SAE EDR SYMPOSIUM: DAY 1, SESSION 4

Bill Messerschmidt
Manager
Messerschmidt Safety Consultants

The last session of a great day in Danville, Virginia, is on standards development, beginning with SAE J1698, SAE J2728, and International Standards Organization (ISO) Activity.

The first speaker is Brian Everest, speaking on the objectives of the light vehicle Event Data Recorder (EDR) Standards Committee. The updated Standard will address the data, the tool, and the extraction. There are five task forces, focusing on: 1) updating the text and definitions to be current with new and future technology; 2) defining new future parameters and technologies (like brake pedal position!); 3) tamper resistance, physical integrity, and standard data retrieval communications; 4) recommended practices for any tool used for accessing the EDR; 5) ensuring data integrity.

That's a lot of beneficial work!

The next speaker is Carl Munch, speaking on test protocols for compliance with Part 563. This is the part of the committee's work that will ensure that data from EDRs are recorded and reported accurately, including synchronizing the parameters. The committee has looked at reporting of longitudinal delta v, max delta v, and time to max delta v.

The third speaker is Lee Lackey, from Noregon Systems, discussing the J2728 committee. This committee has developed the Standard for HVEDRs. There were four main groups in Tier 1, which is the first stage of the Standard: data definitions, data extraction, data file format, and event triggers. There were also groups for performance specs and survivability, which come into play more in Tier 2 than in Tier 1.

The J2728 Standard has 16 Header parameters, 1 Footer parameter, and 20 data elements. The data will be output into a CSV file that can be validated, and requires EDRs to have sufficient reserve power to write data in the event of a complete power failure. At this point, the Standard is in the final stages of meeting some requests from the NTSB.

The last speaker of the day is Joseph Marsh, from Ivy Consultancy, describing the International Standards Organization's activity with EDRs. These are under TC22 / SC 12 / WG7, the Traffic Accident Analysis Methodology group. This is mostly concerning the collection of aggregate EDR data.

This was an excellent day--very much worth the time and money. I'm looking forward to tomorrow!

Visit SAE's page learn more about the speakers. View the Event Guide for the SAE 2011 Highway Vehicle EDR Symposium (pdf).