cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1247209/all-cars-sold-in-the-eu-now-require-a-camera-aimed-at-your-face-its-still-not-clear-wher
Starting July 7, 2026, every new car sold in the European Union must include a driver monitoring camera aimed at your face. Glance at your phone, your kids in the back seat, or the radio for too long, and the car will flash a warning light and sound an alert.
Automakers have known this was coming for years. What they, and EU regulators, have never spelled out is what happens to that footage after the alert goes off.
While the intention behind the new system is difficult to dispute, its implementation has raised several concerns. Early real-world testing suggests the distraction warnings can be overly sensitive and potentially distracting.
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Once again: I’m just going to have to take extremely good care of my 2006 clunker.
Seriously, the way things are going I’d be happy pouring more cash into a bucket of bolts than it’s worth just to keep it running. Mine is only a 2015 but I’m gonna keep up the maintenance because it was one of the last model years not to have an upgraded radio with the newer round of anti-features and spyware. I drive all of 20-40 miles a week. Not really worth buying a $50k car, is it?
My clunkers blue book value is $2,500. I just put $3,000 into it last month to keep it going.
I am in the privileged position of being able to afford the financial costs of a new car, but I can’t abide the privacy costs.
Agreed, the privacy costs of driving modern cars are absurd.
I was doing okay before AI replaced me. I wouldn’t have bought anything I couldn’t have paid for on the day of purchase but I’m glad that I didn’t because unemployed me has to drive even less than work-from-home me did. Pouring $3k into my car would hurt, but not as much as buying a $40k mobile babysitting device that’s going to surveil me everywhere I go.
Some states are trying to ban older cars right now. I know it is all over, but this is one place Blue states are torquing me off, because they seem to be the ones pushing some of this crap.
I lean left, but I have similar frustrations. There’s an authoritarian wing to both parties who think they can make rules for everyone else, but won’t subject themselves to the same rules. Will the data be collected from these politicians car cams the same way they want to spy on you and me? This is clearly about data and power and our leaders have shown time and time again that they’ll make moves to enrich themselves and then wrap the approval in something like climate change, save the kids, or some other cause that it barely touches on. I need my leaders to lead by example and live openly and honestly in a way most people don’t.
The politicians are the ones the cameras should always be pointed at.
I have an almost dead 02 corolla in my driveway that needs a ton of work. But, I will learn just for this reason.
IMHO it’s enough to buy a used car, have some rudimentary knowledge of maintenance, and find a good traditional mechanic that doesn’t cost too much.
The mechanics where I live are horribly expensive. Buying something else might be the right way to go, but, I’m also hoping to use it as a teaching tool. Maybe I can learn something without risking by daily driver which is about 10 years newer. Also corolla parts are cheap.
Mechanics are expensive, but buying enough equipment to do any kind of major job is even moreso. Not to mention the cost of trying to do complicated jobs without technical expertise, which could cost you a lot if you make a mistake.
Im all for doing work myself when its within reason and doesnt require much in the way of specialized tools. But theres more than a few reasons that mechanics cost a lot of money. Expertise is expensive, labor is expensive, equipment is expensive, etc. Some things are best left to professionals. Unfortunately we are long past the time of cars that are truly simple for the average person to maintain or learn to do work on
Worth noting, at least for those in the USA, your local chain auto parts store may lend out tools. The one around the corner from me used to.
My fan clutch seized up (it’s supposed to let go when it cools down so the fan isn’t always spinning at full speed). I needed a very wide wrench to get it off; even my biggest crescent wrench was way too small. They had a tool that fit perfectly and since DIYers buy their parts from them, it makes perfect sense that they’d happily lend these tools out as long as people bring them back. They put a hold on my card for the borrowed tool, but dropped it when I brought it back.
The broken fan clutch took my fuel economy (this was a late 90s vehicle) from 15-17mpg to 7-8mpg, but it roared like cross between a very angry hippo and a lion when that fan was pegged at 100%. I was a little sad when it was fixed… but my wallet was happy and the vehicle had a little power again instead of just sounding powerful.
Yeah this. I’m usually able to identify problems, then I make an informed assessment whether I can do it myself or not.
Sometimes a special tool is required that would be just as expensive as letting my mechanic do it.
We bought a new car a few years ago that came with a whole suite of sensors and warnings. I’d like to turn them off, but my partner insists on turning them on again every time I do, so I need to deal with them. In the first six months with the new car, I think I had four or five near-accidents caused by the “safety” system suddenly making some loud noise when I was already partway through a manoever. But after a while I became able to tune out the stream of beeps, boops, and buzzes that come about half a second too late to be of any use, when they’re not false alarms.
