When an airplane crashes, investigators can determine the accident’s cause by turning to the aircraft’s flight data recorder, also known as a ‘black box’. This device records cockpit conversations, communications with traffic control, and other useful information.

That is the idea behind Car Black Box, a mobile app published by Neusoft Mobile Solutions. Essentially, this app is a flight data recorder for your car.

Car Black Box, a free app for Nokia Symbian OS, S60 5.0 (touchscreen) devices, senses when your car has been hit, records your location, sends a text alert to a friend or family member of your choice, and takes photos of the accident scene. And once you have set up the app, it does all this automatically.

In the event of a mere fender-bender, the information Car Black Box captures can be useful for your car-insurance paperwork. But in the case of a serious accident, the text alert could help get an ambulance to you quickly.

Car Black Box is simple to set up, since it has only one main screen. Here’s a look:

To start, you have six options. The first, ‘Contact phone number’, is just that, the phone number to which you want your emergency text message sent. To set this, tap ‘contact phone number’, then enter the number you want:

‘Action type’ is the second option, and it offers three choices: Disable, Send SMS, and Send landmark MMS. Disable is self-explanatory. Send SMS means that when Car Black Box detects your car has been struck, it sends a pre-set text message to the phone number you’ve selected. ‘Send landmark MMS’ means the alert will also include your location on a map; for this option, the recipient must have a Nokia device with Nokia Maps installed.

‘Emergency message’, the fourth option, is where you set the text of the message that will be send in the event of an accident. Car Black Box comes pre-loaded with a message, but you can change it to whatever you like, within the length limit. Here’s how the pre-loaded message, sent from my Nokia N97, looks on a recipient’s device  — in this case, the non-Nokia phone owned by my wife, the person I designated to receive my emergency messages:

The final three options are related: Take images, Max buffer size, and Image quality. ‘Text images’ simply toggles between Yes and No – Yes means you will record photos when Car Black Box detects an accident. ‘Max buffer size’ gives you a slider control to select the maximum amount of memory dedicated to images; it ranges from 10 megabytes, enough for 1 minute, to 3 gigabytes, enough for 5 hours. Image quality, also selected with a slider, gives you the choice of Low, High, and everything in between. (Because these images need room, it is best to install Car Black Box in user memory, rather than in phone memory.)

Once you’ve selected your settings, press Start Server in the upper left-hand corner, make sure your camera lens is uncovered (if that is an option on your device), and you are ready. Since Nokia devices can multitask, leave Car Black Box running whenever you are in the car. And as long as you are not driving, you can also use your Nokia device to run other apps or functions while Car Black Box runs in the background.

Then, should you get into an accident, Car Black Box uses your Nokia device’s accelerometer to detect a sudden movement. In my tests on a Nokia N97, I was able to trick Car Black Box by punching the air with the device in my hand. The app interpreted the sudden movement of my hand as an accident.

But just to be sure, when Car Black Box detects an accident, it flashes an alert message on your device screen: ‘Unusual shock detected. Please close if you are okay.’ At the bottom of the screen is a 30-second timer; if you do not close the screen within those 30 seconds, Car Black Box sends your emergency message to the pre-defined phone number. At that time, the app also begins using your device’s camera to record images.

Later, after the accident, you select ‘View events’ to look at the photos that Car Black Box has recorded. Here’s an example, which I took from inside a car while driving near the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Again, I tricked the app into thinking we had had accident, and then I did not close the Alert screen within the 30 seconds. (I was not driving at the time!)

This image includes quite a bit of useful information: the date (upper left corner), the time when the photo was taken (lower left corner); my location (longitude and latitude, upper right corner), and my vehicle’s speed (also upper right corner).

Wondering why the text is turned? No, our car was not on its side! I was merely holding my device the ‘wrong’ way, so the photo is turned 90 degrees. To adjust, simply turn your device to the right or left – or use the ‘Rotate’ command in the app’s viewing function to turn the image on your screen.

You will have quite a few images to review, since Car Black Box seems to snap an image every second or so. I set the buffer maximum at 1 minute, so I ended up with a very generous collection of some 60 images from a single ‘incident’.

While viewing Car Black Box images, you can zoom in for more detail. You can also send Car Black Box images as a MMS, e-mail, or Bluetooth message, or upload them to the web. Printing is an option, too, as is the trash can for any images that are less than useful. You can also move Car Black Box images to your laptop or PC by connecting your Nokia device via a USB cable and using Nokia Ovi Suite. (Images taken during operation are stored on your phone in data\images\carblackbox.)

Car Black Box’s ease of use is due, in part, to a recent user experience (UX) consultation provided by Forum Nokia. A Forum Nokia UX consultant evaluated the app using a set of mobile heuristics, measures that include system-status visibility, consistency, and error management. The UX consultant then prepared a written report that itemized the app’s design strengths and weaknesses, and recommended design changes that could make Car Black Box an even better experience for users. To learn more about how the Forum Nokia UX consultation helped Car Black Box, check out this Forum Nokia case study.

This app runs on Nokia Symbian OS, S60 5.0 (touchscreen) devices, including the Nokia N97 mini, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia C6, and many others. A Qt version for advanced Nokia touchscreen devices — the Nokia N8, Nokia C7, Nokia E7, and Nokia C6-01 — is in the works, according to Neusoft; this version will reportedly add new features and further improve usability.

Car Black Box is available now on Ovi Store, and it is free.