Feds, Industry Argue Over Black Boxes

February 29, 2000 9:45 AM, EST

The debate over placing so-called black boxes on trucks is ready to heat up, but the dialogue isn’t likely to go anywhere until someone spells out what the devices should do.

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Several federal agencies would like to see trucks carry black boxes — essentially on-board computers — chiefly to record data that could help in identifying crash factors if the vehicle is involved in an accident and to enforce federal limits on drivers’ hours of service. For a variety of reasons, however, many in trucking are fearful of government mandates that would force them to buy this kind of equipment.

Black box is an aviation term. In reconstructing events that lead to airplane crashes, investigators of the National Transportation Safety Board rely heavily on information collected by the famous black boxes aboard each commercial aircraft. The same could be done for accidents involving large trucks, insists NTSB Chairman Jim Hall, who is calling for black boxes on all trucks to aid in determining what causes collisions and how to prevent them.

At the same time, the Department of Transportation’s long-awaited proposal to reform trucking’s hours-of-service regulations — still under review by the Office of Management and Budget — is expected to push the industry into paperless logging by requiring some sort of on-board electronic recording device — now popularly referred to in the industry as a black box.

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