BOSCH CRASH DATA RETRIEVAL

The Bosch Crash Data Retrieval (CDR) tool is a device that can access data stored in the Airbag Control Module (ACM) of certain vehicles. This technology is legislated as mandatory in the USA, and is likely to be mandatory in Brazil, China and Canada in the following years. The coverage of the Australian vehicle fleet is improving as more vehicle manufacturers offer worldwide vehicles.
The data is stored as events, and it is possible to record both deployment and non-deployment events. A non-deployment event is a sudden change to the vehicle’s speed which ‘wakes up’ the airbag module but makes a decision not to deploy any of the airbags/pretensioners. A non-deployment event can be as low as a speed change of 8km/h. A deployment event is any event where an airbag or a pretensioner has fired.
ACM’s may record a wide range of data, both pre-crash data and the crash data itself. This data can include the position of the accelerator and whether the brakes were applied, the speed of the vehicle up to 5 seconds before impact, the crash data including both forward and sideways accelerations due to the impact and whether seatbelts were shown as "Buckled" or "Unbuckled" at the time of the crash.

Bosch CDR for Insurance

An example of when this technology could be used is in the classic three car nose to tail impact. Car 1 is hit in the rear by car 2 and car 2 is hit in the rear of car 3. Car 2 claims that they were stationary and car 3 hit them forcing them into car 1. If you are the company insuring car 2, it could be beneficial to prove that your client was not at fault, and the collision was caused by car 3 impacting the rear of your insured vehicle. If data was recovered from car 2, we could see the pre-crash data of the vehicle including its speed and brake application in 0.5 second intervals before the collision. We could see that at say 1.0 seconds and 0.5 seconds before impact the speed of car 2 was 0km/h and they had the brakes applied. In this type of collision the data, and the liability of your insured, could be determined quickly, and a short report on the data could be prepared.

Bosch CDR for lawyers

An example, which is based on an actual case, a stationary vehicle (Holden VE Commodore) was hit by another vehicle. Using some scene data and the vehicle masses, we were able to calculate the impact speed of the other vehicle at approximately 90km/h (on a 50km/h road). The impact speeds of both vehicles in a collision can usually be determined if there is access to a single vehicle’s data, with some at scene data and vehicle masses.

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