> I have to assume that my vehicle will collect data that could be used against me in court.
They always have, for a long time. Exploring event data recorders is an interesting art to get into and put together how crashes play out, sensor-by-sensor.
To play along at home: https://crashdatagroup.com/ -- amusingly, one of the referrals mentioned on the page was essentially "Someone hit my parked car and then claimed I was driving it at the time" -- the EDR sounds like it saved them from a fraudulent claim.
My stepdaughter was involved in a he-said, she-said collision in a lighted intersection. "I believe I had the green light", "no, I believe I had".
So me, thinking, talking to insurer, "While not definitive, if the EDR shows that she was a complete stop for 30s before moving, that might show she was stopped at a red, and then went when it turned green".
Insurer: unless we're looking at six digits in a claim, we're not pulling EDR data.
They did treat it as a not-at-fault collision, because fault could not be determined, but still.
Tesla will make you fight them to get access to your own EDR data. But will hold press conferences where they'll tell the world all about your EDR data if they think it will move the spotlight away from AP/FSD (fatal accident a few years ago where they were suspected to be involved. Tesla holds a press conference, "Akshually, the vehicle had told the driver to be more attentive". And it had. But Tesla didn't mention that it had only done that once. And that that one time was EIGHTEEN MINUTES prior to the collision. They just wanted to make it sound like an irresponsible driver.)
It's also a gamble. Money and labor to retrieve the data, possibly out of a seriously damaged vehicle (making it difficult to get to it). And then if you're in a situation where EDR is your best source of verifiability (no eyewitnesses, etc.) you're also gambling that the story coming from your customer was accurate and doesn't increase the liability that you've helpfully provided evidence of.
The scale at which data collection now happens is unprecedented. The fact that data collection and sharing is now a continuous process is unprecedented.
claiming that this has always been the case is disingenuous.
They always have, for a long time. Exploring event data recorders is an interesting art to get into and put together how crashes play out, sensor-by-sensor.
To play along at home: https://crashdatagroup.com/ -- amusingly, one of the referrals mentioned on the page was essentially "Someone hit my parked car and then claimed I was driving it at the time" -- the EDR sounds like it saved them from a fraudulent claim.