TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Sometimes criminal cases can have witnesses that are not even human. A key witness in the hit and run that killed three U of A students could be the driver’s car.
On board computers made cars more efficient and more capable, but also more capable of telling investigators if you were driving in a way that led to a wreck.
In the hit and run that killed three U of A students, we know detectives have executed a search warrant on Louis John Artal’s car.
When a car hurts or kills someone, it is standard for detectives in criminal cases or investigators in civil suits to tap into the car’s computer.
Scott Greene with Evidence Solutions makes a specialty of capturing the stories a car’s data can tell.
“So there are two basic places in cars that data is recorded. One is the airbag module, which will have speed, RPMs, that kind of thing. Sometimes steering input, whether the brakes were on. And then there's the infotainment system, which actually contains a lot more data in the right vehicle. It'll have speed as well as GPS coordinates and whether the radio was playing, and how loud it was, and where the lights were on inside, and things like that.”
The computer can tell how fast a driver was going. Was he hitting the gas, or hitting the brakes?
Ryan Huffman of the St. Louis Huffman Law Firm often defends drivers in court.
He says if Artal connected his phone to the car’s systems it will create a record of whether Artal was texting or talking on the phone right before the impact.
Huffman says when a defense attorney’s facing a prosecutor who plans to use car computer data he may try to convince a judge to throw out most or all of the data, or work to convince a jury the data’s been misinterpreted.
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Craig Smith is a reporter for KGUN 9. With more than 40 years of reporting in cities like Tampa, Houston and Austin, Craig has covered more than 40 Space Shuttle launches and covered historic hurricanes like Katrina, Ivan, Andrew and Hugo. Share your story ideas and important issues with Craig by emailing craig.smith@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook and Twitter.
