From the next year, cars sold in Europe will have to come with an event data recorder. An event data recorder like the “black box” will be of great help for understanding an accident in a better way. However, the information won’t be accessible by insurance companies.
As per the new law, car manufacturers have to fit a black box inside the cars they will produce from May 2022. This law is valid all over Europe. Moreover, the law will be extended to all used cars by 2024.
The black box will provide data on acceleration, speed, braking, and position of the steering wheel. In simple words, it will be a priori only data directly related to driving. Now, it remains to be seen for how long this information will be kept. This information will be available exclusively only by law enforcement.
The regulation reads, “An event data recorder is not capable of recording and memorizing the last four digits of the ‘vehicle designation’ part of the vehicle identification number, nor any other information which could allow individual identification. of the vehicle concerned, of its owner or keeper.”
The black box will be located in such a strategic way that it is impossible to reach in order to avoid it being neutralized. Though speed limiters and black boxes are now being considered mandatory now, it was first proposed back in 2019.
At that time, the introduction of black boxes and speed limiters were overwhelmingly approved by a European Parliament committee. It was suggested that the speed limiters would use GPS data or traffic sign recognition tech to limit how fast a car could drive on the public road.
Back in 2019, the European Transport Safety Council claimed that this could reduce road traffic accidents by up to 30% and prevent almost 25000 lives from being lost in the next 15 years.
