The Dutch government’s forensic lab says it’s decrypted electric carmaker Tesla closely-guarded driving data-storage system.

Reuters says it’s exclusively found out that the lab has uncovered “a wealth of information that could be used to investigate serious accidents”.

The agency reports it was already known that Tesla cars store data from accidents, but the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) said it had discovered far more data than investigators had previously been aware of.

The NFI said the decrypted data showed Tesla vehicles store information about the operation of its driver assistance system, known as Autopilot. The vehicles also record speed, accelerator pedal position, steering wheel angle and brake usage, and depending on how the vehicle is used, that data can be stored for over a year.

Reuters adds that the Dutch lab said rather than seek the data from Tesla, it had “reverse engineered” data logs – a process where software is deconstructed to extract information – present in Tesla vehicles “in order to objectively investigate them.”

(PIcture – Tesla)