Black Boxes in Cars?

I must be living under a rock, but I was unaware that black boxes even existed in cars! Evidently,"Almost all vehicles built today have a "black box" recorder, a similar, simpler version of the flight data recorders found in airplanes. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is considering a proposal to make the boxes, now optional for automakers, mandatory within a few years in all vehicles sold in the United States."

The article mentions different groups debating for the particulars of how this will be regulated into law. Perhaps I'm not alarmist enough, but I'm less concerned about what sort of usage the police can get out of this technology than I am of the insurance companies that can see the potential savings of this sort of technology. All of this makes me wonder: What kind of lobbying power do insurance companies have over at Capital Hill?