Talking about cams and/or computers in vehicles

[NCWayne]

Didn"t want to hijack the thread below about the dash cams and those that said they thought they were a good idea, but here"s a story told to my buddy the other day by a trucker. Based on what I was told one of the drivers for his company was fired awhile back after being hit by a drunk driver that ran a red light. What happened was that the drunk"s lawyer got a warrant for the electronic records related to the operation of the truck. In turn he discovered that the driver had been going 5 MPH over the speed limit at some point in time, even though he was under the speed limit when hit. Based on that information he put forth the fact that had the driver not been speeding he wouldn"t have been in the intersection when his client ran the red light. The end result was that the drunk got charged with drunk driving, etc, as should have happened. Unfortunately,the fault for the accident was placed on the truck driver, because his prior speeding did, in fact, contribute to him being in the intersection at the exact time the drunk ran the light. Had he not sped he wouldn"t have been there yet, so the accident wouldn"t have happened....at least not to him. The end result was that the truck driver got charged for causing the accident and as a result lost his job.

In the end I"d much rather stick with my older vehicles, without GPS or any of the other fancy gadgets that will tell anyone who cares to look anything about me I don"t want them to know...The way I see it we spend good money to send the police officers to training to reconstruct an accident based on the evidence, and witnesses to the event....So why should I make it any easier on them, or give them evidence of anything that was done prior to the accident that has even the slightest chance of putting the finger on me for someone elses stupid actions?

 

[Janicholson]

The truck driver had a bogus lawyer. The origin of the rout (moment he took off from the depot,or ?) the rate he accellerated, the lights on the street, and the rationale for going a tad faster (such as allowing traffic to blend onto a highway where lane moves were not available) were certainly lacking from the defense. His firing was also a dispicable outcome. Unless he had a reputation for grief, he was railroaded. Jim

 

[BushogPapa]

But, don't you KNOW....Sh!! rolls DOWNHILL..!!!

The Buck always stops at the Driver..

Ron.

 

[moresmoke]

Unfortunately if a semi is involved there is an automatic presumption of guilt. Just the way it is in this lawyer driven world. Somehow it is assumed that all trucking cos. are rich.

 

[omahagreg]

I ran a 15" laptop with GPS in my FedEx Home Delivery truck. It always told me my speed too. I always wondered-never had an accident-whether that would be used against me if I had!
When I was in their driving school, they told of a UPS driver who had waved someone on as they were turning left in front of him. The person hesitated, then went, got hit. The UPS driver was held responsible since he was considered a professional!

 

[oldtanker]

(quoted from post at 16:20:02 01/25/14) Didn"t want to hijack the thread below about the dash cams and those that said they thought they were a good idea, but here"s a story told to my buddy the other day by a trucker. Based on what I was told one of the drivers for his company was fired awhile back after being hit by a drunk driver that ran a red light. What happened was that the drunk"s lawyer got a warrant for the electronic records related to the operation of the truck. In turn he discovered that the driver had been going 5 MPH over the speed limit at some point in time, even though he was under the speed limit when hit. Based on that information he put forth the fact that had the driver not been speeding he wouldn"t have been in the intersection when his client ran the red light. The end result was that the drunk got charged with drunk driving, etc, as should have happened. Unfortunately,the fault for the accident was placed on the truck driver, because his prior speeding did, in fact, contribute to him being in the intersection at the exact time the drunk ran the light. Had he not sped he wouldn"t have been there yet, so the accident wouldn"t have happened....at least not to him. The end result was that the truck driver got charged for causing the accident and as a result lost his job.

In the end I"d much rather stick with my older vehicles, without GPS or any of the other fancy gadgets that will tell anyone who cares to look anything about me I don"t want them to know...The way I see it we spend good money to send the police officers to training to reconstruct an accident based on the evidence, and witnesses to the event....So why should I make it any easier on them, or give them evidence of anything that was done prior to the accident that has even the slightest chance of putting the finger on me for someone elses stupid actions?

