Black Box in Cars – Great Safety Feature or Potential Invasion of Privacy?

Are you ready to take Big Brother along for the ride every time you take a trip in your car? That could be the way of the future.

Privacy issues are again a topic of conversation with a new push to ensure that all new vehicles come standard with a black box.

According to a story in the New York Times, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is pushing to have all new vehicles sold in the U.S. from September 2014 onward come equipped with a black box data recorder. As it is though, about 96 percent of 2013 vehicles already came with the recorders. 

While it is touted as a safety tool, there are those who raise questions about just who the collected information belongs to, according to the article in the New York Times. Federal law generally says the data belong to the car's owner, but many insurance contracts allow insurance companies to gather the data after a crash. This was reportedly a problem for the former lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, Timothy Murray, who claimed he was wearing a seatbelt and not speeding when he was involved in a crash. However, the data from the black belt revealed he was not wearing a seatbelt and was going at about 100 miles an hour at the time. He was not seriously hurt, according to the New York Times, and he later said he fell asleep. 

However, in the midst of the National Security Administration scandal as well as privacy concerns over the drone policy, people are saying, "enough already." There is concern that GPS tracking could later be added and accessible to government agencies. In the light of the NSA having access to telephone records without a warrant, could the same policies not apply with regard to vehicle data recorders?

What do you think? Is the black box a great safety feature or do you think it opens up the door for excessive government intrusion in the future?