Why Is the Black Box Important in Truck Accidents?

It isn’t just airplanes that have black boxes these days. Today, cars and trucks have an event data recorder (EDR) embedded under their dashboards. It records all the details of the vehicle’s speed, braking, direction of travel, and more.

If you are involved in an accident with a big rig, the black box data can be essential to your case. But your time to obtain the information is limited, so you need someone who can get it quickly and ask the right questions immediately.

What Is a Black Box?

The event data recorder (EDR), or black box, is an electronic device attached to the truck’s onboard computer. It records several data points about the truck’s driving performance, including:

• Hours of service and driving hours
• Miles drove per day and in total
• Average speed and rate of acceleration
• Direction of travel
• Engine performance
• Braking patterns

The black box data can be downloaded and presented as evidence in court or for insurance purposes. It can also be used for crash reconstruction and corroborate the driver’s or witness’s testimony following an accident.

How Do I Get the Data from the Black Box?

Like the driver’s written log, the data in the black box is documentary evidence and needs to be provided after an accident. Unlike the written log, neither you nor the driver can put it in the copy machine and make a copy. This will be when you need an attorney who can obtain the services of a professional who can download the information if the company does not provide it.

The black box is a small computer with a limited hard drive. It does not have a lot of space to store information, so it constantly overwrites data. The maximum time it can save data is about thirty days. This means that after an accident, you have about that long to request the black box data before it will be overwritten in the ordinary course of time. Some older models rewrite the data much more frequently than that.

Trucking companies have no legal requirement to preserve their black box data. You will need to notify them that you want that information from them, or your attorney will need to do so.

How Can This Help My Case?

Accidents involving big rigs are incredibly destructive to cars and their passengers. You may not know what happened during the accident if you have been seriously injured. It may not be immediately apparent who was at fault in the tangle of metal and plastic on the road. The data from the black box can help your attorney and the insurance company determine the following:

• The direction of travel. The black box information will show which way the truck traveled during impact. This can be important if it is unclear who had the right of way or who may have been in the roadway.
• The speed of the truck at the time of the impact. If the driver claims they were traveling at the speed limit, braking, or stopped at a light, the black box data can verify whether they were.
• Maintenance issues. Many big rig cases hinge on maintenance problems such as faulty brakes or transmissions. The black box tracks the truck’s maintenance and can pinpoint the last time the vehicle was in for service.
• Driver fatigue. Because the data is kept automatically, it accurately records how many hours the driver is on the road. Tired drivers are a major cause of accidents, and the black box prevents the fudging of records.

How We Can Help

Because the black box is an automatic record kept by a computer, it cannot be altered or tampered with. Because of this, trucking companies are very reluctant to surrender the data unless they are forced to.

There is no legal requirement that truckers or companies preserve the data following an accident. The black boxes overwrite their data about every 30 days. Even if they are not at fault, the company has no reason to give the victim in an accident this information unless someone requires them to.

That’s where we come in. At Abel Law Firm, our attorneys will communicate with the trucking company immediately after your accident, letting them know we want the black box data immediately. If necessary, we can contact a private data company for you and have the information downloaded by professionals.

Contact Us

If you’ve been injured in a big-rig accident, you need someone on your side to get this data for you. Contact Abel Law Firm at (405) 239-7046 to speak with a truck accident attorney, and let us start immediately.