The Demand of Black Boxes In All New Cars Might Not Be A Bad Idea

   If you listen to the news, there always seems to be some story about how technology is changing how we do things. We are finding out more and more everyday about things that we never had the technology before to use to understand. That being said, it is no surprise that Federal agencies are now wanting to jump on that path too, to use technology in their own way to improve on the safety of the vehicles that we are all driving.

   In a recently published article, the author talks about how federal agencies are wanting to make it a necessity for all new cars, starting in September 2014, to all be built with something called a black box. These boxes are devices put into cars that are used to record different types of data like, "vehicle speed, whether the brake had been activated, crash forces at the moment of impact, the state of the engine throttle, airbag deployment timing, and whether or not seat belts were in use"(1). With this new idea of these boxes, researchers would finally be able to conduct studies to prove how to make vehicles more safe, to hopefully narrow down the amount of car accidents that take place year after year. 

   With this box only adding the additional  $20 to the manufacturing costs per car, it is hard to see why it wouldn't be a good idea to take advantage of. No one likes to hear those sad stories about the devastating car accidents that happen in their community, and with this new development, that goal of increasing traffic safety, will hopefully be met, and that number of accidents can hopefully start to decline.

Resources:

• "Federal Agency Wants Black Boxes in Every New Car By September 2014", Cyrus Farivar. Ars Technica. December 8, 2012. Web. Accessed December 10, 2012.http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/12/federal-agency-wants-black-boxes-in-every-car-by-september-2014/