The Clymo Brief: the black box for your car
Another day, another survey but scary figures from one recently commissioned by the RAC Foundation has revealed that nearly half of drivers send and receive text messages while behind the wheel of their car. Mind you, the survey was conducted with the help of 2,000 Facebook users and we know what that lot are like, don’t we? But I digress…

Seriously though, what happens when you smash your vehicle into something, be it another car, bike, truck or person (delete as applicable) with a mobile in your hand? Well, it will mean big trouble but perhaps even more so now because Japanese car producer Honda has come up with a black box recording device similar to those found in planes.

We already have more CCTV in this country than anywhere else in the world. Maybe the car is next? Of course, Honda is actually on about using it to prevent accidents, but if you do end up having one there could be a frame-by-frame record of the unfortunate event.
Just don’t tell the government. This has obvious potential for making them even bigger pots of cash in fines. Remember those hysterical reports in the papers about Jeremy Clarkson allegedly cruising down the motorway in his 6.3 litre Mercedes with a mobile glued to his ear? An in-car camera would have been perfect for solving that kind of scenario.

The device could be programmed to keep a watchful eye on its owner who’d then be given a nice big fat fine every time their fingers inched towards the trusty mobile for a quick text. Stuck in traffic? Then don’t even think about heading to the laptop for a bit of Facebook frivolity or it’ll be, um, £60 please.

The little black box contains a 270,000 pixel CCD camera that gets attached to the rear view mirror. A main control unit is stored elsewhere in the car and can detect an impact to the vehicle, sudden steering movements or exaggerated acceleration or deceleration.

It automatically jumps into action and records 12 seconds before and eight seconds after the incident. A 512BM SD Card captures up to 15 scenes of your shunt along with details of speed, time and also the soundtrack to events, which will consist mainly of loud swearing. Strangely, only commercial vehicles have been using the device so far, but now it’s become available for Honda’s Inspire range of saloons over in Japan.

I wonder if the boffins back at the factory can tweak the design a little so it can record an incident when you’re not in the vehicle. I’d love that. I’ve just got my car back from the body shop after a hat trick of accidents. All three happened while I wasn’t actually in the car itself.

The black box wonder from Honda could have served me well by recording the registration number and, in the case of the last ding, reveal how they managed to hit it at all in the space of an empty car park. Hey, I could send the clip into You’ve Been Framed and spend the resulting £250 on getting the repairs done.
Perhaps the driver was trying to see through their charcoal window tints or was distracted while struggling with the dashboard mounted hairdryer? That’s the trouble. We’ve been spoilt by in-car fluff. Some cars have more gadgets packed inside them than an out-of-town electrical superstore. There’s the stereo, air-con, cruise control and just maybe the DVD player but also perhaps a small fridge and a juicer.

Let’s not forget satellite-navigation either. Only the other day I read about someone driving into a lake after taking the wrong turning. Their sat-nav system decided it knew better than they did. Worse still, lorry drivers are crashing into bridges and other large obstacles with alarming regularity due to sat-nav systems insisting they’re on the right route.

I’ve recently been getting acquainted with one of the models from TomTom in a bid to outwit other drivers and beat the queues of congestion. I don’t really enjoy driving these days and I’ll use a bus or train whenever possible, but for work it has to be the car.
TomTom sent me the Rider, a model meant for bike and scooter users, but it also works brilliantly in the car too thanks to an additional mounting kit. It works anywhere really, even when you’re navigating from the kitchen to the sofa with your tea.

It’s a bit of a giggle going through the initial set-up instructions. You get to pick the voice of your choice from a selection of men and women and, for the lost and lonely, more are available on the TomTom website!

American Mandy sounded tempting but I was left a little non-plussed by Australian Ken. He’s a forgiving chap who sounds like he should say “No worries” if you ignore his advice to turn left at the next junction. Jane on the other hand, appears a little unpredictable. A friend pointed out that she jumps from mild-mannered English rose one minute to raucous Scot whenever negotiating a roundabout. Or maybe it’s a fault? I’m looking forward to trying John Cleese next.
Whatever voice you plump for the TomTom is a device that’s pretty much idiot proof. It’s a lifeline for anyone who fears inadvertently parking on a railway line or driving off a cliff. The points of interest function is a dazzling feature, helping you locate even the most elusive of tea rooms on a Sunday afternoon jaunt.

The ability to update maps is invaluable too, especially when you consider that the latest available atlas of Western Europe has an additional 80,000 kilometres of road and a staggering 2,800 extra points of interest. That’s a lot of tea rooms!

But can I suggest a modification? I wonder how long it’ll take the clever people at TomTom to make sure that we get Mandy, Ken or even John Cleese hollering a warning that a little old lady called Gladys is about to pull out in front of us at that nasty junction up by the post office? If it’s all a little too late, then thanks to the wonders of Japanese technology, the little black box gizmo should record the point of impact for posterity. And the insurance company…


Rob Clymo is a journalist employed on a freelance basis by Microsoft. The views in this article are those of the author and not of MSN or Microsoft.