Colliding Views of Technological Accidents: Legal and Technical Histories of Aviation's Black Boxes

This article examines the contested adoption of cockpit voice recorders and flight data recorders ("black boxes") in aviation. It uses the 1971 collision between two airliners in Sydney, Australia, as a case study. Australia, the first country to mandate cockpit voice recording for large, jet-powered airliners, encountered resistance due to the poor performance of early recorders and pushback from pilots through industrial action. The analysis reveals how technical, political, legal, and financial factors shaped air safety investigations and debates over evidence use. It also explores tensions between legal frameworks of admissibility, liability, and restitution and aviation's "just culture," which encourages open admission of errors to prevent future incidents. The article argues for integrating judicial and technological perspectives to better understand aviation safety and risk epistemologies.