Wayne: I've talked to a lot of drivers over the last few years that told stories that were told to a friend who heard them from another friend who was told by a friend. Some, like that one was really lame. I'm not calling you a liar, I'm not calling your friend a liar but down the road somewhere something stinks.

One driver he worked with told me he too had served in the Army in the late 60's. Claimed to have been Special Forces and Delta Force. Delta wasn't formed until long after this clown had left the Army if in fact he ever served at all.

Kinda like the story told to my son in law by his father a driver. Fathers friend got a DUI. Claimed that he's gone to a bar next to a truck stop, had a few drinks and the cops arrested him getting into his truck. I know who this guy is and I checked his story. What really happened was he had to wait for a load. Dropped his trailer and bob tailed 6 blocks to a strip bar and got stopped on his way back to the truck stop.

Rick

 

[NCWayne]

I completely understand what your saying, and like you say, I can"t say whether this is the truth or a work of somebodies imagination. That said, given the technology available now days, the culpability/liability related to nearly anything a "pro" does, and just the litigious nature of society in general, it stands to reason that this sort of thing has, can, or will eventually happen.

As far as what I know technology can do, look at the Progressive insurance commercials and their "Snapshot" deal. To get better rates you basically let them into your car"s computer so they can see how you drive. Thing is if your having to speed to get on the interstate, accelerate quickly to get out of a parking lot into traffic, or any number or other things they may deem as "bad" driving, they will know about it. Thing is all they have to look at is a bunch of raw data that tells them nothing of the situation, or where, or why you did this or that. Given that face, in essence, the information is worthless to them.....but they are going to use it against you anyway...because they can....

Because they can, they will gladdly base whether your a "good" or "bad" driver on said data, and give you rates based upon that info. Right now I assume they keep all that info "secret", but think about what would happen if they were to market it out to other insurance agencies. Basically that would put everything you do while driving under the microscope. Whether everything is taken in context of the situation or not doesn"t matter to the agencies because they have "hard data" saying they are justified to charge you the highest rates they possibly can..........and there"s not a dang thing you can do about it. Me, I like knowing that the only thing they will ever know about me is what I tell them........and that"s the way I like it.

 

[jon f mn]

Sorry Old tanker, but that is exactly what is
happening, and frequently too. We have to go to
continuing education classes every 8 months with
Dart and they are always full of stories just like
his. There is the driver that did local deliveries
and stopped at a gas station to get coffee and
stayed on duty while he did it. When he left a
driver ran a stop sign and hit him. The lawyer
said that because he lied about being on duty at
the gas station he probly lied about a lot of
other stuff too so he shouldn't have been there so
he was resposible. The problem today is that all
you need to be tracked is a cel phone. If you have
one with they will know exactly where you are and
how fast you are going no matter what you are
driving and whether it has a computer.

 

[MarkB_MI]

Sounds pretty thin to me. Surely you can come up with a more believable story than that. There are plenty of actual cases where crash data has been extracted from vehicles and used in court.

 

[Mike Henry]

I work for a county bus system. Deliver whomever wants a ride for a small fee from their door to the door of where ever they are going. One day 15 yrs ago a senior driver t boned a driver who had run stop sign. He didnt get a ticket but she and her family of backwoods deliverance relatives sued us. Their lawyer had one thing to say in response to our lawyers account of the accident. Our lawyer pointed out that the other driver ran a stop sign, was speeding,did not have insurance,no driver license, wrong plates and her child under 4 yrs old wasnt in a child seat. the response was our driver was a professional and should have been able to see that she wasnt stopping and slowed to let her through the intersection. The lady recieved $50000. It was more cash than that family had had in generations unless you count the welfare checks and food stamps they had collected over the yrs. Another lady wanted to go to the downtown drug store in the winter. paralel parking along the street in front of the store. driver dont want to drop passenger in a pile of snow around a parked car. He pulls one car length ahead. The store on the other side of the car where dropped hadnt cleaned his walk. Though the drug store had. She sued us for a $5000 settlement because she didnt get dropped in a safe environment. She slipped on the unsafe sidewalk after walking through a clean street curb.We cant win as a government entity.