For the "black box", many of us have heard, the most commonly heard is the "black box" on the plane, but in fact, today's "black box" has been popularized to ships, trains, cars and other means of transport. Today, we are mainly talking about cars, or more precisely, the black box on passenger cars, that is, EDR (that is, Event Data Recorder, automotive event data recording system). Because not long ago, GB 7258--2017 "Motor Vehicle Operation Safety Technical Conditions" National Standard No. 2 amendment order was issued, which clearly requires that from January 1, 2022, newly produced passenger cars must be equipped with EDR.
Similar to the black box on the aircraft, the automotive EDR can be used to record the key data of the car's operation in the three stages before, during and after the collision (speed, ABS status, steering wheel steering angle, seat belt status, airbag status, vehicle braking state, etc.), which can effectively restore the real state before and after the accident. Automotive EDR has long been popularized in foreign markets, such as South Korea since December 2015 required mandatory installation of new cars; the United States requires 99% of new cars listed in 2019 to be equipped with EDR; in addition, the European Union and other countries and regions will also pass regulations in the next few years to force automakers to install EDR for new cars.
In a word, the future of cars equipped with EDR has become inevitable.
Why do cars need "black boxes"?
Remember the Tesla "brake door" incident that made a lot of noise in the first half of this year? The specific course of the incident will not be described in detail today, but it must be said that to this day, there is no authoritative and fair conclusion about the Tesla "brake door" incident. Although this matter seems to have faded at present, the previous mutual ridicule between consumers and Tesla, each other's opinions, endless debates, and the resulting industry discussions are still fresh in the ears. Tesla is not without EDR installed on the car, moreover, Tesla in the United States and Canada official website has launched the EDR data extraction kit, and after the "brake door" incident, Tesla also launched the EDR query software on its OFFICIAL website in the United States, but at present this service is only open in North America, and domestic Tesla users are temporarily unavailable.
In fact, before Tesla's "brake door" incident, there have been two well-known "brake door" incidents in history, one is Audi in 1986 in the United States, and the other is Toyota in the United States in 2009. The result of these two events on the two car companies can be said to be very large, even fatal, at that time Audi to solve the crisis was very unsuccessful, and today's domestic Tesla, began to be domineering, and then the US government intervened, and finally Audi was forced to carry out a large-scale recall under pressure. Although the final judicial judgment is not the reason for Audi, but because the whole process has gone through a long time, the goodwill of the Audi brand was eventually consumed, and it has been in a slump ever since, and to this day, Audi has not eased up in the US market.
And Toyota due to the relative success of the response, Toyota Akio bowed and apologized, and did not argue with public opinion, did not argue, did not apologize; and actively self-examination, and finally there was no danger, smoothly through the crisis, but also paid a great price, direct losses of 3.6 billion US dollars, the total loss is as high as 15.1 billion US dollars (including the cost of recalling the processing of products and the cost of compensation to customers, etc.), and led to Toyota's 71 consecutive years of profit history ended in 2008, in addition, Toyota has also ceded its dominant position in the North American market. Let's put aside the conspiracy theory, Audi and Toyota in the United States, Tesla did not encounter in China, on the one hand, perhaps the unsound regulations, on the other hand, may indeed be unable to find out or analyze whether Tesla in the "brake door" incident behind the data is not a problem, poor or our domestic batch of accident consumers.
People can lie, but EDR is an impartial accident narrator, and an objective and true technical judgment basis is also conducive to the judicial organs to make fair judgments. If we add perfect regulations, we can judge similar "brake door" incidents or some collision and scratch accidents, thus avoiding protracted war of words between consumers, public opinion and car companies; of course, it will also avoid the occurrence of "oolong accident records".
It should be noted that the era of fuel vehicles, because most fuel vehicles are based on mechanical architecture, once an accident occurs, in the case of not destroying the accident site, through accident survey and accident analysis, especially the addition of various driving recorders, it can comprehensively restore the accident scene; but now the electrification of automobiles continues to deepen, especially intelligent electric vehicles, vehicles are developed based on electrification architecture, which complex electronic control systems, automatic driving technology, network information interconnection, etc., need to be complete data records, EDR has become a just-needed measure.
