Can Your Car Be Used against You in a Court of Law?

By Heather Siladi

Published on November 16, 2006

Unlike your spouse, no matter how close your relationship with your beloved vehicle, it can be forced to rat on you.

The moment your airbags are deployed in an accident, the EDR begins calculating and recording specific safety components like whether your seatbelts are working and how well your brakes are functioning.

But the EDR also records other information as well. It records when you hit the gas and when you hit the brakes. It also records potentially penalizing information like how fast you were going at the time of the accident. This is the information that can be used as testimony in the courtroom.

But the EDR only records factors inside the car and not the outside circumstances, so it can tell the court that you swerved, but leave out the fact that a deer suddenly leapt into the road. Unfortunately, your insurance company will be quick to lay out the cold hard facts, and the extenuating circumstances may be harder to prove.

The original idea behind the EDR was to monitor vehicle safety and crashworthiness, not to use it against drivers involved in accidents.

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