That long?

On slashdot (see links) there is an article saying that under a new National Highway Traffic Safety Asministration resolution, car manufactuers will have to tell people that the car they are buying has a black box (which in this case records data related to how the person drives, such as speed). It also limits what black boxes can record. This sounds good, and is, but dows not have to be complied with until model year 2011. This is is really much too long. After all, how long does it really take for car dealershipws to start telling people which cars have black boxes? Probably a few months, maybe six months, at most a year (it would seem, but I can't know for a fact, so anyone in the industry tell me IN A COMMENT). Changing the programming in black boxes shouldn't take too long either (for the manufacturer), especially as it is almost entirely removing code and changing/adding a few lines of code. So the deadline for compliance could be model year 2007-2009 (somewhere in there)

Also, something interesting said was

while totally irrelevant, it lead to an interesting thought... the data in the recorder is a unique pattern generated by the drivers purposeful actions- eg the data was explicitly designed by the driver and therefore is automatically copyrighted on their behalf..

Someone else said in reply

i don't think that argument would fly, but if it's a unique expression of the owner would it not also be self-incrimination?

(Damn, blockquotes are a pain in the @$$)

This could be helpful, but the cops can get away with most anything, so it doesn't matter.