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.
What sucks is you know the US is going to put it in their cars “to simplify production” and we dont have GDPR to protect us, so you know that data is going somewhere.
Yes I would not want to live in the US.
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.
The primary purpose of AI systems is mass surveillance.
Yes.
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.
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”.
Would think that limiting engine power would be better way to go. We don’t really need 400hp+ cars that go from 0-100 in 3 sec. If I had such a car when I just started driving,I probably wouldn’t be writing this…
Also enforce carmode on mobiles - black out mobile screen when car is moving.
Finally, alle the beeps and blinking warning -toooo many already. I got warning fatigue, I just ignore the message and get irritated
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.
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)
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.
I use it a lot. I set it 10kmph above the speed limit as well. It’s not perfect in a lot of city conditions and it can behave unexpectedly as well in these condition. Unless I want to fiddle with a spacing distance all the time and avoid sudden breaking for no reason I have to use it sparingly depending on time of day and location. Outside of cities it tends to work quite well for the most part. Some sharper bends trigger breaks too soon for no reason as well even though I’ve set sensitivity to the lowest.
Also during heavy rain it just tends to ignore everything in front of me and starts accelerating to the max set speed.
Don’t you know how roads work? Different speeds, situations, city traffic? Any of this rings a bell?
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.
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.
Just need a really tiny picture of your face to trick the camera.
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.
Only buying pre 2018 cars from now on, I will have a Toyota collection that will run forever
The data destination should be mandatory disclosure, not a mystery.
My utv detects the seatbelt. If you don’t click in the seatbelt, it limits speed to like 10mph and limits the hp. Sometimes I’m tooling in the yard or getting it unstuck and I need full HP but also need to get in and out of the vehicle. Someone made a cute little bypass that took 5 minutes to install. Works like a charm. Now, when I’m driving on a road, I buckle up, but when I’m plowing the snowy driveway I don’t.
How do I learn to be a FOSS developer so I can start working on firmware/software replacements for vehicles?
Couldn’t you just sit on top of the buckled seat belt?
Shutup, nerd.
Edit: Truth is, I thought of that and tried it. I cant remember why, but for some reason it was uncomfortable. Or maybe I wanted the flexibility to buckle easily when I felt it was warranted. Something like that.
I have a John Deere skidsteer. To even start the machine you need to crawl over the loader bucket, turn around with your back to the machine, kind of fall back into the cab to sit down inside the tight cab, feet on both hydraulic peddles, buckle the shoulder/lap belt, close the front glass door to access the ignition, toggle a safety switch, then turn the ignition key to start it. A fighter cockpit has more room.
If for any reason, if you need/want to dismount from the machine you must reverse each step to shut down the machine to get out. If you do one thing out of order it immediately kills the engine and stops the machine. Imagine needing to do all that multiple times a day or even hour.
A single seatbelt to buckle ain’t no thang.
***And yes, the machine is for sale…
Jumping straight to vehicles might be much. But you can definitely start hacking away at small iot devices or routers. They usually have poor/no security and are a great way to get your feet wet.
There are whole youtube channels dedicated to reverse engineering small consumer devices.
Right on. Thanks. I never expected to jump straight to vehicles, nor do I think one man is out there making the FOSS operating systems, so I guess I’m just wondering where I should start to be able to contribute to the effort in the near future.
I’d rather have the option for a factory installed dashcam or at least a mount for me to install one.
I’m in the US where this is coming soon enough. My car is a 2012 which seems like kind of a sweet spot, but it’s not going to last forever especially with our winters and road salt and pot holes.
I didn’t plan to buy a new car any time soon but have been thinking about my eventual next choice. All this BS has me wondering whether it’s better to get something soon without the next level of surveillance, or wait a few years and see how bad it is in practice and how it can be disabled.
That 2012 I mentioned is fun to drive, has low mileage for its age, and is fuel efficient, plus I have renewed my love of working on my own vehicles after not doing so for a decade or two. I’m currently doing work on the brakes. Maybe I’ll just have to try to make it live forever, and not give any more money to the whole damn industry as long as possible. That’s the most economically and environmentally friendly option, after all.
Just a heads up: I have a 2026 GM. The infotainment doesn’t work right and the key fob often isn’t detected. Their solution is to blame my phone (even though it works with every other car and every other Bluetooth device; and a factory reset of my Pixel 9 only solved some of the infotainment problems and shouldn’t have had to happen at all anyway). My father-in-law also has a 2026 Chevy and there are infotainment problems for him. Different models.
Tldr: avoid the 2026 GM vehicles.
Avoid all GM vehicles, they are directly responsible for the pathetic state of US public infrastructure and they have literally been caught valuing profits over their customers’ lives.
DONE, lol.
I kinda want to get something with a manual transmission again, so it will very likely be a japanese brand.
Invest in some fluid film or other lanolin based undercoating, that way you can stop the road salt damage from getting any worse.
I did already get myself some Surface Shield which is exactly that kind of lanolin based protectant, after also reading about some of the more hardcore stuff like POR-15 that I’d worry could trap water or hide damage.
I’ve used it a bit on my car near where I have some wheels removed to work on the brakes, and tried it on some garden tools.
Impressions are very good and I totally plan to cover the underside of my car with this stuff when finishing up work on it. Just not the exhaust I imagine.
Surface shield is just as good or better. You know your stuff, good for you! I do at least one application before winter, and on my car with a little rust I do once more in the late spring as well. The stuff doesn’t seem to harm rubber, so I go crazy and spray it all over with my little 5 gal air compressor and a woolwax gun. Beware, it makes future underside work much dirtier, but I much prefer that to battling rusty bolts.
I have a car from 2023, and I think thats the last year before they started adding shit to the vara, like beeping when going over speed limit and filming the driver.
So if I were you, I would look at cars from that year now, and you hit the sweet spot of getting a 3 year old car for almost half the new price.
You won’t be able to disable stuff, it will get worse and worse every year as drivers gets used to it.
