Frankly, I don't trust the government. They eavesdrop(spllng?), watch you, profile you, help big oil and corp. america more than the people, etc... I'm sure the Cali's know about the federal gov't, big oil, and the car giants killing the electric car.

Anyway, back to the black box, I'm sure it was pushed by the Insurance companies!

 

Cool, so we can know exactly how fast we were going before we totalled our car...

 

No. It was originally to collect crash data from airbag equipped cars. That's ostensibly why it is still there. So the manufacturers can figure out how to deploy airbags without killing the occupants of the cars.

I've seen the story about "killing" the electric car. It's hogwash. When someone figures out how to economically produce power for transportation 50 miles away from where it needs to be used and transport is losslessly we might be on to something. Until then, electric cars are a novelty. We can't even run our air conditioning in the summer in California. Imagine 15 million cars being plugged into the wall to recharge every night. Yep, that's gonna work AND pollute less. NOT. Sorry, after 20 years enlisted in the Air Force I'm keenly aware of my government's short comings, but killing the electric car isn't one of them. Besides that, the EDRs are nothing compared to the real time monitoring system they've been working on for the last 20 years, and that IS real.

 

I would hope people are smart enough not to toil with those settings.

The majority of those are for your NAV and LCD. I'm going to take a stab at these since I am an administrator that gives me the IT back ground. Muah ahha.

1. Drive Recorder -- This probably stores your POI, phone book, and destination.
2. Touch SW Adj -- This adjusts your touch screen. Like if hit your LCD and where you touch is off, this will probably realign everything.
3. Calibration -- I'd assume this is used if your LCD colors go screwy.
4. Vehicle Signal -- No idea. Maybe GPS.
5. Soft Version -- Version of DVD software, firmware for the NAV, junk like that. I imagine the IS and GS, LS are different.
6. Tel Voice -- I guess the voice for the NAV.
7. TFT Adj -- Screen adjustment.
8. Display Memory -- Seems the same as drive recorder, of what loads the current image.
9. SRam Clear -- The memory that holds your current location -- you know as you are driving. Sure its linked to a satellite but that information probably has to buffer somewhere?
10. BT RF Test -- Blue Tooth junk
11. Rom/Ram R/W -- System stuff, temporary memory.
12. Check Sum -- If you Nav is giving you the blue screen of death
13. Data Logging -- No idea?

I bet one of these handles the initial screen that pops up and says warning.. blah blah blah.

 

the black box serves a legitimate purpose in the event of an accident. For example, the driver may claim he got into an accident because the brake failed when he slammed on the brake, while the black box may show that he didn't step on the brake at all, or that he was driving at excessive speed, etc. Obviously it also gathers crash data. Manufacturers such as Volvo and MB have been doing this since the 80's.

 

I think it is an excellent idea. Also, this can serve as a CYA for car manufacturers since we live in such a SUE happy society.

 

Who cares about the black box you paranoid freaks. So you speed, get in an accident but they can tell how fast you were going when they reconstruct the accident scene like they have been doing before EDRs were around and interviewing witnesses. If you think a car without an EDR will save your butt in some situation...wrong.

 

Anyone know how to defeat the BB, stop it from recording, ect...?

 

You can't because if you disconnect it the airbags wouldn't deploy in a crash plus some other safety features might not work. Every sensor on the car is connected to the BB so that if you get into an accident it knows everything about the car.

 

Actually the first screen display is different, but hit menu, then the screen tap sequence and you end up at the same diagnostic screen.

 

I'm totally not understanding. Can you describe it step by step?

The step by step as I understand it is:

Hold Info
Click parking lights until Diagnostic screen appears with LAN check options (you can also do this by the Display method.)
Tap Menu - takes you to main diagnostic screen, all options in the middle
Tap upper right, upper left, lower right. New diagnostic screen with all the details mentioned in previous posts.

Are you saying you've found a different way into this menu?

 

I didn't find a new way it was posted previously, so I tried it holding the disp. hard button, turn lights off and on and yes the initial display that comes up does not show all the options in the middle, but once you tap the "menu" selection in the upper right it takes you to the screen with the choices in the middle. Then tap upper right, upper left and lower right and you're at the exact same screen for diagnostics!
Give it a shot,...