Many New Jersey drivers might try to hide the real cause of a car accident if they are at fault, but Tesla Motors has made this very difficult. The company is constantly connected to its vehicles over the Internet, so it records data on every action that the cars and drivers make. Other car makers are expected to follow this example in the near future, making it nearly impossible to hide the cause of a crash.
In one example of a driver trying to hide the cause of a collision, a Tesla Model X owner blamed the vehicle for suddenly accelerating by itself. The California accident involved the SUV crashing into a building. After Tesla reviewed the data that it recorded from the time of the accident, it reported that the SUV was moving at 6 mph until the driver abruptly pressed the accelerator pedal.
A majority of car manufacturers do not record data from their cars like Tesla does. However, some of them have event data recorders, which are in a sense like the black boxes on airplanes. While this does not record the detailed data that Tesla vehicles do, Internet connectivity is increasingly more common in vehicles.
As of 2016, only about 25 percent of new vehicles have the technology necessary to achieve this, but experts believe that more than 90 percent will have it by 2020. One motivation for this is the work that many automakers are doing to build driverless cars. Tesla has made quick progress on this front, and its method of data collection is part of the reason.
Car accidents can happen for a variety of reasons including poor weather or road conditions, but most are attributable to human factors. When a person has been injured by a distracted, speeding or otherwise negligent driver, an attorney for the victim can use the data recorded by the vehicle along with police investigation reports and other evidence in order to substantiate a claim for damages in a personal injury lawsuit.