On January 14, 2014, Senator Hoeven (R-ND) introduced legislation (S.1925) to limit the retrieval of data from EDRs.
The bill declares that any data in an EDR required to be installed in a passenger motor vehicle is the property of the owner or lessee of the vehicle in which the recorder is installed, regardless of when the vehicle was manufactured.
The bill prohibits a person, other than the owner or lessee of the motor vehicle, from accessing data recorded or transmitted by such a recorder unless: (1) a court or other judicial or administrative authority authorizes the retrieval of such data subject to admissibility of evidence standards; (2) all owners or lessees consent in writing to such retrieval for any purpose, including vehicle diagnosis, service, or repair; (3) the data is retrieved pursuant to certain authorized investigations or inspections of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) or DOT; (4) the data is retrieved to determine the appropriate emergency medical response to a motor vehicle crash; or (5) the data is retrieved for traffic safety research.
The bill prohibits, when data is retrieved in connection with traffic safety research or an NTSB or DOT investigation or inspection, the disclosure of: (1) personally identifiable information of the vehicle owner or lessee, and (2) the vehicle identification number.
The bill directs NHTSA, after completing a study and submitting a report to Congress, to promulgate regulations concerning the amount of time event data recorders installed in passenger motor vehicles should capture and record vehicle-related data in conjunction with an event in order to provide sufficient information to investigate the cause of crashes.
The bill was referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
