Most commercial airplanes have an indestructible flight recorder, also called a "black box" — even though the casing is actually bright orange. Actually, there are two of them: One records information from the flight computers, and the second box records cockpit audio and other sounds inside the plane. In the event of a crash, investigators can recover the black boxes and find out exactly what happened. Cars can have black boxes, too. In fact, it's a good bet your current car has one already, and if it doesn't your next new car certainly will. That's why you should know exactly what that black box is recording, who can get that information and how you can stay in control of it. Black boxes in cars aren't a new idea. The practice started in 1994 with cars from Cadillac, Buick, Chevrolet and Pontiac. The black boxes were meant to help manufacturers learn how their cars performed in crashes That's the technical side of downloading black box data, b...