Event Data Recorder - Use As Evidence in Courts

Use As Evidence in Courts

There have been a number of trial cases in the US and Canada involving EDRs. Drivers have been convicted and exonerated as a result of EDR evidence.

Other examples include:

• In New South Wales, Australia, a teen-aged woman (a probationary driver) was convicted of dangerous driving "causing death/occasioning grievous bodily harm" in 2005. Evidence from the Peugeot's EDR showed that the car was being driven in excess of the posted speed limit. An injunction against the use of EDR evidence, obtained by the owner of the car (the parents of the defendant), was overturned in the NSW Supreme Court.
• In Quebec, Canada, the driver of a car who sped through a red light, crashing into another car at the intersection and killing the other driver, was convicted of "dangerous driving" in 2001 after EDR information revealed that it was he, not the deceased driver of the other car (as the defendant asserted), who was speeding. There were no other witnesses to the crash.
• The first such use of EDR evidence in the United Kingdom was at Birmingham Crown Court during the trial of a 21 year old man who crashed the Range Rover Sport he was driving into a Jeep in 2006. The accident left a baby girl paralyzed and the driver, who was aged 19 at the time of the incident, was sentenced to 21 months in prison. The EDR evidence allowed investigators to determine the driver was speeding at 72 mph in a 30 mph zone.