With the development of intelligent cars, there are more and more electronic control systems, the operation is becoming more and more complex, and various sensors, electronic controllers (ECUs), drivers and control program software are constantly being loaded into the car, which brings a new driving experience, but also increases the challenge of vehicle safety. Once the intelligent car causes a traffic accident due to the electronic control system and the automatic driving system, then it will become very difficult to collect evidence and pursue responsibility, the collection and analysis of accident-related factors is extremely complicated, and the definition of responsibility is very challenging to the wisdom of all parties. Just like the previous Tesla "brake door" incident, although there is an EDR-like device on its car, the data can only be extracted and parsed by the car manufacturers themselves, which lacks credibility, and so far because there is no exact accident conclusion, it cannot convince the public.
In recent years, car companies and consumers have been more respectful of the installation of driving recorders, and with the improvement of the field of view of the ADAS front view camera (100 ° and above), the driving recorder function is also becoming one of the reusable functions of the ADAS system. Moreover, after Tesla's "brake door", Bydio's Zhao Changjiang, who is in charge of the preparation of high-end brands, once said on social platforms that a camera should be added to the throttle brake, which can be called a "foot driving recorder" to avoid controversy. Ideal Auto CEO Li Xiang said that in response to the possible problems of ADAS and brake failure, it is recommended that the government regulatory authorities put forward more specific regulatory requirements for car companies, including: let models with ADAS also be equipped with driving recorders; the picture recorded by the driving recorder must simultaneously show whether ADAS is running; in addition to the ADAS running status display, it is also necessary to display the corresponding basic work status of throttle, brake, steering and other basic work conditions in the ADAS state, and people must also display these working states when driving.
With the current technology, there is no difficulty in achieving the above, but this time the state is mandatory to install EDR is a solution once and for all, because a separate driving recorder records only video information, GPS data, etc., and cannot record the operating status of the vehicle. And some human factors caused by traffic accidents, such as overtaking, fatigue driving, drunk driving and other incorrect driving behavior, or some hidden malicious porcelain touching behavior, etc., sometimes there are driving recorders and ADAS is also difficult to avoid, or it is difficult to say clearly for a while, if there is EDR equipment and ADAS system reuse the driving record function of the auxiliary, I believe that it can greatly reduce the probability that the owner is difficult to obtain evidence and the manufacturer is wronged.
Why is EDR more reliable?
Let's first briefly understand the working principle of EDR: when the car starts, EDR is powered on, which can read and record the status data of each device on the car in real time through the CAN bus, and can respond to the recording of the collision state within 20ms of the collision of the vehicle, usually recording the state of 10 seconds before the collision and 5.3 seconds after the collision, excellent software algorithm combined with high-precision acceleration sensor, can identify lateral / longitudinal collision accidents, accurately determine the collision event, Thus knowing the state of the car at every moment.
It should be noted that EDR will immediately lock the event at the moment of the collision of the car, and store key data information such as the speed and braking state of the vehicle in Flash. Even if a serious accident causes the external power supply to suddenly disconnect, the backup power supply built into the EDR can ensure that the EDR is running normally until the data is stored, without worrying about data loss due to sudden power failure. The stored accident data will be judged to be locked data and will not be overwritten by subsequent accident data.
Written in the end: Comprehensively, car EDR is a vehicle owner, forensic party and car manufacturers are beneficial equipment, with the rapid development of intelligent cars and automatic driving technology, the identification of automobile traffic accidents will go to a more complex situation, and car EDR can be complete, accurate and reliable record of accident moments of data, if coupled with the driving recorder and ADAS system reuse driving record function, then, the definition of responsibility in future traffic accidents, or will no longer be a problem.
Note: The picture in this article comes from the network