do all bmws have a so called "black box" that shows
 

that was happening before an accident? where is it located?

I've never heard of any black box, to the effect of those in aircrafts. It might show how many times a car has been pushed past redline, but it won't record data like how fast the car was traveling before impact or anything like that.

No black box on BMWs. I think it's only on some domestics like Fords.

GM has them on almost every model...

I'd suspect some data could be pulled from "somewhere" inside
BMW's obc, but that's just a suspicion.

They can definitely pull data from the car. The car records faults and also things like maximum speed, engine revs etc, the dealer normally wipes the data at every service I believe. Not sure if it constantly records the last 5 mins driving though.

There are several disclaimers in the papework that comes with the car acknowledging they MAY do such.

I wouldn't assume that it is not recording a lot of the data.

Want to know for sure, just file suit against BMW for some role in causing an accident. When they roll out an analysis of speed, braking, and what you had for lunch based on recordings of your breath...

They record quite a lot.... M5 owners aren't generally aware that each 'launch' is recorded inc revs etc.... so BMW know what is happening with the box

Cheers

Wasn't the first big "black box in autos" deal with the C5 Corvette? I remember that being big news a few years ago...

Yes, according to a previous thread. The original source was BMW, but they did qualify that their box doesn't meet the US gov't definition of an EDR. I would say that this is semantics, they do have an event recorder.

http://www.xoutpost.com/x5-e53-forum/...black-box.html

what is the capacity (megabytes) on those boxes i wonder.