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Letter to the Editor

Inside the Black Box:

How accident-related vehicle data is collected and used could profoundly change the Collision Repair Industry

About 60 seconds after Helen Connolly's car was struck by another vehicle, information about the accident was automatically transmitted by her vehicle's telematics technology to a central call center. That center, in turn, called 9-1-1 dispatchers, telling them where the accident occurred, how many people were in Helen's vehicle, whether they were wearing seat belts, and the severity of the crash, based on the speed of Helen's vehicle, her braking, etc.

Similar information could then quickly be made available to Helen's car dealer who wanted to contact her about scheduling repairs or perhaps looking at a new car. Her insurer, too, could use this information to access liability in the claim - and to estimate or negotiate what level of injuries or auto damage they should expect or for which they should pay.

Sound far-fetched or overly futuristic? Although the situation above is fictitious, the technology is not. GM says 400,000 of its 2004 model-year vehicles will include an advanced automatic crash notification system that will notify the OnStar call center when a moderate to severe frontal, rear or side-impact crash occurs, regardless of airbag deployment. The new system also provides crash severity information to OnStar call center advisors, who relay it to 9-1-1 dispatchers.

And this past summer Ford launched a pilot of its "Automatic Crash Notification" technology, which similarly transmits crash information on whether the airbags were deployed, which seats in the vehicle were occupied and if the occupants were wearing seat belts. Sensors and global positioning satellites determine vehicle orientation and location, Ford says of the system, which is installed on 500 police cruisers in 23 Texas communities as part of a 2-year pilot program.

Linking such crash data to claims costs really would just require collecting it over time, right? Well, this past spring, IBM Corporation, Insurance Services Office Inc., and the Safety Intelligence Systems Corporation formed a partnership for the delivery of such crash information to a global crash database launched by the end of this year.

So what will all this mean to repairers and insurers?

How they work

Scott Palmer is among those excited about the possibilities that the data from a vehicle's "black box" - the airbag control module under the driver's seat - offers. Palmer is president and CEO of Injury Sciences, a 5-year-old company that helps "claim ad-justers understand accident and injury causation." He says at least five of the Top 20 in-surance carriers are working toward putting airbag module data to use by their fraud or claims departments.

Unlike flight data recorders, automotive black boxes only begin recording when an accident appears imminent.

"There are accelerometers in the vehicle that wake the system up just prior to a crash," Palmer said. "The system wakes up and determines the energy that's in the crash, because that's the energy that creates the damage to the car. Once it is calculated, the system determines whether this crash is severe enough to deploy the airbag. But once the system wakes up, the data is recorded whether or not the bag is deployed."

What data is recorded? It varies somewhat by vehicle make and model, and the systems likely record information accessible to the automaker but not to the aftermarket. But in general the systems record whether the driver's seat belt was being used, if the passenger airbag had been disabled, and five seconds of pre-impact data (in 10-millisecond increments): the speed of the vehicle, engine speed, brake status and throttle position. It also records detailed vehicle deceleration information or what is sometimes referred to as "crash pulse."

"If you're an insurance company, this is invaluable data when you begin to link it with the environment in which the crash occurred in determining how an accident occurred," Palmer said. "It can be vitally important to the adjudication of casualty claims and determining fault and what injuries should or should not be expected. Black box data is to crash litigation as DNA is to paternity suits. It tells us what happened."

Palmer said if the airbag deploys, the information is permanently written to the module. If the crash is such that the airbag does not deploy, the data will be erased from the module after 250 ignition cycles - on average, the equivalent of about six weeks. If during that time, however, the vehicle is in a subsequent collision with a higher severity, that data will override the previous data.

Systems are currently on the market to "harvest" airbag module data from almost all General Motors vehicles manufactured after 1994, and from 2000 and newer Ford Taurus, Sable, Crown Victoria and Windstar models. Other manufacturers are reportedly being added to the mix.

"With the addition of Ford, 15 percent of all private passenger vehicles on the road today have harvestable black box information," Palmer said. "And that percentage will increase, according to our estimates, even if no other manufacturers were added, by 2-3 percent per year. So there is a critical mass of this information available, and its availability is increasing at a significant rate."

That, he said, along with his company's estimates that use of the data could save insurance companies $4 billion to $7 billion a year, has attracted the interest of a number of insurers.

