Toyota's Blackbox and OBD

I'm reading The Wall Street Journal yesterday and I see this article about an issue relating to reading the Blackbox in Toyota vehicles. Now it doesn't really say why people can't read the blackbox data but it most either be because there is no published literature on how to read the data or that the data is encrypted. I would assume the information in the blackbox is encrypted otherwise somebody would have hacked it by now. Of course there is always that privacy issue about giving out automotive data without the owners consent.

Anyway I always assumed that the data in the black box was as easy to obtain as the data on the OBD interface. Well maybe not that easy but along the same lines as reading any OBD codes as long as the user had the correct scanner, the right software and knew what the data represented. OBD supplies trouble codes from the engine indicating emission problems and other faults. [OBD Description].

So the OnBoard Diagnostics [OBD] interface has been required on US cars since 1996, or if your lived in California since 1988 ~ here's a little OBD History.While I gather the blackbox [Event Data Recorder] is that part of the system that records things like over-revving the engine, or things people would rather not tell a car dealer. Even worse that the Data Recorder could indicate that the driver was speeding just before an accident. I would still think the info is retrievable, or why record it.

In some way the blackbox data must be separate from the vehicle trouble codes that are readable as required by law. Is there one uC to handle the blackbox and another computer for the OBD interface? It was also my impression that the government was in the process of standardizing the data from the blackbox, which implies that it is retrievable.

I'm certainly no automotive expert, just an engineer that tracks the electrical requirements of different interfaces. Ok, the last time I worked on a car was in the seventies which is long before cars had computers.

Is this data available on the OBD connector, on the CANbus portion of the interface or is this a completely different interface on another connector and does it vary by manufacturer. At any rate I was just a little suppressed by the fact that it's so hard to get at the data.

The correct term for the Blackbox is Motor Vehicle Event Data Recorder [MVEDR].