At the end of December 2023, a major traffic accident involving Ideal L7 occurred in Qingyuan City, Guangdong Province. Is the ideal disclosure of car driving data and line and recorder** suspected of violating driver's privacy? What data compliance issues may arise during the accident analysis of intelligent networked vehicles? Zhiding.com interviewed lawyer Han Ting, the founding partner of Wangheng Law Firm, who believes that the driving data and ** released by Li Auto are not in the scope of privacy, but she called on relevant departments to speed up the introduction of regulations and standards related to the black box of intelligent networked vehicles.
Zhiding.com: What personal information is involved in the incident? Is it privacy?
Han Ting:After the "Ideal L7 Qingyuan Car Accident", Ideal released two incident-related Weibo. The first Weibo post announced the speed (178 km h and 96 km h) and driving behavior (braking measures); The second Weibo announced the dash cam**, which has no sound, nor does it display the driver's whereabouts and precise positioning information. We believe that the above information is personal information of the driver and constitutes data, but is not private, because the content disclosed in the ** is not related to the driver's private activities or private information.
Zhiding.com: Is there a legal basis for Ideal to collect and publish the above personal information data?
Han Ting:Ideal mentioned in the public report that the speed and driving behavior data comes from the background of the vehicle, so these data should be collected by Ideal. Whether a car company has the right to process such data, i.e., collect, use and disclose the data, depends on whether there is an agreement between the car company and the user. We do not currently know whether users have signed an agreement that includes consent to data processing, so we are not in a position to determine the legality of the ideal collection and disclosure of data.
Regarding dash cams**, we speculate that they may not be ideal for collection, because dashcams are usually not connected to the Internet, and if they are collected, the storage cost of dash cams will be very high for car companies, and the legal risks will be high. As for where the ideal car dash cam comes from**, it remains to be further understood.
Zhiding.com: Who should handle the data after an accident?
Han Ting:The issue was complex, not only in terms of equipment and technology, but also in terms of tenure and rights.
Usually, after a traffic accident occurs, the traffic management department shall process the data and determine the responsibility for the accident. At present, there are no particularly targeted and detailed legal regulations on data processing related to intelligent networked vehicle accidents in China. We believe that the answer to this question will become clear as regulations and standards are further refined, especially in the future with the application of Event Data Recorder ("EDR" or "Black Box").
The L7 involved in the accident is an intelligent networked vehicle with assisted driving functions, which can achieve L2 level, or "conditional autonomous driving". For connected cars with assisted driving or even higher-level autonomous driving functions in the future, accident analysis will rely heavily on black boxes.
There are currently no mandatory regulations on black boxes in cars in China, but on April 7, 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a draft of the "Guidelines for the Access Management of Intelligent Connected Vehicle Manufacturers and Products (Trial)". Article 8 of the Draft stipulates that "ICV products shall have the functions of event data recording and autonomous driving data storage, and the data collected and recorded shall at least include the operating status of the driving automation system, the driver's status, the driving environment information, the vehicle control information, etc., and shall meet the relevant performance and safety requirements to ensure the integrity of the equipment recording data in the event of an accident." From this statement, it can be seen that the data recording and storage functions of self-driving cars should be completed by the "equipment" in the car, rather than uploading the data to the cloud system or the car company through the network. In short, if the guidelines are issued, every connected car should have a black box in its vehicle.
Several Provisions on the Security Management of Automotive Data (for Trial Implementation) advocates the principle of in-vehicle processing, that is, not to provide data outside the vehicle unless it is truly necessary. Based on this, we can foresee that the type of data that intelligent connected cars can transmit back to the car company after the installation of a black box may be further restricted by regulations.
In addition to data collection, there are a number of questions related to black boxes: who should control them, and whether car companies have access to the passwords or reading rights of black boxes; Under what conditions and who will open the black box, and whether the user agrees that it can be defaulted; If the traffic management department or a third-party organization does not have the environment or ability to process data, can the car company conduct an accident analysis; If the analysis conclusions obtained by the car company are questioned by users, how to solve them, and so on. It is expected that more targeted regulations and standards will be introduced in the future to solve the above problems.