Consumer Reports on Today show discussing Toyota black boxes

Mar 11, 2010 4:00 PM

The unintended acceleration events this week involving Toyota Prius hybrids in San Diego, California, and Purchase, New York, have put more pressure on Toyota. These headline-grabbing events followed right on the heels of the company having refuted the sudden acceleration study recently presented before a Congressional committee by Dr. David Gilbert, along with an ABC News report featuring the professor. In the aftermath of these developments Consumer Reports has had many media queries and reader questions related to what to do if your car suddenly accelerates and the role event data recorders, or black boxes, can play in understanding these events.

Consumer Reports Managing Editor, Autos, Jon Linkov recently spoke with Matt Lauer on the NBC Today Show, as shown in the embedded video, discussing the potential benefits of black boxes. He went on to describe the difficulties involved with accessing information from Toyota data recorders, including that there is just a single “beta” laptop in America that can read the black box data. In contrast, many car companies use formats that can be more easily read by a tool manufactured by a third-party supplier.

Black boxes collect valuable information that can help manufacturers and investigators understand a number of vehicle parameters immediately before, during, and after an accident. These devices record such data as vehicle speed, throttle position, air-bag deployment, brake application, and safety belt usage. Consumers Union has called on manufacturers to make information from black boxes more immediately accessible to government investigators. Further, CU encourages all automakers to quickly adopt formats to enable swift information retrieval and dissemination to crash investigators.

For more information, read: “Consumers Union calls for changes to strengthen U.S. car-safety net.”

Linkov had previously discussed black boxes with Fox News.

—Jeff Bartlett

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