Dutch police are to start using information recorded in modern car computer systems in accident investigations, the AD said on Tuesday.

After trials in Rotterdam, seven of the 10 Dutch police regions will start systematically using the event data recorders built into new vehicles which, the paper says, are similar to the black boxes found in planes.

The EDRs record the time, location, speed, pedal situation and airbag use and can be used to determine what happened in the car in the last five seconds leading up to an accident.

During the Rotterdam trials, police used EDR information 21 times and the results were so promising that other forces have now bought special scanners to be able to read them as well, the paper said.

EDRs have been compulsory in all new cars in the US since 2014.