Injury Sciences Rolls Out ‘Black Box’ Web Portal

Injury Sciences LLC of San Antonio introduced its Event Data Recorder (EDR) Web Portal, designed to assist automobile insurers in harvesting automotive “black box” or EDR data.

A vehicle EDR is a device that records and stores data from an automobile collision. Black box information is accessible in many vehicles that are originally equipped with devices that detect collision events and assess their severity for the deployment of occupant protection systems such as airbags.

Although the harvestable information varies by make and model on vehicles equipped with EDRs, key information includes: Pre-crash information five seconds prior to impact measured in one second intervals (e.g., vehicle speed, engine RPM, throttle position, braking status) and/or post-crash velocity changes. This data is often stored and harvestable even when the airbag is not deployed in moderate or minor collisions.

With the EDR Web Portal, claims professionals can quickly identify which automobiles have harvestable “black box” information and what types of EDR information is available in specific vehicles. The Web portal also offers access to a network of service providers throughout the U.S. who are equipped with the Vetronix Crash Data Retrieval (CDR) system to harvest the “black box” information and a secure data vault for these providers to transmit and store the information for secure viewing and analysis by the claims professional.

Near term uses of EDR data will largely benefit individual claim evaluations by:
–Determining accident severity for the vehicles involved in the collision (including low impact collisions).
–Identifying injury potential in low impact and moderate-severity collisions.
–Identifying accident causation and other negligence/liability issues
–Determining driver seatbelt usage.

When aggregated over the longer term, EDR data will benefit insurance pricing and underwriting departments as well as collision repair management.