Busted, insurance are now onto ya...

[ReaperSS]

Black boxes in cars.....
http://i59.tinypic.com/2ylmidi.jpg

[Socrates]

1978 FTW! No computers but not as safe :(

[Joe]

If someone wanted to be really dodgy, they could easily attach a current (i.e. a battery) to the airbag module and fry it good and proper.

But that's if someone was really dodgy.. none of us here would EVER do anything of the sort.

[d1mitch]

lol good thing i dont have airbags. i like how the driver somehow mistakenly went from 3rd to 1st...

[MadDocker]

Missed third and into first. Not third to first.

Frightening how monitored our lifes have become really. Not a lot of things that someone cant track, log, document etc.

[JME]

Irrefutable evidence still needs to be verified beyond reasonable doubt. As is the case with insurance companies, you have to fight a little.

[Uber XR]

Toyota has been doing this for about 8 years funnily enough.

[ReaperSS]

Could you claim that they have no right to touch it as its your property. It only becomes their property once a write off has been signed off. He should of got his lawyer onto it but i spose insurance company could bring out the fraud card and a warrant to get the info could be brought into the situation

[Tre-Cool]

Even with that proof, to me it means nothing. IF I pay for insurance and I bin a car. I claim. How the car was damaged is irrelevant.

Seems like a stupid publicity stunt by RAC to me.

[-Luke-]

I think the whole story is BS. it's wrapped up in fair to neater bundle for me.

It's pitched at brown cardigan wearing camry driving pensioners who like to feel secure in the knowledge that all those nasty high powered car driving hoons will get busted by this "new technology"

Also why would speed be recorded in MPH in a (i'm assuming) Bosch unit fitted to a locally built/delivered car?

As mentioned above how did they have the right to obtain the data from a privately owned vehicle without consent?

[Buckets]

Even with that proof, to me it means nothing. IF I pay for insurance and I bin a car. I claim. How the car was damaged is irrelevant.

Seems like a stupid publicity stunt by RAC to me.

Doesn't work like that. Insurance are like Casinos the pingpingpingpings set the game up so they always win in the end. As such insurance policies always have clauses that get them off the hook in the event the claim potentially stems from an illegal activity such as pissy driving, speeding, even "illegal modifications" can see a policy voided. They also prohibit claims stemming from legal activities such as participation in motorsport ect ect.

Sure the RAC are making a song & dance about it for PR purposes but they are entitled to deny the claim if they believe they can prove the terms of the policy have been breached by the claimant.

Oddly enough if the bloke was more upfront they may not have questioned it in such detail.

[volt_bite]

Usually accidents are from someone doing something illegal though. Otherwise it wouldn't be an accident.

[SimonR32]

91.7km/hr at redline in first gear? I have no idea of diff ratios in HSV, are they that long standard?

I guess you could also argue wheel speed isn't vehicle speed but no doubt he was being a douche

[Buckets]

Most are the result of lapses not a deliberate act. No one (well not many people at least) would jump in their car and decide to wreck the thing. Accidents (fender bender, dumb ass useless / inattentive driver spec shit) are just that, crashes clearly stemming from deliberate actions which aren't covered by the policy (like doing 40 km/h over the limit) can't really be put in the same basket

[mehow2g]

Missed third and into first. Not third to first.

Frightening how monitored our lifes have become really. Not a lot of things that someone cant track, log, document etc.

Just wait till "hoon cams" are in every suburb.

[S85FI]

This man.

Id question why the readjng is on mph and not kmh? And tell them to stick it and I was doing g 57kmh.

Maybe trecool knows more about them? Can you chose mph or does it default mph? In my car it was all in German and had to use Google translator. .. haha


Irrefutable evidence still needs to be verified beyond reasonable doubt. As is the case with insurance companies, you have to fight a little.

[S85FI]

What Simon 32 said... see now we can bring in reasonable doubt. ... as Buckets would say. "insurance eat a dick"

[Lonewolf]

moral of the story, should have been on the brake whilst throttle was at 100%

[satch]

Even with that proof, to me it means nothing. IF I pay for insurance and I bin a car. I claim. How the car was damaged is irrelevant.

