Research Fosters Debate Over Crash Data and Driver Privacy

[EV_Ares]

Interesting debate over the little black box in cars that is constantly getting new info input into it.

What if you had a bad auto accident and your car could automatically notify an emergency response team, giving doctors detailed information about the force and direction of the collision and the speed at which the car was traveling?

That data could be crucial to guiding an ambulance crew's decision about whether to rush you to a fully-equipped level one trauma center, says Dr. Richard Hunt of the Center for Disease Control. Research by the CDC has shown that a severely injured person who is transported quickly to a level one trauma center has a 25% better chance of survival.

"I know from clinical experience as an emergency physician, this is a life or death decision," Dr. Hunt says.

But what if, after you survived the wreck, that same technology turned tattle-tale, and divulged to police or the insurance company that you were speeding or driving recklessly?

That's one dilemma confronting consumers, auto makers, safety regulators and medical professionals as they sort out the potential rewards and risks of increasingly sophisticated "telematics" technology available in new vehicles.

The issue of how much a car should tell about driving behavior isn't new. As insurers, rental-car firms, police and plaintiffs lawyers have discovered that the "black boxes" that control safety systems can capture and store increasingly detailed data about vehicle behavior just before a crash, the issue of who owns that data and what should be done with it has been on the table.

Some privacy rights advocates have argued that what goes on with a car should stay in the car. The National Transportation Safety Board, in contrast, has urged that such black boxes be required in all vehicles, in part so safety researchers and regulators can harvest data to guide decisions about new technology or engineering standards. Mindful of the potential pitfalls, NHTSA has avoided coming down hard on one side or the other of the debate -- so far.

But framing the issue of privacy behind the wheel in terms of life or death changes the nature of the debate.

Driving the discussion about telematics is General Motors Corp. and its OnStar subsidiary. OnStar, an early and aggressive mover in the field of in-vehicle communications or telematics, is a key part of GM's effort to rebuild its image as a technology leader. For about a decade, OnStar-equipped cars have had the capability to call 911 when the car's airbag deployed, giving the car's location to emergency response teams.

But now, GM is launching a new generation of OnStar with what the company calls Advanced Automatic Crash Notification, or AACN. This system has the ability to transmit more detailed information about the circumstances of a crash: the direction of the impact, whether the car rolled over, the "delta V," or the change in speed, and other data.

GM plans to put this advanced OnStar system on about two million 2007 models, and ramp up to three million vehicles for the 2008 model year, says Chet Huber, the president of OnStar.

But GM isn't stopping there. The company and the CDC announced last week that OnStar and the GM Foundation, the auto maker's charitable arm, will indirectly fund work by the CDC to make it easier for doctors and emergency responders to make use of the AACN data from OnStar. GM is making a $250,000 grant to the CDC Foundation, a nonprofit entity that can accept corporate donations to finance CDC studies.

The CDC isn't allowed to endorse any commercial products. But with GM's money, the CDC can pay for a group of about 20 experts in the fields of emergency medical response, trauma care, vehicle safety and related disciplines to work during the next year on how best to take the raw data from an OnStar crash notification and translate it into something an EMT racing to a wreck can understand.

Dr. Hunt, who will coordinate the panel's study of how real-time data about vehicle dynamics in a crash correlates to injury, says he'd like a system that's as simple to use as the interfaces developed for portable defibrillators, in which a voice prompts the user to shock or not shock -- based on the software's interpretation of the patient's vital signs.

Perhaps a display in an ambulance could read the raw data from a car and tell the emergency technicians, "trauma center, or not trauma center," he says. Dr. Hunt says specific data about a crash -- such as whether the forces came from the side, which can cause more harm to the body -- are crucial. As cars have become better engineered and padded inside, it's often not obvious just by looking at a crash victim that the person has suffered a dangerous internal injury, he says.

OnStar officials, speaking at a conference in Washington, D.C. last week, outlined a long-term vision that every car sold should have advanced crash-notification technology, according to a report in Automotive News. GM's work with the CDC and its ongoing discussions with federal safety regulators at NHTSA can't hurt progress toward that goal, which would be a boon to GM. CDC research that boosts the perceived value of telematics technology would be one more arrow in GM's quiver as it seeks to generate demand for its service.

Mr. Huber, in an interview last week, said "market forces are going to shape that…Leading vehicle manufacturers are going to need something in this space to maintain competitive positioning." OnStar, he notes, has 350 patents on its telematics technology.

Dr. Hunt at the CDC is careful not to venture his own opinions about whether systems like those in the latest OnStar should be mandatory. But he says privacy issues are a concern to the CDC and to him as a healthcare provider.

"Those privacy issues are real," he says. But so are life and death decisions that could be made more quickly and appropriately with better data. "How that is balanced is something we need to pay attention to."

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