CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Channel 9 investigates the growing ways the government and insurance companies can track what’s happening in cars.
Most -- and soon all -- new cars on the road will have what’s called an electronic data recorder.
An EDR is like a black box in a plane. It’s designed to explain the details of what happened leading up to a crash.
Soon, it may be able to reveal even more.
As some drivers travel Charlotte roads each day, many don’t know their steering, braking, speed and use of turn signals are being recorded.
"As far as privacy in your car, eventually I don't think there will be any," said John Whitehead, who wrote a book about it called "Battlefield America: The War on the American People."
It's a war he says is being waged in silence in a tiny black box possibly right under your driver's seat.
United States Department of Transportation videos show how new technology called v2v, or vehicle-to-vehicle communication, would work.
It’s being developed now with the possibility of being included in new cars by 2017. Vehicles can talk to each other and avoid collisions. They can even communicate with sensors on stoplights, train crossings or emergency vehicles.
Someone has to physically pull the data from your car's black box. But with v2v, it will beamed out like Wi-Fi.
Whitehead worries who will be receiving that signal.
"That information is being captured in your v2v or your black box. It goes up into that cloud,” Whitehead said. “And it’s going to affect your insurance rates.”
Whitehead said with v2v, insurance companies could raise your rates if you're a reckless driver.
Police could send you a speeding ticket in the mail, all based on what data your car are sending out.
Similar technology is already in limited use.
Ford said its new S-Max car can read speed limit signs and will automatically slow the car down if you're going too fast.
<strong>"Do I think this information will become available and be used to issue citations? Absolutely," said Charlotte law school professor Victoria Liccione.</strong>
She said EDR data can't be grabbed by just anyone right now. The owner of the car has to give consent, or police can use a search warrant.
Liccione said drivers may have already allowed auto insurance companies access to the data when they signed a contract. Language could be in the fine print that gives consent to hand the data over after a crash.
Liccione said the privacy people once enjoyed in cars won't last much longer.
"People do need to get their heads around the fact that so much of what we do that we once hought private, in a digital age, is just not private,” she said.
Seventeen states have enacted laws about black boxes and privacy.
The Carolinas are not among them.
Whitehead said all people can do now is push lawmakers for legislation that regulates or limits the use of information about what you do in your car.
A bill was introduced on the federal level to allow drivers to turn the data recorder off, but it didn't pass.
WSOC
