The Role of Vehicle Black Box Data in Florida Car Accident Claims

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Car Accident

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Many modern vehicles come equipped with an Event Data Recorder (EDR), otherwise known simply as a “black box.” These black boxes constantly generate and store data pertaining to vehicle health and driving habits. This means that they can be important sources of evidence when you decide to file a car accident claim after a crash.

What Black Boxes Record During a Crash

In general, vehicle black boxes record driving data, occupant information and performance metrics. When a crash occurs, the most important data stored within the black box includes:

Information about the vehicle’s speed and acceleration
Brake usage and force measurements
Throttle position
Steering angle
Crash severity

The black box can also reveal seatbelt usage, airbag deployment and various forms of pre-crash data. All of this information can reveal a driver’s habits and their behavior leading up to the crash, which may strengthen your claim if you decide to pursue compensation for your damages.

How Black Box Data Can Support Your Car Accident Claim

The black box data from your own vehicle can strengthen your claim, but so can the data from the other driver’s vehicle. It is worthwhile to explore both sources of data for evidence you can use, if possible.

Your black box can show that you were obeying traffic laws and speed limits, observing good safety practices and making a reasonable effort to avoid a crash. In other words, it may prove that you upheld your duty of care to other drivers and that you did not contribute to the occurrence of an accident.

The other driver’s black box might show that they were speeding, swerving or that they failed to brake in time to avoid a collision. These behaviors can be evidence that the other driver violated their duty of care toward you and that their negligence makes them liable for your damages.

What Florida Law Says About Accessing Vehicle Data

Florida law acknowledges that vehicle black box data may contain private information. In an effort to protect individual privacy, the law requires the owner’s permission or a court order to access black box data. This means that you cannot automatically access someone else’s black box data even if you get into an accident with them.

During negotiations for a car accident claim, both sides typically bring all relevant evidence to the table in a process known as “discovery.” Crash data from a vehicle black box is highly relevant during this process, but Florida’s privacy laws do not necessarily force either party to make this information public.

Your car accident attorney can use a subpoena or court order to attempt to gain access to the other driver’s black box data. This is not guaranteed to succeed, and it may lengthen the negotiation process, but keep in mind that the other party’s refusal to share data may strengthen your claim that they are at fault for the accident.

How a Car Accident Attorney Uses Black Box Data

Car accident attorneys have experience investigating dozens or hundreds of accident cases. They can leverage that expertise to analyze black box data and reconstruct the crash. They build accurate moment-to-moment timelines of what happened and identify exactly where the vehicles were in relation to one another when the collision occurred.

Local lawyers also have connections with respected experts in the area. Your legal team can call in accident reconstruction experts, mechanical engineers or behavioral experts who can help nail down the sequence of events. These expert testimonies can stand as powerful evidence during negotiations or courtroom litigation.

In many cases, the greatest purpose of black box data is to corroborate other types of evidence. There are times when witness statements or photographs can be compelling, but not quite able to support your claim on their own. Your lawyer can use black box data in tandem with those other forms of evidence to present a more sturdy argument on your behalf.

Call Our Car Accident Lawyers Today

At Kogan & DiSalvo Personal Injury Law, our car accident lawyers spare no effort to explore every option for getting you the compensation you deserve. We respect the role that vehicle black box data can play in complex car accident cases. From proving the other driver’s fault to establishing your innocence, we use this powerful tool to the fullest.