Event Data Recorders

H. Clay Gabler is an Associate Professor of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering at Virginia Tech. Currently, Dr. Gabler serves as Assistant Head of the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences and is a member of the Center of Injury Biomechanics. Prior to Virginia Tech, he served as a research program manager at the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Dr. Gabler has published more than 70 technical papers on subjects including event data recorders (EDRs), vehicle crashworthiness, injury biomechanics, crash epidemiology, crash modeling, and injury reconstruction. He was the principal investigator on the project “Use of Event Data Recorder (EDR) Technology for Highway Crash Data Analysis” conducted for the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies of Science. Dr. Gabler received his Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University.

John Hinch is Director of the Office of Human Vehicle Performance Research in the NHTSA Vehicle Safety Research program. Mr. Hinch has been involved in EDRs since 1998. He is the agency’s focal point for EDRs, including conducting analytical investigations of EDR systems and EDR data, presenting agency policy on EDRs, and developing and operating two national working groups to explore the current state of the art of EDR5 in original equipment manufacturers (OEM5) and aftermarket manufacturers. Mr. Hinch was the principal engineer in the development of two public notices regarding EDR rulemaking, and he has published several papers on this topic and has participated in several independent standards development activities outside of the government related to EDRs. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan, College of Engineering.

John Steiner is a senior automotive engineer with the engineering firm Keva Engineering, LLC in Southern California. Since 2000, his research interests have included how EDR data are generated, extracted, analyzed, and applied in the areas of accident reconstruction. Mr. Steiner has participated in standards committee activities for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 1616 Motor Vehicle Event Data Recorder; the SAE International Vehicle Event Data Interface (VEDI) J1698 Committee, and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Working Group 7 (WG 7) dealing with the “Guidelines for the interpretation of recorded crash pulse data to determine impact severity.” All three standards activities pertain to passenger vehicle EDR5. Mr. Steiner also is the current co-chairman of the SAE Heavy Vehicle Event Data Recorder (HVEDR) J2728 Standards Sub-Committee, whose focus is to produce a recommended practice for HVEDRs. Mr. Steiner graduated from California State University, Long Beach, in 2000 with a Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering.