Soon, cars to give crash evidence against their drivers

Those driving modern vehicles will have to be a extra vigilant now onwards, as event data recorder (EDR) installed in their car can provide investigators exact details about their driving behaviour, in case of a crash.

Police will soon be trained to use this technology, which can provide evidence against the driver, though for now it will only be applicable to a limited number of cars built after 2000.

EDRs, installed in many modern cars, stores crash information in a similar way to the ''black box' flight recorder used in aircraft.

Sergeant Brett Samuel of Sydney's Metropolitan Crash Investigation Unit says police have dabbled in using EDRs and that their use in investigations will soon be common, the Age reported.

"It's coming," Samuel said.

"We have done it but it hasn't held up in court yet. The technology has been streamlined so that we will be able to use that evidence in court," he added.

But a transport engineer and the secretary of the Australasian and South Pacific Association of Collision Investigators, Colin Wingrove, says there are still 'legal problems' with data retrieval: questions of privacy, intellectual property and evidence management that have not yet been addressed.

"It is a whole new area that the public has no idea of," Wingrove said.

"I don't even think the government has thought about this properly."

"Over a number of years it's started to worry me; I have reservations about these things," he added. (ANI)