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.
Im sorry, but this is just silly.
If a camera rocords your face, it can be used to identity you. Thus it falls under GDPR regulations as PII. That requires that the footage is kept no longer than needed for its purpose and that what happens to the data is spelled out exactly. My car already comes with a privacy policy that you can read.
So the answer is: Anything that can be used to identify you will deleted - or rather it will never get stored.
And the reason this regulation doesn’t spell out what happens to the data is that it doesn’t need to because GDPR covers ALL data already.
The EU is guilty of many things, but this is solely about increasing driver awareness and preventing deaths and injury - and it’s working, with each generation of requirements, less people die.
You guys are hilarious with your “I’d just keep/buy an old car.” The EU is also making it illegal to repair older vehicles and forcing people to replace “outdated” models with more environmentally friendly ones. China did the same thing with a buyback and destroy of all their outdated vehicles. Their aren’t going to be any old vehicles. The only way to address this is to demand privacy rights and protection NOW.
The data destination should be mandatory disclosure, not a mystery.
The only option to avoid this is to agree to the “Crotch Cam” as a secondary feature, when purchasing. No salesman will visit your home. /s
So if your teenager bangs their partner in the back seat do you sue your insurance or the automaker for recording child pornography?
Depending on the locals laws, the very act of transmitting such images over the internet qualifies as “distribution of CSAM”.
Only buying pre 2018 cars from now on, I will have a Toyota collection that will run forever
This is for cars where everything is being put on touchscreens so you have to take your eyes off of the road to control it?
A camera that faces both the driver and front windows by default, but only stores it where the owner wants it stored would be nice. Making it a default would change how cops interact with people.
If body cams being on didn’t change how they interact with you. Nothing will.
The footage will only be used to harm you
The terrifying thing is, body cams probably did change how cops interact with people. They were that bad before. There’s also been a few times when a cop their forgets to turn off their body cam or arrives late and got in some trouble.
If you actually owned the car and the software on the car, then you could set the feed to be stored offsite somewhere. Even if the cops knew it was being recorded, they wouldn’t be able to get it deleted. Even if they deleted the local copy, they wouldn’t be able to know how many backups there are.
And make insurance higher, just like why tye scan IDs when you buy cigs and booze.
Yes harm
We are talking about EU, not USA.
ACAB is ACAB the world around.
Oh I know! But the gilets jaunes were not in a car. I think so far I’ve only heard of US shooting persons in car for no fucking reason.
before long people are gonna want to buy nothing but used 70s and 80s carbuerated shitboxes just to avoid all this shit.
10 bucks says all this data is being fed back to insurance companies.
Please install this rootkit on your phone for $10 off your car insurance.
What if you tape the camera ?
I’m speculating wildly, but if the regulations for road sign cameras are anything to go by, the EU will require the car to wail at you every few seconds because it thinks the speed limit on the highway is 40 km/h because it picked up a sign on the offramp you just passed.
I bet before long someone will have a design for a little device to place over the camera with an image that looks like the interior of a car with a random person’s face visible. Doesn’t even need to be a screen, just a backlit photo.
Then some features will likely not work
Time to get to work on emulating a driver sitting in the car doing nothing to fool the computer.
Like?
I remember saying video on youtube, a guy said his Toyota doesn’t recognize his face in sunglasses and shows persistent warning message on the screen. I don’t remember details, but possible that adaptive cc won’t work, or you can’t use infotainment due to the persistent message.
Brakes
:(
Like the ignition. Apparently Meta is subsidising the storage and assessment infrastructure for clip analysis
This is garbage.
The camera works in real time and doesn’t store anything.
The car
The car won’t start.
This was on the news today on tv and they showed a camera filming the driver, watching his upper body.
I bought a car from 2023 without all this shit so I’m very happy. Newer electric cars also beep when you go over the speed limit, which would drive me nuts.
My car shortly beeps 3x every time I go over speed limit. So I’m punished when I try to maintain speed limit and going 2kmph over triggers the beep. So I just constantly go 10kmph over now and I get those 3 beeps just for the first time I cross over the speed limit.
The beep is tied to the road sign monitoring setting so I have to turn off both, not just beeping. So then I don’t get signs displayed on my dash board which can be actually useful sometimes.
I think its horrible and should be illegal. It’s a massive annoyance and could cause accidents since your attention is on that and not the traffic.
So tired of all the bullshit people never asked for.
May I suggest adaptive speed control.
Don’t you know how roads work? Different speeds, situations, city traffic? Any of this rings a bell?
If anyone owns a current BMW and the speed limit beeping drives them nuts:
Hold the “set” button on you steering wheel for about 2s, the screen will inform you the Warnung has been temporarily turned off (until your next start)
I’d rather have the option for a factory installed dashcam or at least a mount for me to install one.
Unless it can prove that it is running entirely locally with no outside connection, it can fuck off.
Even then… I still don’t want it.
The mandate says nothing about cameras specifically.
I thought it did as well but it only specifies this :
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.
Don’t get me wrong, manufacturers are going to have a fucking field day with all of the shit they’ll try and get in under this banner of “safety” and they will almost certainly work their monetisation shenanigans in around this.
It might seem like that wording prohibits data collection, but it doesn’t cover all the bases a team of well paid lawyers would be able to come up with. Or they could just do what they normally do and just ignore the “no data collection” part and pay the
cost of doing business taxfine and rake in multiples of that fine in profits.My point is , it doesn’t specify cameras, so theoretically a company could come up with a non-face-scanning way of doing this and use that instead.
will they ?..fuck no…but they could if they wanted to.
Which is arguably worse.
edit : A note to say that I’m not arguing against the safety aspects of this , they might be fully valid, i’m arguing that it’ll be abused for profit in any way the companies think will give them a positive ROI.
My car has this… Hilariously the sleepy alert only kicks in when I decide to go slower than normal. The “keep hands on wheel” alert kicks off very frequently… Because roads are straight enough for no “input” to be detected
I’ve been in a car that lightly shook the steering wheel and pedals when you approached the speed limit.
That was super disconcerting because I didn’t know it existed until my steering wheel started moving on it’s own.
Time to buy a Daimler-Benz W123 240D (OM616) with 53 kW (72 hp) and a 4-spd manual. Yep, that’s all I need.
