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DIGITAL VEHICLE FORENSICS USED TO HELP SOLVE CRIMES

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You may not know that your vehicle records and stores a large assortment of time stamped data that can range from the opening and closing of the vehicle’s doors, the speed at which the vehicle was driving at any given date and time, voice commands stored in the onboard bluetooth or hands-free systems, and a lot more. Unless you are driving a clunker, chances are good your vehicle has this “black box” embedded inside.  Manufacturers started installing these vehicle blackboxes in the mid-1990 and the technology is now quite advanced.  If you have ever been in a newer model Tesla, you have seen the future of this technology. Everything that controls the Tesla is done through your smart phone, from opening doors, to starting up the car and the control panel that drives and navigates the car.  This technology has become so sophisticated that the police are able to solve crimes using the digital evidence stored in by our cars.

The technology has helped the police solve many crimes, including murder. For example, in Michigan, the police were able to solve a two-year old murder after the victim’s stolen vehicle was found. Time-stamped recordings of voice commands around the time the victim went missing were recovered from the 2016 Chevy truck. That led police to identify the voice, which was not the victim’s, and eventually led to the arrest of the murderer.

In another case here in California, a man was driving his Tesla when he ran straight into a car that was pulling out of a driveway. The driver who pulled out of the driveway died from the impact. The Tesla driver told the police he was driving 55 mph; the speed limit was 45 mph. While the other car may have been violating the vehicle code by pulling out under unsafe conditions, the Tesla driver was still on the hook because he was speeding. He was facing a possible misdemeanor manslaughter charge. But then the police got a search warrant to pull the data from the Tesla. They were able to establish that the Tesla driver wasn’t going 55 mph, but 78 mph!  Now the Tesla driver is facing a felony manslaughter charge, a very serious charge.


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