Subaru Crew - Meet The Members II

paisan

They used to do that on the PA Turnpike with the tickets as well. The other thing is that if you stop to go to the bathroom for say 5 minutes in the middle of a big trip, those 5 minutes of Zero MPH get averaged into your trip, thereby usually making your average speed fall below the limit, or so close that it wouldn't matter. Also they couldn't tie any particular driver to the ticket because they don't know who is driving, only that the car averaged that speed. It would be similar to the red-light tickets that are a fine bringing no points, and no insurance increases.

-mike

storyteller

A lot of anti-government paranoia here! But I've already exposed myself as a pinko commie liberal.

I'm writing quickly here but would like to suggest that most of you are against black boxes because they *could* be misused. They also could be used to more correctly assess the truth of an accident. Are you afraid the truth? If you hit someone else and they claim you were 15 over, wouldn't it be nice to have a box that says your claim you were only 3 over is correct?

I was in a boating accident once that ended up in a lawsuit. The other party basically took truth and turned it on its head, accusing our boat of doing all the bad stuff they had done. We were lucky to have an impartial witness. The black box could be an impartial witness.

Moreover, I can imagine that black boxes might be useful in cars in the ways they are useful in airplanes: to provide a critical baseline of FACT that allows manufacturers to design airplanes more safely. It isn't ALL about lawsuits.

Just my 12 cents worth. Dang inflation!

ateixeira

You can't handle the truth! ;-)

-juice

locke2c

storyteller--

the reason you have to plan for the worst and put mechanisms in place to PREVENT the worst is that you can't put the genie back into the bottle.

i'm not afraid of the government in this case. i'm afraid of unfettered capitalism hurting the end-user.

-Colin
dyed-in-wool capitalist

tincup47

I would imagine that these will eventually be mandated just as emission controls are. I would imagine they will be as easy to remove or disable as the current OBDII monitoring systems (virtually impossible).

[Deleted User]

A few months ago I read an article in my local paper about a car rental agency on the east coast that used black boxes. One of their customers returned the vehicle after his rental period to find he owed several hundred dollars in speeding fines.

When the customer became furious over the situation, they showed him a paragraph in all that fine print he signed which stated he was not allowed to speed in their vehicles. The black box was used to track his speed and noted three occurances of speeding.

Now that's just plain old scary. If I remember right, the customer was taking the agency to court over the matter.

Ty

paisan

Nothing is impossible. Build it and they will disable it. The only reason ODBII isn't disabled is because it doesn't cost people $. Kinda like the turn back the clock on the ODO thing, for the right amount of money you can go to queens and your LCD odo will be turned to whatever milage you want. Maybe not in lilly-white picket-fence areas, but electronic gurus will always be one step ahead of the times

-mike

kens

I've been reading your posts and thinking about the black box idea. One one hand, it could be beneficial for generating crucial data in the event of an accident. However, I do also feel like it's almost an infringement on privacy. Tough call for me.

Here's a thought -- how different would a black box be to say, having video cameras and radars along major roads? You could get higher level data (speed and direction) but not factors like throttle, brake and steering.

Ken

hypov

"#7737 of 7757 I see what you're saying - but what if by subaru_team Feb 28, 2002 (06:42 am)
you all weren't as wonderful as our Crew, and took that exit ramp at 50 mph, wracked up the car and sued the manufacturer because it didn't hold the road?
Are we having fun yet?
Patti"

Given that I've spent 20 yrs of my life in a "Big Brother" environment, I am incline to say no.
Yes, it will be beneficial but I'm afraid that it will be taken advantage of for the wrong cause.
About taking the exit ramp @ 50mph...crash, the Black Box would not be able to register road condition or that pebble that caused the crash.

-Dave

tincup47

OBDII does cost the owners in many ways. It costs them time to take the vehicle back to the dealer, and if the vehicle isn't under warranty it costs them money to fix it. It adds to the cost of the vehicle. If you live in a state with required emissions testing, you cannot pass the test with the light lit. I have no doubt that it could be defeated by someone with the right engineering and software skills, but I doubt if your average hacker could do it without ruining the driveability of the vehicle.

paisan

It is done all the time. Not to mention if you have a car that can't pass ODBII inspection, you just go register it in a place that doesn't require it, or you tip your mechanic well enough that it passes. Don't doubt the persistence of a good hacker/mechanic. Just go out to Flushing, Queens and you can have your electronic LCD odometer setback within 10 minutes. You only need one person to figure out how to override it, then in 1/2 a day there will be 100 websites with the instructions posted up!

As dave said, the box will not indicate any of the enviromental factors in the accident, which could skew the information you get from the box. People will take the box as the only factors in the accident, discounting environmental variables and "human" factor of it, thereby not rendering the proper decision in a case.

-mike

rsholland

Need to think about this a bit more, and need to know more about both the "positives" and "negatives" before passing judgment.