"There are strategies already in place and deployed by the insurance industry to collect this data on a systematic basis," Palmer said.

Harvesting the data

The collection or harvesting process for this data is relatively simple, Palmer said. Vetronix, based in Santa Barbara, Calif., currently sells a product called "CDR System" which downloads and converts data from a vehicle's black box into a decipherable format on a Windows-based PC. The system comes with several different cables that can be used to link into the vehicle's under-dash OBD-II port or directly into the under-seat module.

Learning how to harvest the data takes less than an hour, Palmer said.

"The actual harvesting activities take about 10 to 15 minutes," he said. "However, if the occupant compartment is compromised, and the harvesting portals are damaged or inaccessible, then you may have an hour or two involved in pulling the seat and making that hardware accessible. So in the more severe losses or total losses, the time could be substantially higher."

Palmer's company offers a secure website to which airbag module data can be uploaded and stored, as well as software to help insurers analyze such data. Not surprisingly, he views harvesting such data as a good business opportunity for collision repair shops.

"Your work products today include photos and the estimate, but now your work product can also include the black box data," Palmer said. "Those companies that see the opportunity to leverage their repair activities to an investigative service for the insurance industry, will be providing [insurers] with a value-added service that insurers are paying a high cost to accomplish otherwise."

Privacy and other concerns

Obviously, the technical issues about the data and how to access it are relatively straightforward. The implications of the collection and use of the data, however, are complex and far-reaching. Who owns the data that has been recorded? Who is authorized to obtain it? If a shop harvests the data for an insurer, can the shop be held liable for how that data is used?

Pat McGuire is an Illinois-based attorney in private practice who counts among his clients 75 collision repair shops in that state. McGuire said before a shop harvests any such data, a number of issues should be considered.

"First, who is asking for the information?" McGuire said. "Under almost every insurance policy, the insured has the obligation to cooperate with the insurance company in making relevant data available. If the insurer wants [black box data] in a first-party scenario, the insurer can probably get it."

Third-party claims, however, are very different.

"If it's not the person's own insurance company [asking for the data], you have to be very careful about disclosing any information," McGuire said. "I think it could really come back to haunt a shop if it was determined that they harvested or gave away information to someone who didn't necessarily have a right to it."

McGuire said shops who harvest black box data had better be prepared to defend their training and processes in court as the opposing side is likely to question how the data was gathered, stored or transmitted to prevent possible tampering.

Someone - either the shop or insurer - also needs to notify the vehicle owner about the harvesting, and the shop should obtain a signed release from the vehicle owner, McGuire said.

Lastly, he cautions shops to consider some of the possible longer-term ramifications of black box data.

"People cannot be naive," he said. "It will be used to deny or negotiate consumer's claims. Ultimately, I think the insurance industry has a goal of saying, 'If a Ford Mustang rear-ends a Ford Escort, this is the cost it should be to repair the vehicle.' I don't know if they can make that leap of logic, but I think that's what they see some of this information being used for."

An issue to watch

Palmer agreed with many of McGuire's assertions, saying it is clear that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and others believe the airbag module data belongs to the vehicle owner. But he also cautioned that the data and its harvesting should not be viewed as a negative for consumers or repairers.

"Just as that information could be used to deny a claim, it also could be used equally as well to substantiate a claim," he said. "The data is just the data."

He agreed that in the future it will likely be used as "the basis for questioning a repair estimate," but said that just makes it all the more important for shops to get involved with the harvesting early on.

"For those who are most familiar with this information, who learn how to use it best, it will become a source to substantiate the basis for repair expense," Palmer said. "Because when you think about it, statistics don't tell us how much it should cost to repair a car. The energy in a collision tells us what should be damaged and what it should cost to repair a car. So this information can be valuable to those who are experienced with it to substantiate repair estimates."

McGuire agreed the data is neutral, but still foresees problems with how it will be used.

"I think everyone would be well-advised to stay on top of this topic to see where it goes," McGuire said. "Because there's no telling what the ramifications could be for your industry and for your own personal insurance claims, and how it's going to affect your customers long-term."

"When you can look at it, shop to shop, you can do some comparisons, and you don't know until you do that whether you're high or low or doing okay," he said.   o

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