Get the black box.
It’s crucial after an airline crash. Reviewing evidence contained in such recorders helps people reconstruct events leading up to an incident.
The black box has even made its way into fiction. It’s part of the corporate intrigue of Michael Crichton’s 1997 novel, “Airframe.”
Gary Rayner and the rest of the staff at San Diego’s I-Witness Inc. want to put a black box of a sort to work in vehicles.
Rayner is the inventor of DriveCam, a compact camera that mounts behind a vehicle’s rear-view mirror. It digitally records video, sounds and G-forces on a continuous loop. A person can then view the video on a television or computer.
UCSD Connect has named DriveCam a finalist for a most innovative new product award. Winners will be announced at a Connect luncheon Dec. 7.
DriveCam captures events from 10 seconds before to 10 seconds after the unit senses excessive G-forces , which could be caused by hard braking, accelerating or cornering. The camera can also be activated with a panic button, or set to record when someone triggers a car alarm.
The device can capture road rage, erratic driving and crashes. Rayner said it can be a tool against an opportunistic perpetrator who wants to transfer blame for a crack-up.
“Insurance companies are going crazy over this,” he said.
Rayner says a 1996 incident in San Bernardino, where another motorist threw a brick at his windshield, got him thinking about such a device.
Now the company is 2 1/2 years old and has 10 full-time employees, with Ed Andrew as president.
The company sells its device for $795 to public safety agencies and the fleet market , which not only lets fleet managers keep an eye on the outside of the vehicle, but on employees.
Now DriveCam has its eyes on the consumer market (including de-facto fleet managers: the parents of teen-agers). The company plans to introduce a lower-cost consumer model in the middle of 2001.
