Im in yer carz, trackin yer drivez
NY Times said:
Bad news for one company may be good news for another. Case in point: Toyota’s woes with recalls and mysterious acceleration problems may turn out to be a boon to tech companies like Intel, which already has its sights set on getting into your next car.
At a series of press events last month, Intel demonstrated some of its auto-oriented technologies, including an event recorder, or so-called black box, which Congress is pushing as part of a piece of auto safety legislation inspired by the Toyota unintended acceleration issue. Intel sees such a black box as a natural part of its Connected Car research.
The rest of the story...
Raze
HalfDork
7/8/10 11:21 a.m.
blah, black box recorders are in just about every GM for the last 10 years and many other makes/models as well, all the more reason to buy and drive an older car...
As long as Microsoft doesn't make the software. 
Can you imagine a blackbox lockup and reboot while driving? 
One thing has always seemed strange to me about the infamous "black box"..
they're orange! 
NYG95GA wrote:
One thing has always seemed strange to me about the infamous "black box"..
they're *orange*!
And Agent Orange isn't really orange either. I took Vietnam War class in high school and we had veterans come in to talk about their experiences all the time. The guy who told us that used to get doused with the stuff while on patrol when they dropped it over the jungle to kill the plantlife. He said it came from the orange containers they would keep the stuff in. The military told them it was harmless
JeepinMatt wrote:
... The military told them it was harmless...
They said the same thing about DDT in the 50s. Used to spray people down with it to kill head lice, etc.
wbjones wrote:
hey it worked ....
Damn sure did.
When I started working at a hardware store back in '74, I found a gallon of DDT concentrate in the back of the warehouse. We couldn't legally sell it, so the boss let me take it. I mixed it with Malathion and thinned it with water, sprayed it around the perimeter of my house once a year, and never had any problem with bugs. That stuff was STRONG!
The gallon lasted until about 2 years ago, at which point I started seeing roaches. The stuff they sell as pesticide nowadays is weak sauce.
At the end of the day, I likely cut a couple years from my life expectancy, but it might have been worth it for 23 years without bugs.
I had a friend that had family in Egypt and he would visit them every summer. Used to tell me about the clouds of DDT they'd run through
wlkelley3 wrote:
As long as Microsoft doesn't make the software.
Can you imagine a blackbox lockup and reboot while driving?
Since it's a data recorder it shouldn't affect operation of the car - if it quits, it will just stop collecting data.
As I understand it, nearly every new car and truck sold in the U.S. (I don't know about identical cars sold elsewhere having this feature) has had some kind of "event recorder", at least some time after the switch to OBDII smog regs. Toyota CLAIMS their cars have them, but the computers that interface with these recorders, at least for Toyotas and Lexus vehicles are few and far between.
I really do wish car manufacturers would do a better job of "policing" themselves so that we wouldn't wind up after "problems" crop up with "band aids" that are supposed to make our lives safer. Folks won't check the inflation pressures of the tires on their (overloaded) SUVs? We will make it so EVERY vehicle sold MUST have tire pressure monitors. 1 car company makes a number of cars that "get away" from their drivers? We will FORCE all car companies to come up with a fail safe for that, too.
I doubt folks on here now, remember how in the early '70s all the car companies came out with prototypes of "safe cars". Volvo produced a "safety car" that managed to be both boxier than the 240 series AND had no sharp corners. Every car company produced pretty much the same thing as Volvo....a 3 box sedan with extensive crush zones at each end. UGH. After what looks like a repeat of the horsepower wars of the '50s and '60s, it looks like we are doomed to re-live the auto equivalent of the '70s.
Car companies have been pulling data from ECU's for years - no big deal. A government that mandates it have the ability to actively access a vehicle's data - a much bigger deal.
And there are some things about DDT that don't quite match the "facts" as forwarded by government and ecologists:
http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.html
