Driver convicted by 'black box' sentenced

File photo / Northern Advocate

Data from a car's "black box" recorder has been used to convict a man on dangerous driving charges for the first time in New Zealand.

Levin man Allan Hohaia, 50, was sentenced to six months' home detention and ordered to pay $17,500 reparation in Hastings District Court yesterday, the Dominion Post reported.

Police said his high-performance HSV Holden Clubsport crossed the centre line and collided with another car on a corner near Porangahau, Hawke's Bay, badly injuring 55-year-old driver Peter Kerr in January last year.

Hohaia was convicted after Judge Ann Gaskell accepted evidence extracted from the car's sensing and diagnostic module - similar to an airplane's "black box" recorder - which recorded the car's speed in the seconds before the airbag inflated.

Hohaia claimed he was travelling at 50-60km/h on the corner, within the 58-68km/h which crash investigators said was safe for the corner.

But data from the module showed he had been travelling at 150km/h 2.5 seconds before the crash, and 98km/h half a second before the collision.

Mr Kerr was in a coma for 10 days and intensive care for three weeks. It was 10 months before he began to learn to walk again.

Judge Gaskell said the community sentence would allow Hohaia to make reparations to Mr Kerr, whose life and livelihood had been destroyed in the crash.

She also sentenced Hohaia to 350 hours' community work and disqualified him from driving for two years.

Diagnostic units were first installed in cars in the 1990s, and data from them was commonly used to secure driving convictions in the United States.

- NZPA