Seems like a stupid publicity stunt by RAC to me.

I agree, however I would assume most insurance PDS would have something to the effect of no cover if you were doing something unlawful.

[Tsunamix]

I use an HSV 8: 3.71 LSD Diff in my dunnydore. 6100 RPM = 70kmH. - 4L60 Auto.

Considering 6 Speed manual first gear is lower ratio than auto, there is something very dodgy going on in that article.

Second gear is more believable.

I think the digital records are kept by the BCM, not the ACM....

[ReaperSS]

I was told from people in the know that even dealers cant acsess this info. You have to contact holden direct or send off the module to them so how the hell can insurance companys do it????

[Tre-Cool]

Yeah most safety features in pretty much all cars are bosch units.

The module they are "talking" about would be the SDM. They are supposably a throw away item once the airbags have deployed. if they didn't deploy. no recordings could of been taken. (however they can actually be cleared and reused)

I didn't bring my laptop to work which has a spreadsheet for rpm/wheel speed. But yeah it does seem strange they have it in mph when the Germans use the metric system like us.

It would seem entirely plausible he did a 1-2 shift. then went for 3rd and hit 1st again.

However until I get home tonight to verify with my excel file, I wont completly deny the data.

[Joe]

As mentioned above, MPH?

I reckon they've just fudged some information from the USA, to pander to the grey cardigan parade. These also happen to be the people who invest the most money into RAC (home, contents, car insurance and breakdown service fees)

[SSICK]

Was able to get over 90km out of first gear in my old SS ute.

[LostInTheWoods]

this all smells like bullshit to me, and just copied a case/scenario from the USA,

However, this has an interesting amount of info here:
http://www.crashspeed.com/airbag_control_module.htm

Especially as to who owns the data (in CA anyway)

[Uber XR]

I was told from people in the know that even dealers cant acsess this info. You have to contact holden direct or send off the module to them so how the hell can insurance companys do it????

Correct. Insurance companies can request the info but need court approval to get it. So if they did do it most likely a court was involved or the RAC acted illegally. well that is for Toyota atleast

[Slip_]

Not quite.


However members of the TCU had recently attended a conference on motor vehicle theft & fraud where there was a presentation on how it was possible to download and access information stored in certain vehicles air bag control module

Vehicle would have been made available to the insurer and consequently any assessors or investigators.

Australians are probably the most protected domestic insurance consumers worldwide, we are armed with a piece of legislation called the insurance contracts act. A particularly nice bit of consumer protection. Give it a read.

[Tsunamix]

I know the Records kept in my VT2 are in MPH - because the engine was designed in the states. Initial programming matches country of engine origin.

That may not be applicable to other cars.

What bothers me is that the rear wheel speed is indicated by the cars detection / speedo system - which may have absolutley nothing to do with road speed. Doing a skid = indicated speed 140kPH when road speed is more like 20kph.

[S85FI]

Even better when road speed is walking pace :)

[Tre-Cool]

country of engine origin wont mean shit now, if it ever did. ALL GM operating system code is now in metric.

none of the data actually makes much sense really. when you consider the time interval between what they show.

The only thing that makes sense is a compression lock on the motor/driveline and as such the dudes foot went straight to the floor from sudden deceleration.

compression lock aside and apart from say wheel spin being the only reasonable assumption is there data has been manipulated.

for example, my compression lock theory makes sense as between -2.5 & -2 seconds the car drops (3mph) 4.8kph & 450rpm. (if we stay with the mph claim)

in the next half second @ -1.5 sec it bangs off limiter & gains (8mph) 13kph & 1800rpm. Which is not what i would expect if you shifted from 2nd-1st gear at the speeds indicated (more like the 8kph difference). coz there is sure as shit no way it gained that much speed in half a second under acceleration.

the last -1 & -0.5 is what i would also expect from someone who has realised what they have done, then clutched in and possibly hit the brakes and is now understeering.

The motor takes a while to come down from high revs in neutral thanks to airflow modifiers in the tune. (basically holds the revs up while you shift, it's a standard feature) to improve shift speeds.

The other thing I find strange with the data is the APP % vs ETC % data. Late model commodores are pretty linear in regards to pedal to throttle blade opening %. there is NO WAY you can have the pedal down at 28% and have 100% throttle opening. They don't run a torque load based ecu.

