YOUR CAR IS A WITNESS

A man drives through a Detroit intersection on a green light, under the speed limit. A county truck runs the red and stays in the intersection for more than three seconds. He is paralyzed. He dies about a year later.

His car had a recorder. It could have shown speed, braking, accelerator position — and whether his seat belt was latched. But the vehicle was destroyed before anyone examined it, and the defense then told a jury he had not been belted, relying on an expert who had never seen the car.

That case is why this book exists.

Your vehicle may record more than you think, and far less than people assume. So may the other driver’s. So may a phone, a dash camera, a fleet telematics account, a delivery app, and a manufacturer’s servers. Each is a separate witness, held by a separate company, on a separate clock — and some of those clocks run out in days.

Michigan personal-injury attorney Joseph Dedvukaj draws on more than three decades representing injured people and explains what modern vehicles actually record, who can reach it, how fast it disappears, and what has to be proved before anyone should believe what it says.

Inside, you’ll learn

• What the federal “black box” rule really requires — and the far larger body of data it does not touch
• Why infotainment, telematics and phones often hold more than the crash recorder
• What trucking, rideshare and delivery systems keep, and who owns any of it
• How to preserve evidence before it is overwritten, and whom to write to
• A first-response page for readers who have already crashed
• A preservation-letter structure, a glossary, and a checklist of what to erase before you trade your car in

After a crash, the people involved are no longer the only witnesses

Some of this data is gone in days — overwritten, released back to a lessor, or crushed with the car. Knowing what exists, who holds it, and how quickly it disappears can decide what a jury is ever allowed to see.

Written by a trial lawyer who has represented injured people for more than thirty years — and who watched a case turn on a recorder nobody retrieved before the car went to scrap. See all titles →