For years, airplane crash investigators have had the benefit of retrieving data from the flight-data recorder, or 'black box.' This data has proven invaluable for helping to determine what happened in the seconds before a crash. Now, in order to improve vehicle safety, General Motors is using similar technology in about 40% of its Model Year 1999 vehicles. In the 1970s, electronic sensors gained wide use in production automobiles. This proliferation was largely driven by the industry's move toward electronically controlled fuel injected engines. The computer, or Engine Control Module (ECM), used sensors to gather information about the current state of engine operation. Though it differed by manufacturer, sensors typically gathered information about Throttle Position, Engine RPM and Airflow. The ECM analyzed the information gathered from the sensors. Then, based on programming in the ECM, instructions were sent to actuators that could vary the length of time a fuel injector pulsed, or specify the amount of spark advance the engine received. These electronic systems were much more efficient than their mechanical predecessors and contributed to significant gains in fuel economy. In the early 1970s, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) made the recommendation that vehicle manufacturers and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration work together to gather information on vehicle crashes using on-board collision sensing and recording devices. As a result, General Motors airbag equipped production vehicles have recorded data for impacts that caused a deployment of the airbag since 1974.


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