way for NHTSA to finalize the standard for all cars and light trucks. It was not immediately clear when the rule would take effect.

Assuming sales of 15.5 million vehicles annually, NHTSA estimates it would cost automakers $24.4 million in incremental costs to put the recorders in all vehicles.

About ninety percent of new vehicles have the recorders, including all by General Motors, Ford Motor Co., Toyota Motor Corp., and Mazda Motor Corp.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, an industry group comprising the Detroit 3, Toyota Motor North America, Volkswagen Group of America, Mercedes-Benz USA, and six other automakers, urges the government to consider driver privacy, it said.

"Event data recorders help our engineers understand how cars perform in the real world, but looking forward, we need to make sure we preserve privacy," an alliance spokesperson Gloria Bergquist said in a statement. "Automakers do not access EDR data without consumer permission, and any government requirements to install EDRs on all vehicles must include steps to protect consumer privacy."

In February 2011, NHTSA said in a White House report it would make a proposal by the end of 2011 to make EDRs mandatory, but it was delayed at the White House Office of Management Budget for more than a year.

EDRs have been in use for about twenty years, though different automakers collect different data. In August 2006, NHTSA issued a rule to standardize the information EDRs collect to make data collection easier, which took effect for the 2013 model year that started September 1.

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