The car also has a “safety” feature I don’t think I can disable, that restricts acceleration when proximity sensors are triggered. It was not a pleasant feeling to be in the path of a multi-ton truck, flooring the accelerator, and having the car slowly mosey forward at the pace of a quiet afternoon stroll down a country lane. Worse, I believe that it was the barrelling behemoth itself which caused this reaction. Fortunately, I found quite by accident that if you keep pumping the accelerator in a blind panic for a couple of seconds, the car decides that you might really be serious about accelerating, and that maybe it should defer to the actual human intelligence that’s nominally in control of the vehicle. That, or the idiot software finally clocked that I was already in the truck’s way, and needed to get out of it. But subsequent events have lent credence to the pedal-pumping theory.
I feel like new, automated “safety” features are going to kill and injure at least as many people as they protect.
I had to rent a car for a few hours last weekend. It had a “safety feature” that automatically applied brakes if it thought you were too close to something ahead of you, with seemingly no regard to what is behind you and quickly approaching. After the third near-miss this caused, I pulled over and looked up how to turn that off.
Driving only works if everyone performs gradual, predictable maneuvers. I cannot act predictably if I can’t predict what my car will do.
Starting July 7, 2026, every new car sold in the European Union must include a driver monitoring camera aimed at your face
Patently false. The rule says nothing about how the ADDW system must function. All the sites claiming that a camera is even required are completely making shit up.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2019/2144/oj/eng
It is merely defined as:
‘advanced emergency braking system’ means a system which can automatically detect a potential collision and activate the vehicle braking system to decelerate the vehicle with the purpose of avoiding or mitigating a collision;
It’s up to each individual manufacturer to design a system that fulfills that purpose, however they feel like doing it.
Please stop spreading misinformation.
This should be higher up - Eur-lex is the official repository of such documentation in the EU.
Thats not the addw section (at least in the version im reading) but otherwise you are correct
Driver drowsiness and attention warning and advanced driver distraction warning systems shall be designed in such a way that those systems do not continuously record nor retain any data other than what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which they were collected or otherwise processed within the closed-loop system. Furthermore, those data shall not be accessible or made available to third parties at any time and shall be immediately deleted after processing. Those systems shall also be designed to avoid overlap and shall not prompt the driver separately and concurrently or in a confusing manner where one action triggers both systems.
I maintain my stance that this is one of those “small steps” towards something much worse and that manufacturers will absolutely find a way around this to monetise it somehow (even in it’s current form)
But I suppose we’ll see.
Wait until the cotton gin arrives, all the hand weavers will become jobless and no one will have experience anymore.
Wait until the printing press arrives, all the scribe monks will become jobless and no one will have experience anymore.
Wait until the computer arrives, people will become obsolete and no one will have experience anymore.
Wait until the steam engine, automobiles, planes, calculators, telephones, bla bla
“Slippery slope” arguments like these assume that once a technology introduces a specific risk, society lacks the agency to create counter-measures, new norms, or alternative uses for that technology.
History shows that when a “slope” appears, regulation steps in, technology evolves to solve the problem, or the culture shifts to reinterpret the tool.
In almost every case, the feared “bottom” of the slope was never reached because humans constantly built ramps or bridges along the way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
Just because the baseline has shifted doesn’t mean the change never happened , it just means we collectively haven’t noticed as much as we could have, because the change sometimes happens at a timeframe larger than our collective memory.
That the “absolute worst” didn’t come to pass doesn’t negate the change that did occur.
Just because the baseline has shifted doesn’t mean the change never happened
There can and will be change, sure, but my point was that OP’s “smalls steps towards something much worse” typically never happens because of the shift.
The “small steps” comment was me.
The shift described in the overton window is the shift in the perception of normal.
If 5 steps down are taken, then the window shifts, followed by another 5 downward steps, you’re still down 10 steps from where you started.
Same with 2027 models and newer in the US: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3684/text
Though technically that version can be implemented without cameras or data transmission, however unlikely.
Maybe this will open up a new DIY car industry where you buy resale cars from individuals who purchased individual components from various firms.
…I have a 2023…I’m starting to think I may never replace that car
The technology isn’t even my biggest concern. It’s the lack of transparency around where that data ends up and who gets access to it.
We need this in Canada. The amount of distracted driving I see on a daily basis is of epidemic proportions. People can’t stay off their phone and won’t unless something drastic happens. It’s beyond frustrating when someone at the front of the queue for a light isn’t paying attention and wastes valuable advance green turn signal time.
Mississauga has a lot of inept people in traffic control, stop lights are everywhere, and a lot of them only allow left turns for a brief period.
The data shouldn’t go anywhere, wall it off so that it can’t leave the car. Whimsical fantasy I know, but that is what I’d like to see.
My 2026 Subaru has driver monitoring. It frequently diables itself and beeps a message that its disabled. Sometimes it will beep a warning to keep my eyes on the road, but its misreading what Im doing, like sometimes Im looking left for traffic while turning right on to a street, other times its harder to tell why its beeping. It doesnt seem at all reliable like that, and Im glad when its not working so it doesnt give me false warnings. Ive learned mostly to ignore any driver monitoring messages. They only flash for about a second too, so I dont even know what it says when Im legit looking at traffic because I cant look away. It doesnt work very well.
