On January 14, 2014 Senators John Hoeven (R-N.D.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) proposed a still pending substitute amendment to the Driver Privacy Act, which formerly applied only to vehicles that were required to be equipped with an event data recorder which included passenger cars, multipurpose passenger vehicles, trucks, and buses.
Now thankfully, the language of the bill has been changed to a broader reaching scope to include motorcycles, but also to ensure that all of the information collected by “black boxes” for any vehicle is now protected.
Section 2, sub-section (a) of the Driver Privacy Act or S. 1925 now reads “Any data in an event data recorder required under part 563 of title 49, Code of Federal Regulations, regardless of when the passenger motor vehicle in which it is installed was manufactured, is the property of the owner, or, in the case of a leased vehicle, the lessee of the passenger motor vehicle in which the event data recorder is installed.
Sub-section (b) deals with the privacy of the information collected by the EDR and states that only a court or other administrative authority having jurisdiction may access that information and even then, it may only be when said information meets the requirements for admission into evidence.
The data may also be collected if the owner(s) of the vehicle give their written consent to collect it.
Wayne Allard, Vice President of Government Relations for the American Motorcycle Association, is grateful for the work Senators Hoeven and Klobuchar have done to protect the privacy of motorcyclists.
“The American Motorcyclist Association supports the Klobuchar amendment and believes that all information collected by event data recorders belongs to the owner of the vehicle or the person leasing the vehicle — whether they are on two, three or four wheels,” Allard said. “Access to that data should come only at the discretion of the vehicle owner or lessee.”
In an age of instrusive technology, it is great to see some of our elected officials working with the public to protect everyone’s privacy while on the road because let’s face it, the road is the one place many of us go to feel free.
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