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If you bought your car within the last few years, then it almost certainly does have a so-called black box. These devices are technically called event data recorders (EDRs), and they can keep track of everything from how fast you were traveling prior to an accident event to whether or not you were wearing your seatbelt at the time. And according to the NHTSA, 96 percent of the model year, 2012 vehicles produced for sale in the United States contained some form of EDR.
Since event data recorders are highly integrated into the electronic control systems of the cars they monitor, and many are even built right into airbag control units, simply unplugging or turning them off isn’t really an option.
So, where do you go from there?
If your car or truck was built within the last few years, then you can almost bank on it having some form of EDR. Even going back ten years, roughly half of all new vehicles sold in the United States had these black boxes installed. So how, exactly, do you tell if your car or truck has one?
The easiest way to find out whether your car has a black box is to scour the owner’s manual. Although the NHTSA refused to order manufacturers or dealers to disclose the presence of EDRs when the agency first ruled on the matter in 2006, it did issue a regulation that requires some form of disclosure in the owner’s manual. If there is absolutely no mention of an EDR in your owner’s manual, and your car was built after the 2006 ruling, then you may not have a black box in your car.
Of course, it’s important to remember that the 2006 ruling gave automakers six years to comply. That means cars and trucks built between 2006 and 2012 could feasibly have EDRs without any form of disclosure. And one year after the ruling became enforceable, 96 percent of all new vehicles in the US came with EDRs installed anyway.
Turning off, disabling, or removing an EDR is typically difficult or impossible. The difficulty stems from the fact that these aren’t standardized systems, which means that the location and appearance of an EDR will vary from one make to another and even within different models produced by the same OEM. The other issue is that EDRs are often built into an airbag control module, secondary restraint system (SRS) module, or electronic control module (ECM), which means they can’t be removed or tampered with at all.
Even when a vehicle has a discrete component that only functions as an EDR, it is almost always tied into the airbags or SRS in some way. This is particularly true of newer vehicles, and you may find that even if you manage to locate a discrete EDR, your airbags may deploy as soon as you start messing around with it.
If you’re really serious about disabling or removing your EDR, then your best bet is to look for someone else who has already successfully done so with a vehicle that precisely matches the make, model, and year of yours and then proceed from there.
Of course, there are potential consequences of tampering with an EDR that go above and beyond accidentally deploying your airbags. For instance, tampering with these devices is actually illegal in some jurisdictions. Just to be safe, you should always check your local laws before messing around with your EDR.
Although it may be difficult or even impossible to disable the EDR in your car, you always have the option of buying a used vehicle that doesn’t have one. In some cases, you’ll have to dig pretty deep, but there are other automakers that only jumped on the bandwagon relatively recently. For instance, General Motors was already installing EDRs in most of its vehicles in 1998.
While there is no comprehensive list of vehicles that do or do not have EDRs, one somewhat counterintuitive place to start your research is with the companies that build the devices that interface with EDRs, since they provide lists of vehicles that their equipment is compatible with. Companies that offer accident investigation services also provide lists of vehicles that they are capable of pulling data from. Find a vehicle that isn’t on one of those lists, and you may have found yourself a car that doesn’t have a black box.