In general, I feel if it makes life a bit better, then I'm for them. If, however, it turns into a case of "big brotherism," I'm against them.

I just don't know enough about the topic at this point to comment.

Bob

tincup47

I don't know about NY or NJ, but the inspection stations in Md are run by the state (not independents). They won't pass the vehicle if the light is on. Changing the engine management system is a lot more complex than changing an electronic odometer, so I won't argue the point.
I doubt if the doom and gloom scenarios presented would come to pass, it wouldn't be the sole evidence used. Witness statements, weather conditions, police investigation results would still be factors also. But it would clear up the picture with what the vehicle was actually doing as opposed to what the operator claimed it was doing. The costs of the current system are paid for by all of us, every lawsuit lost, defended or settled is passed directly to the consumers.
Would any of us like the airlines to drop their black boxes? It is an intrusion into the flight crews privacy (since most crashes end up as pilot error). I don't think so. We require next to no training to receive a drivers license, and 40-50,000 Americans are killed every year on our highways. I do find it interesting that post Sept. 11 there are many who advocate invasions of privacy to stop terrorism, but want no abridgement of privacy to save far more lives on our highways. I like Subarus (have to stay on topic)

[Deleted User]

I'm not saying that I disagree about the benefits you listed with using black boxes in cars, but with all due respect I have to disagree with your airlines analogy. Airlines are essentially a public service provided by private companies. They transport large numbers of citizens. Cars, on the other hand, are personal transportation devices.

A more fair anology would be to compare commercial planes to buses. Should we install black boxes on buses since they also transport large numbers of citizens? That would be a more accurate comparison.

If you want to stick with planes, then we should compare cars against small private craft, like a four-seater Cessna. Just for the record, small craft don't have black boxes.

Ty

ateixeira

Ken brought up a good point. Putting a black box in every single car would cost a fortune. The Beltway around DC has 6 danger spots, where most accidents happen. I'm sure it would be much cheaper to install 6 cameras vs. installing millions of black boxes.

OBDII is a real pain. Lots of Miata.netters will recommend certain model years based stricly on a lower level of OBD compliance. I don't think it's as effective as the designers had hoped. Putting one of those remote emissions sniffers to find the 5% of cars that are gross polluters would again be more cost effective.

I'm also in MD, and our state is unusually strict about emissions testing. Most cars are even put on dynos (but not AWD because they don't have dynos for that) for more realistic measures. You have to do it every 2 years regardless of the age of the car. Many states only require it once, when you buy it.

I follow your black-box-in-airplanes argument, but that's for-profit commercial transportation. Fine, put them in taxis (ever seen how cabbies drive in NYC?) and buses.

Testing for licensing should be better, but that has exactly nothing to do with this issue IMO.

-juice

ateixeira

Ty beat me to it (buses).

-juice

peterson10

I agree with you: I like Subarus too.
Oh yeah, I also agree with your reasonong on the black box issue. I'd add to it, but then I'd expose myself for the cynical, self-righteous social-conservative that I am. I do love Subarus though.

YetAnotherOpinion

tincup47

I agree that airlines are commercial, and that the comparison is not apples to apples. Neither are the number of people killed per mile of travel. Private automobiles are much more dangerous than commercial travel of any kind (even NY Taxi's).

fibber2

Be very afraid of Big Brother. As a foreign national, I'd be careful of that anti-government retoric!!! :-) You know I am only kidding....

I like Subaru's too....

Steve

nygreg

Although black boxes can be valuable for data, they will be misused by lawyers, etc. Imagine a manufacturer using them to blame SUV rollovers on excessive speed - 5 mph over limit. As for removing them, the data collection can be integrated with powertrain management so that you disable the car if you try to remove the "big brother" component.

As for airlines, pilots are "professional" drivers. Can't say that about 90% of people on the road today - add a cell phone, kids, bad tires (remember that?) a dog....oh, sorry that's a Subaru thing, and it's quite different. Hmmm, brings up a point - how does BBC (big brother chip) measure those factors?

Greg

ateixeira

Hey, your tax dollars at work. Emphasis on your, as in not mine. ;-)

Maybe they should mandate in car cameras, so they could really know the cause of the accident. I saw a Navigator driver reading the newspaper in bumper to bumper traffic this morning.

Forget a black box, I want a Polaroid of that fool.

-juice

tincup47

I work for a manufacturer, and despite the popular opinions, we don't want our customers killed through our negligence. Dead people aren't repeat customers and we also drive the same vehicles. I do think that the Explorer-Firestone debacle would have been lessened if there would have been hard crash data available to Ford, Firestone, and NHTSA from the start. It would have identified the problem sooner, given valuable info on driver reactions (which could lead to improvements in vehicle control reactions to inputs), and given a more complete picture of the dynamics involved in the incidents. Any technology improvements can be misused by people, does that mean we automatically reject it? I notice we are all on discussing this on the internet, one of the least secure commumication links from a privacy standpoint. Kind of ironic in my opinion.

ateixeira

I don't think a black box would have helped in the Explorer case, not unless it had input from a tire pressure monitor as well. Not to mention, once the tread separates, all bets are off.

