The federal government has finally caught up with New York State in lifting the lid on the secrecy surrounding "black boxes" installed in many of today's cars.

Last year, the Albany Legislature enacted a law requiring auto manufacturers to disclose - in or along with the owner's manual - the use of an event data recorder (EDR) on any vehicle sold or leased in the state. The factory-installed device records vehicle speed, safety belt status and other data in the seconds immediately preceding a crash. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has now issued a long-awaited rule mandating disclosure of EDRs in owner's manuals nationwide, beginning with model year 2011 cars and light trucks.

In the rulemaking, NHTSA doesn't require all vehicles to have EDRs.(Roughly 64 percent of '05 vehicles come equipped with EDRs, and that figure is expected to climb to 85 percent by the time the rule takes effect.) But the government did spell out the specific

kinds of data that an EDR must record. They include the position of accelerator, the vehicle speed and the time of airbag deployment relative to impact.

According to carmakers and many independent safety experts, EDR data can become an invaluable resource in designing safer vehicles, preventing crashes and saving lives and property. In public comments filed during the federal rulemaking proceedings, AAA acknowledged the safety potential of EDRs but also advocated for protections of the privacy interests of automobile owners.

New York, which is one of 10 states that have passed laws concerning these black boxes, prohibits retrieval of EDR data except by consent of the owner, by court order, by safety researchers who "sanitize" the identity of the vehicle owner or by authorized technicians servicing and repairing the vehicle.

NHTSA also commented that the vehicle's owner also owns the EDR data and that the information should be collected only with his or her permission, but it sidestepped many related privacy issues as outside its authority.