TOEIC(R) Test 満点続出の謎を解く!
No.297 SIM音読用英文 
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'Black Boxes' Aren't Just for Airplanes Any More
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More than two-thirds of the new cars -
foreign and domestic -
sold in the United States this year
will be equipped with so-called black boxes.
In fact, about a third of all the vehicles
on the American road today
have such devices.
These are not like the airliner black boxes
that record long periods of audio
from the cockpit
and streams of data
about the performance
of the plane's technical systems.
Famously and tragically,
those kinds of boxes,
when recovered from crash sites,
often provide important clues
to what might have brought the plane down.
Those black boxes actually aren't black but are bright orange,
to make them easier to find in wreckage.
In automobiles, they're not black, either.
In fact, they're not even boxes!
They're electronic components
built into newer cars' computer systems.
You cannot disable these sensors
by yanking a few wires.
They are built
so deeply into the guts of the onboard computer
that they're almost tamper-proof.
Automobile black boxes do not record voices
or sniff out whether drivers have been drinking.
In fact, they don't even turn on
unless and until there's a crash
so serious that the vehicle's air bags deploy.
But these sensors do record the car's speed,
starting about five seconds before a high-speed accident.
And they measure the degree
to which the driver applied the brakes,
and whether or not the driver and passengers had buckled their seat
belts.
Big auto companies and the National Highway Transportation Safety
Administration
gather black-box data
from these serious crashes
to improve auto safety systems.
Highway police and insurance companies
like to get hold of this information, too.
They can in some states and communities,
but are not allowed access in other places
without permission from the car's owner.
Some advocacy groups oppose
putting black boxes in cars.
They consider them
an invasion of owners' privacy.
But data sensors are showing up
in more and more vehicles each year,
whether people like it or not.
I'm Ted Landphair.
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