I like the idea of gathering better info, but I really think that cameras at strategic locations will provide far more useful data than black boxes, and at huge savings.

Some cameras are already in place, I know the VA DOT has them so people can see how traffic looks on the web before heading home. If they can afford it for this simple convenience, I think they can use them to gather accident data, too.

-juice

storyteller

I doubt anyone here has enough information to talk intelligently about whether black boxes are cost effective and/or the "best" way to get more information about accidents. We just don't know. But we can still debate whether or not it is too intrusive on our privacy to have the box in our cars.

I am a fierce advocate of privacy rights and I blister companies like the phone company for thinking they have the right to sell private information about me to advertisers.

In a car, something different is at stake. I am not a free agent in my car. I have to coordinate my behavior with that of others so as to avoid hurting or killing folks. Driving is a social activity, not something we do in isolation. I give up some of my privacy (as by having a publically viewable license plate) every time I drive.

People are arguing that it is conceivable that some unprincipled lawyer might try to misuse black box data in court. Of course some will! They do this every day. Black boxes would at least offer the potential to bring more objective fact into a situation that is riddled with self-serving statements already.

I'm not saying black boxes are good. Could be awful. Everything depends on how intelligently they are designed and how well laws could be developed to control the ways they are used. I just don't automatically conclude that they'll do more harm than good.

Up with Subarus.

Yet another Steve

tincup47

It would have recorded the reactions of the driver and the dynamics of the vehicle after the tread separated. This could have been invaluable to engineers to analyze how the vehicle could be changed to minimize the potential of a disasterous rollover. I go back to aircraft, there have been many changes to aircraft structure and controls due to results of crash analysis. These may not have been uncovered any other way. The problem with cameras is that they can't be everywhere, and they only let you see what the lens sees. With the cost of electronics today, I don't think the cost would be prohibitive. The technology is already in some cars as we discuss this.

ateixeira

Well, the Corvette is a premium priced car. I doubt any mainstream cars have it.

AN had a tidbit about Acme Rent-a-Car, the complany that used GPS to fine its customers. The consumer protection commission of CT has told them to stop doing so, because it's simply not their job, and refund $13,000 or more.

But that proves how easy it would be to abuse such technology, whether it's a rental or an insurance company. Legislation to protect the consumer has to exist first. Then maybe people (myself included) would accept it.

-juice

paisan

tincup, what though if Ford instead used those driver's reactions against the drivers? Maybe they just froze up cause a tire blew, but the black box would have them being chastized unfairly. Again, drivers are not professionals, and cannot be held to the same standards as air-craft pilots. Bus drivers and truckers, yes, non-commercial vehicles, no.

-mike

tincup47

I doubt if that would have happened. If nothing else it would have pointed out the pitiful state of driver training and ability in this country. If the driver panicked and slammed on the brakes and oversteered, doesn't personal responsibility enter the picture? Not everyone who has had a flat tire ends up losing control of their vehicle. Is it the manufacturers obligation to pay for the drivers who give up control due to incompetence or driving over their heads? It is actually in everyone's interest to have the true facts, as litigation costs drive up the price of automobiles and all other consumer products.

paisan

The driver should be held responsible, but having a black box is not the way to do it. The next thing after that would be to put a V-chip in the black box electronically limiting the speed of a car to the speed limit in that zone, don't you think? It could have a transponder, like an ez-pass transponder, that would tell the car computer what the posted limit was, limiting the throttle to not allow the car to exceed that limit....

-mike

tincup47

I think you need to turn down the paranoia a bit

bluesubie

IMO, a tire pressure monitor wouldn't have helped since Ford recommended 26-28(??) psi's. Let that go down by 2-4 psi's and you've got a problem.

That even created panic among some Subaru owners.

I saw an S-class last night with a tire that looked about half pressure.
Hey, how about putting simple safety and maintenance questions on the driver's exam?

Patti started a hot topic here. :-)

-Dennis

tincup47

But it has been an interesting discussion.

rsholland

I'm leaning (strongly) towards Chuck's position, the more I hear. If it can help save lives, I see that as a good thing.

Bob

rsholland

What Chuck is saying, and I agree with this—it has the "potential" to offer some very worthwhile benefits. Yes, it also has the potential to do damage to personal freedoms, if the technology is misapplied.

However, after 9/11, I'm a bit less sensitive to the personal freedom issue. I would rather give the technology a chance first, and see what good can be accomplished, rather than slam the door shut, before anything can actually be tested and proven one way or the other.

My $.02.

