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Event data recorders (EDR) offer important benefits in the area of automobile and highway safety. Our understanding of crashes is currently based on laboratory crash tests and recreations of real-world crashes, which can be unreliable. EDRs record certain data elements in the seconds prior to and following a crash. This allows an unprecedented look into the dynamics of real-world crashes, enabling researchers and engineers to improve automobile and highway safety. To maximize the benefits of EDRs, all on-road vehicles must contain the recording devices. That way, researchers have a complete perspective of the performance of vehicles in crashes. Approximately two-thirds of new vehicles are equipped with EDRs. In August 2006, NHTSA issued a final rule standardizing data elements that EDRs record and requiring that manufacturers state in a vehicle’s owner’s manual that the vehicle is equipped with an EDR. NHTSA should require that all new vehicles be equipped with EDRs and that auto manufacturers also notify consumers on a vehicle’s window sticker that the vehicle is equipped with an EDR. |