Black boxes in cars? Follow you every move..

Has been so for years.
Be aware.

They've been doing this for a decade now. They can tell your top speed, how many seconds, minutes or hours spent individual speeds, how many seconds minutes or hours spent at certain rpm's... highest rpms, braking information and on and on. They can tell if you've been doing "standing starts", and they can combine all these details, speed, rpm, braking, etc, at any given time to see just about anything.

The information is not just used in accidents either. Companies use the info to get out of warranty work, and a whole myriad of other issues.

There were ways to get around these recordings, but manufacturers are getting smarter about keeping the data safe from dumps/tricks.

Even "high performance" car companies do it and they don't tell you about it either. In fact, it's a bait and switch. These cars are sold with warranties etc, but companies try to wiggle out of warranty work or even starting the warranty at all. I personally know of two brands that sell their cars as being literal race cars, even encouraging you to take them to high peformance driving events on the racetrack on weekends. Heck one company even PROVIDES the trailering service to their OWN RACING EVENT! The "rub" was that after the break in period you were required to bring the car to a dealership and have an ECU dump. They then read the information and if there were more than a certain number of standing starts, or rpms, etc, they told people "sorry, you've been racing your car, therefore we won't warranty it AT ALL'.

I'm not talking about idiots who wear the clutch out or blow up the transmission with bad shifts, who try to get warranty work, I'm talking about extremely expensive cars, sold for racing, who often have mechanical issues etc that are truly manufacturers problems...that they deny entirely. Of course once people found out about the ECU dump, they found ways around it, disconnecting the battery for x amount of hours or doing a rain dance or wtf ever was needed to erase information...but I don't know if companies have found ways to defeat that.


ECU's aside, you have people who willingly stick cameras inside their cars from Insurance companies like PROGRESSIVE in order to save a few pennies. Pretty soon I believe insurance companies will make these mandatory.

Unfortunately, this is why you'd need a dash cam...

You've lost me. What does the above video have to do with ECU dumps?

I was referring to your second part about dash cams. But yes, I understand what you're getting at with the ECU. It reminds me of the little reactive material inside the headphone jack on an Apple product that changes color if its been water damaged and this is what they look for.

I'm not sure I would want to warranty a pair of headphones that had been dunked under water either. Apple didn't advertise them as being underwater headphones did they?

What I'm talking about is denying warranty for using a car how it was advertised to be used, then using clandestine data collection and their own specs, to determine your fate. Seems foul. Also, complete denial of warranty, ie, sorry you ran the car at XXX rpms, which *may* have damaged the drive train... no warranty for you, even if the warranty involves the paint falling off or the radio stops working or the engine overheats due to design flaw.

I'm not familiar with Progessive, I've just seen the commercials. Do they give you a dash cam? I didn't think they were watching for insurance scams, but rather collecting data on the individuals driving habits.