On Thursday, investigators will work to recover the black box from a Pontiac Grand Am involved in a deadly car versus tour bus crash near Madison.

The electronic data recorder is about the size of a computer hard drive and could provide some key information. About two-thirds of all cars made since 2003 have a black box and all GM cars have had one since 1994. It's located under the passenger seat inside a Grand Am and collects a lot of information without you knowing it.

Chris Thames says he'd heard of black boxes coming to cars but didn't know he was driving one around in his Buick.

"I've read about it in articles and known that they were possibly going to do it like they do in airplanes currently," Thames says. "But I didn't realize it was being done in vehicles right now."

For several years the South Dakota Highway Patrol has been able to download data like speed and acceleration, from cars using a computer. The information could now help investigators find out what happened seconds before Lance Parliament hit a bus head on.

"You want to figure out whether the person had their foot on the gas pedal, or acceleration, whether they reacted to someone in front of them or not," says trooper Jeff Kollars, who plans to remove the device and analyze the data. "Getting this information would hopefully help us decide that."

But trooper Kollars says there is a chance he won't be able to recover the black box at all.

"Due to the nature of the accident I guess it's very possible that it could be destroyed," Kollars says.

Even if investigators recover the black box, there is a chance that it didn't record information. Kollars says that's because they primarily serve as a safety device to deploy airbags.