A black box is an important safety tool the aviation industry has long-used to track data during flights. Investigators can use information recovered from a black box after a plane crash to determine why the motor vehicle accident might have happened. Traditionally, black boxes were flight recorders – heavily protected recording devices with disks for recording flight data. Black boxes on planes record all relevant flight information, including flight statistics and aircraft diagnostics, as well as conversations on the radio and between pilots.
Today, black boxes have expanded outside the aviation industry and into commercial trucking. Although not every commercial truck has a black box (or event data recorder, as they are called in trucking), the majority do to help trucking companies, insurers, investigators and the government keep track of what causes collisions. Black boxes allow federal regulators to improve the safety of the trucking industry. They also allow crash victims to potentially determine the causes of their accidents and prove fault.