Bob

ateixeira

It was much more than flat tires - it was tread separation. The tread would get caught up in the axles and seize up. It's not even close to a simple flat, nowhere near it.

Firestone had said 30psi, Ford lowered it to 26psi to lower the center of gravity.

Like I said, I may accept a black box if there were comprehensive laws in place to protect the consumer from people like Acme.

-juice

barresa62

Two things come to mind for me (bear in mind, I'm quite liberal...almost over the edge so..):

Re: Blackboxes, the bad outweighs the good IMO.

Re: 9/11, I'm now much more concerned about personal freedom as I see our Administration has crossed several lines that run the risk of making a mockery of our constitution. Again...IMHO.

Stephen
Ex-army brat in Seattle

paisan

What do cars have to do with 9/11? You guys are on crack, how does black-boxes in cars relate to terrorists?

Tincup: paranoid? If I wasn't a speeder why wouldn't having a speed limiter based on the posted limit be a problem? If it saves a life, by all means we should do it, no?

-mike

barresa62

I was just responding to Bob's comment about his feelings of personal freedom post 9/11. Didn't mean to strike a chord, :-) Actually, the black box thingie is related to the video surveliance of public spaces in Wash.D.C proper. There was some article how it's now possible to track one's visual activity in that area (greater than anything prior), something that was created in response to the 9/11 attacks. A lot of things are begun w/good intentions but tend to get into the wrong hands or used in a way that they were not originally intended to be used. The point is much like what could happen w/the black boxes. In other words I agree w/your argument.

Stephen

paisan

I get spazzed sometimes when people go off about 9/11. No harm done.



-mike

subaru_team

If/when Subaru starts talking about the technology, it'll help me be a bit rounded in providing my .02

I still feel very middle of the road (pun intended).

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I can't really post on the other forums (I don't think - I'll have to check), but I did read some of the thoughts Karen directed me to. I think this is going to be a very hot topic for awhile.

Patti

subearu

Saw a 'REUFUS' license plate on a XJ7 today.

-Brian

lucien2

Ummmm....did I miss a federal holiday here or something?? 55 posts since LUNCH!?!

:-)

Wish I could have joined in. I tried to make the chat but got back too late. Rats. Nighty night-

barresa62

No worries. I know how close you were to the 9/11 tragedy.

Stephen

tincup47

I was just referring to your thinking that the auto manufacturers and Goverment would conspire to install speed limiting technology, the manufacturers would fight that tooth and nail. I tend to think that our government, although misguided at times, has no grand plan to remove my pleasures or freedoms. My comments regarding 9/11 were to point out that sometimes we are willing to put aside privacy concerns for the greater good, and the irony that this somehow does not apply when thousands more lives are in the balance on an annual basis. I meant no offence to anyone.

grahampeters

G'day

This is a link to the article in Autoweb announcing the model range for Subaru Forester in 2002. Interesting to see they have specced the range with the 2.5lt but dropped the turbo for the present. Mights uggest what is feasible for the USA

http://www.autoweb.com.au/start_/showall_/id_SUB/doc_sub0202282/article.html

Cheers

Graham

paisan

My point on that is that if it can save lives why would anyone be opposed to it? It is for the greater good of the country, etc. etc. It is just a more extreme case of the black box, and it would save 99% more lives than a black box would save, no?

-mike

p0926

Wow Patti, you sure opened up a can of worms.

IMO, Some of you folks need to take your anti-paranoia medicine. Cases such as the car rental company trying to fine their customers for speeding based on active monitoring is an obvious invasion of privacy and won't (and didn't) stand up in court. However, a device that passively monitors data that can only be recovered with the owners permission in the case of an accident doesn't strike me as particularly threatening.

The police already can usually figure out if excessive speed caused an accident based on skid marks etc. A black box would just provide more accurate information.

There is of course the slippery slope argument where once you give up a little freedom you make it that much easier for "them" to take away a lot more. Still, I don't really see it as a major threat to personal freedom.

-Frank P.

paisan

1) "However, a device that passively monitors data that can only be recovered with the owners permission in the case of an accident doesn't strike me as particularly threatening. "

This is the first mention of having to have the owner's permission, if that is the case then it *may* be ok, since I would just refuse to have it used and therefore render it useless

2) "Cases such as the car rental company trying to fine their customers for speeding based on active monitoring is an obvious invasion of privacy and won't (and didn't) stand up in court. "

I don't want to have to go to court if this device is used against me, just because you win in court doesn't mean it wasn't costly (loss of wages, lawyer fees, etc. etc.)

-mike

cptplt

that car rental company triggered a state law banning their practice!

rsholland

Indeed it is interesting that you folks now get the 2.5L in the Forester, like what we've had all along. I wonder what's in store for Euro-spec models?

Sounds like Subaru may be trying to standardize export models as much as possible.

Bob