The closest or highest you can get really is at idle. where the pedal will be at 0% but etc could be up to max of about 22% (if the operating system/cal doesn't have a lower limit, which most do)

So in closing your honour, I call BS on RAC's "experts".

[Jase]

Some of the stuff RAC publish is pretty crap at the best of times.


SGIO kindly offered me the chance to win something if I agreed to trial a GPS based recorder in my car, which would send 'anonymous' info back to them; speed, distance travelled, acceleration etc. ..I think they may have said record fuel usage as well, can't quite recall, needed car for full day to instal their gizmo.

I think they said it was to help them tailor their insurance packages/market research or some shit, so unsure if its planned addition to all cars at a later date, but being new to supercharged V8s and donning a small tin foil hat I politely declined.

[RICEY]

I use an HSV 8: 3.71 LSD Diff in my dunnydore. 6100 RPM = 70kmH. - 4L60 Auto.

Considering 6 Speed manual first gear is lower ratio than auto, there is something very dodgy going on in that article.

Second gear is more believable.

I think the digital records are kept by the BCM, not the ACM....

The SDM (never heard it called an ACM) does store all that data up to and at the time of a deployment, Ive never had the opportunity to try and download the data to know if its possible. Generally when there's a deployment it will log a DTC and DTCs generally come with freeze frame data which includes the above and a lot more, so that being the case a dealer could access the info theoretically.

[GhostFc3s]

Where u get this shot from ? Not sure its supposed to be for public consumption. Reads more like an internal memo.

[Philbo]

Where u get this shot from ? Not sure its supposed to be for public consumption. Reads more like an internal memo.

Oh noes it's attack of the interwebs police ! Who cares where it came from it's all BS.

[GhostFc3s]

Oh noes it's attack of the interwebs police ! Who cares where it came from it's all BS.
Listen I barely care but u hve to be aware who the audience is. TCU is rac technical claims unit. So they are rac's internal claims investigators mainly made up of ex cops. This is probably just a internal email to the claims dept to make sure that they refer similar claims to them. It's not supposed to be read like a technical document as far as I can tell anyway.

[1JZNOSHIT]

LOL @ thread.

[BOSS 290]

Who the fuck would insure with RAC anyway? They're nothing more than a mouthpiece for WAPOL.

[TheChad]

Nowhere does it record the gear he was in in that "data".

So all of the talk about speed etc isn't anything to do with it. Looks like he was in second, booted it, lost it and failed at trying to stop. Only the driver claimed to be in 1st, doesn't look like it records that data.

[Sciflyer]

There is no way given the 0.5sec intervals that what the RAC claim would be possible. The car went from 4700rpm to redline and back to 4700 in the space of 1 second? Not in gear it didnt.

[EVLO]

in gear with wheels spinning?

[ReaperSS]

Where u get this shot from ? Not sure its supposed to be for public consumption. Reads more like an internal memo.

Its doing the rounds at all the parts depts around W.A. It is in PDF format but i didnt know how to post pdf so i screen printed it

[S85FI]

If the car was on cruise control? And lets say it rained? And it aquaplaned, with no touch of brake pedal until too late? Would the car kick down and try to accelerate quick as possible?

I knocked my EB Fairmont once into neutral while copping a gobie, fuck me, I shat, she shat and the car was rolling slowly with the engine bouncing off the limiter. .. haha

[rodent]

Got the monthly email newsletter today from RAC and they're running a pole - "Who own's your car's data?"

Wonder what brought that on....

[Tre-Cool]

If the car was on cruise control? And lets say it rained? And it aquaplaned, with no touch of brake pedal until too late? Would the car kick down and try to accelerate quick as possible?

I knocked my EB Fairmont once into neutral while copping a gobie, fuck me, I shat, she shat and the car was rolling slowly with the engine bouncing off the limiter. .. haha

still talking commodores here, but cruise would disable automatically.

[S85FI]

Have no idea... ^ with commodore. Same thing isnt it ;)

[Uber XR]

Had a manual pajero that did the same thing when you put the clutch in. It would just bang the limiter