[klayfish]

It's nothing new. Some automakers have been putting these "black boxes" in their cars since the early 1990s. It's just that the news is getting out now. Many new cars today have them in it. They are not traditional black boxes in the sense that most people know. For the most part, they "monitor" the vehicle operations, such as all the things going on inside the motor, the throttle position, speed, brakes, and such. The amount it actually records is very short. When the vehicle detects a collision or similar event, it takes a roughly 5 second (depending on manufacturer) "snapshot" of the events. So it will have the speed, throttle, brake, decel forces, etc....right up to the point of impact. On most cars, once this happens, the box has to be replaced, because that snapshot is frozen into the memory bank, and it would not be able to record another event. Unless the vehicle has some kind of GPS system in it, it cannot record the vehicle location.
The automakers are very, very protective of this information. It is very difficult to get. Some, such as BMW and Mercedes, won't give anything to ANYONE. You have to subpeona them in court to get the records, and even then, it is a fight.
I think before long, they will be standard equipment in all cars. Comes along with modern technology, I guess.

Steve