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.
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.