Kimberly Gross Kimberly Gross

Who Owns Your Black Box Data? An Overview of U.S. EDR Laws and Regulations

Event Data Recorders (“EDR”) are regulated in the United States under 49 CFR § 563, which ensures that all EDRs record and collect data in a readily usable manner, and that car manufacturers provide commercially available mechanisms to retrieve crash and pre-crash data from EDRs. But who owns that data?

The federal Driver Privacy Act of 2015 limits data retrieval from EDRs and expressly rests ownership of EDR data with the owner or lessee of the vehicle. Specifically, it provides that “[a]ny data retained by an event data recorder (as defined in section 563.5 of title 49, Code of Federal Regulations), regardless of when the 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 motor vehicle in which the event data recorder is installed.” 49 CFR § 24302(a)(“Limitations on Data Retrieval from Vehicle Event Data Recorders”).

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Kimberly Gross Kimberly Gross

Why Do We Care About “Right to Repair?”

“Right to repair” is receiving increased attention as the Biden Administration has made it a regulatory priority. In mid-2021, the President signed an Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy with the stated purpose of promoting “the interests of American workers, businesses, and consumers.” Among the many directives in the Order, the President directed the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission to consider exercising the Commission’s “statutory rulemaking authority” to address “unfair anti-competitive restrictions on third-party repair or self-repair of items.” Exec. Order § 5(h)(ii) (July 9, 2021).

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