Montreal — The airbag in Éric Gauthier's car was designed to save his life. But it could put the 26-year-old behind bars.
Unbeknownst to Mr. Gauthier, the airbag in his Chevrolet Sunfire had a data recorder that proved he was driving at three times the 50-kilometre speed limit on a Montreal street when he hit another car, killing the driver.
Mr. Gauthier was convicted on two counts of dangerous driving. His trial marked the first time a Canadian judge had to rule on the admissibility of such data as court evidence, prosecutor Jeannot Décarie said.
Yesterday, at his presentence hearing, the Crown asked for a three-year sentence.
The palm-sized device that convicted Mr. Gauthier is now standard on most new car models. Manufacturers designed them as protection in case they are sued for airbag malfunctions.
A Montreal police investigator seized the recorder and odometer of Mr. Gauthier's car a week after the April 19, 2001, accident because he had trouble using traditional methods to establish the car's speed at the time of the impact.
But Mr. Gauthier's defence argued that using the data in the recorder was a violation of his privacy. Quebec Court Judge Louise Bourdeau ruled that any infringement was minimal and Mr. Gauthier was convicted last October.
Known in the industry as EDRs — event data recorders — the black boxes have grown increasingly sophisticated and common. General Motors, for example, has put them in its new models since 1999 and Ford since 2000.
Because they are beginning to be used as a prosecution tool, the recorders have triggered a growing legal debate in the United States. Critics cite privacy concerns and say that the machines constitute an unfair form of self-incrimination.
In California, a new law requires that owner's manuals for vehicles made after June, 2004, notify the drivers of what the modules are able to record. Meanwhile, a U.S. federal regulator, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, is considering making EDRs mandatory in all new vehicles.
Beyond the legal issues, Mr. Gauthier's trial also highlighted the tragedy of two families. The victim's father, Khelifa Zinet, tearfully told the court yesterday how the tragedy ended the life of his son Yacine, a 20-year-old student.
Later, Mr. Gauthier's mother, Hélène Cyr-Robert, also sobbed as she asked for forgiveness for her son, a small-town draftsman who had come to the big city and was showing off his new car to a friend the night of the accident.
The friend, who rode in Mr. Gauthier's car, suffered injuries, including a broken arm.
The police had to turn to the black box because investigators could not determine the speed at which Mr. Gauthier was driving. There were no braking skid marks.
Shortly before 1 a.m. in an industrial part of the East End, Mr. Gauthier's Sunfire barrelled into Mr. Zinet's Neon.
They hit with such force that the two cars swung sideways and smashed against each other again, then bounced onto traffic lights so hard that they sheared off the poles.
The black boxes are activated when the airbag inflates and they lock in key data for the five seconds before impact.
They're typically memory chips that record in a continuous five-second loop some key data such as the speed of the vehicle, the engine's rpm speed, the positions of the brake and gas pedals and whether the seatbelts are fastened.
In Mr. Gauthier's case, the recorder showed that in the five seconds before crashing, his Sunfire's speed went from 154 to 131 kilometres per hour. Also, four seconds before his car hit the Neon, Mr. Gauthier's gas pedal was still fully pressed to the floor.
Scofflaws might wonder if a way around the technology is to disable the EDRs. But Quebec's Highway Safety Code forbids tinkering with airbags and other safety devices.
