Hello people, my family recently bought a Renault 5 e-tech. The car itself is great, but there are some aspects that creep me out, especially the driver-facing camera. We didn’t actually know that such a camera existed before we bought the car, it was only mentioned as the car was given to us.
The cameras official purpose is to see, if you are tired and paying attention to the road, by some “AI magic”, I suppose. You can also let it scan your face, so that you automatically get logged into your profile.
I personally think, that that is kinda creepy, especially as there is no visual indication if the camera is currently recording and no official way to disable the camera hardware-wise. When it is being coverd, the car immediately complains about it.
When talking to friends or family about it, I got one of two reactions: equal concern, or “nice feature actually”, “what about the camera on your laptop?”, “you are way too paranoid”, “I have noting to hide; it is only me driving being recorded”.
I have also seen such cameras in other cars, BYD for example.
What do you think, is this creepy or am I too paranoid? Does anyone know where the actual data is processed, on device or on some cloud server? Do you have any experience with such cameras? I couldn’t really find any information about it on the internet.
Fatigue detection is a real thing that doesn’t use the type of AI that people think of when they hear that word today most often. It’s not language based but instead it’s able to recognize faces and posture, tell where your attention is focused, and recognize signs of fatigue like head drop, eyes closing, and attention drifting from the road.
It, along with other attention based driver safety features, are real and effective and can be done on device with a computer with less power than a modern cellphone.
It is, however, at least a little creepy. It’s made a lot more so by it not being disclosed upfront with disclosures and full user awareness. It should be explained by both the website, the car manual, the salesperson and the car itself exactly what it’s doing and where any video data is being sent. It’s probably processing the video locally and at most sending telemetry about which driver just sat down and such, but 1) you might not want that 2) unless they actually tell you that you don’t know.
It’s not paranoia to want an explanation and appropriate assurances, or for it to be in your control. You don’t need to assume it’s the worst case for that to be true. It’s probably a real safety feature with a couple of quality of life features taped on so people can see it do something, since you don’t really see a passive safety feature. But without actual communication you don’t actually know that.
There are at least two cars owned by members of my family that I am aware of that have a fatigue detection, and neither of them use cameras. So I’m firmly in the creepy camp.
We are all assuming the worst case because it’s most likely based on historical data. There is no way to justify this while ignoring other actual safety issues like headlights. Pretty sure not being blind while driving is an actual issue, but since it doesn’t rape privacy and civil rights, they’ll just ignore that.
I see the safety benefits of having this, and I would appreciate knowing that the car would blast a loud sound every time my eyes shut off from sleepiness so it will never happen, but this must be 100% open source no exceptions so it can be verified that it doesn’t spy on you.
Yeah, I can see the safety benefits but I’m honestly not sure how I would feel about it. My current car has a variant but the camera is mounted on the outside, and it notices lane drift and changes in responsiveness to curves. It’s basically an extension of the collision/lane centering/automatic windshield wiper (weirdly) systems.
I’m okay with that because it’s not looking at me, but at the road, which I expect the car to do. Even if it was verified to not be sending anything anywhere I can honestly say I’m still very unsure about just being passively on camera like that.
Thank you for the excellent response!