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.
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?
The primary purpose of AI systems is mass surveillance.
You know you can just tape it?
They can easily set it up to prevent operation if they don’t see your face.
But they probably can’t prevent you from wearing sun glasses, a beard, a covid mask, and ear muffs.
Yeah IKR.
I have glasses and sometimes wear a facemask, and my driver awareness system does NOT like it at all. You can cancel the alert/notification, but for safety reasons, the car will not operate in hands-free mode unless it can clearly identify that there is a driver in the car watching the road.
Can they see my girlfriend giving me a blowjob?
Yes. They can detect it and may even sell/share that data.
This Mozilla report is from 2023, I assume things have gotten only worse since.
Yeah, can they see this guy’s girlfriend giving us blowjobs? And who is paying for the gas? I mean, it’s this guy’s car presumably, unless his partner is just VERY accommodating. Either way though, I’m the guest in this scenario and shouldn’t be expected to cover that.
Get the fuck out of my car, now!
You know what, this has gotten pretty hostile and weird, I think Julie and I would both feel better if you left the car.
Betcha it will be stream on the most popular porn site.
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.
Sounds like more ways for insurance companies to a) charge you more based on behaviors they arbitrarily determine are “bad”, and b) take your payments for years/decades then never pay out because they say something you did on video makes any accident your fault based on some term buried in the 500 page contract you obviously didn’t read all of.
They already do “a” by taking vehicle blackbox info uploaded by dealers or via telemetry and increasing your rate via their risk analysis. Note, your rates never go down for good driving. Only up.
I just want to rant about how dystopian car “insurance” is.
Set aside all the justifications / propaganda you’ve heard about car insurance, and think about how it actually works. You’re legally obligated to pay a corporation for the right to use your vehicle on public roads. What do you get out of it? For the vast majority of people nothing. Even if you get in an accident they’ll do their absolute damnedest not to pay you or to pay you a pittance that you could’ve covered with a fraction of the cumulative fee. That’s basically the text-book definition of a scam. Even if you do have “good” insurance (doubt) they’ll have higher prices due to all the scammy insurance companies. It’s a legally obligate scam – insurance has effectively turned every public road into a toll road.
Frankly, I feel this way about all forms of insurance, so I doubt anyone will take me seriously (It’s not hard to save and invest money, with that the entire notion of insurance kinda falls apart). Still legally obligatory insurance is a particularly disgusting form of oligarchical capture.
Score one more point for fucking bikes, Jesus…
Now about all those CCTVs
I get so tired of bikes being brought up every time a car is mentioned. They’re not at all an option for me or anyone who lives near me, and millions of others.
I’m sorry to hear that and I don’t mean to rub it in, but your local infrastructure isn’t my problem. I do hope it improves, though.
Just for balance there are plenty of things about my region I hate, like our shitty voting laws and piss poor democratic representation, but you wouldn’t catch me complaining to people who enjoy more direct democracy.
Are you also tired of being told that you are the one person responsible for choosing to live in a location that necessitates driving a car, or do you reckon it might be good to be told that a bit more, then?
I’m asking first, because I wouldn’t want to tire you any more, just because the world hastily on its way to hell in a hand basket, what with climate change, and all the disastrous knock-on effects that follow from it.
I hope you have a pleasant commute.
I’m not who you replied to, but this is a stupid take.
My area doesn’t have public transit to speak of, its semi-rural small town, and everything is in another town, so I’m forced to drive. Everywhere around here is like this. I explicitly do not have the option to move to a more urban area because I live in a very low cost of living area, which means very depressed wages, and I genuinely cant afford to move, much less live somewhere with walkable infrastructure or decent public transit, without better wages first. Because no, getting rid of everything and starting over isn’t an option, nor should it have to be.
And I didn’t choose to be here in the first place, either. When you are born into a very low cost of living area, you often get stuck there or can only move somewhere even further behind, because wages are so depressed you can’t save enough to get into a better area. The only way you get out is if you can land a good job before moving, which is insanely difficult, since remote work usually scales to the local wages, and who can afford to travel for in-person interviews?
Just move is easy to say when you can bring home more than you pay in bills, or have enough in savings to cover a few months until you find work or whatever, and its really easy to say when you already live in an expensive area. But its not actually a practical option for many of us.
So idk about that other person, but yes, I’m fucking tired of being told to just move if I don’t like how things are. Condescending out-of-touch bullshit, is what it is.
You’re an ableist asshole.
Same sort of thing coming to the US because of course.
I just bought an EV that was made before 2020. I’m going to learn all about rebuilding EV batteries.
Facerec-defeating tattoos are a thing, just throwing that out there
Does literally nothing for this though, they already know who you are.
No way in hell I’m buying a car with that BS. I’ll ride a bike first.
No way in hell I would buy a new car at all, lol!
No way in hell I could buy a new car. They cost more than my house.
My first used car was like $1000, lol!
Every new car. So congrats on further destroying the new car market, good job.
Time to stock up on old cars?
Sweet my problem has just become a massive opportunity!
It’s not wether it’s easily fooled or not. The thing is, I am not sure most of us agree with this regulation. So is this democratic after all?
And if it is, then people are dumb, stupid.
Politicians are fine with this because the cameras will just point at their chauffeurs.
Distracted Driver detection is already really common in cars sold these days, and it’s a good security feature.
If you’re not comfortable with it, you can always opt to not operate heavy machinery - there are other ways to get around.
Yeah we are not pro loose cannon we are pro privacy and if they cannot secure or explain the technology then fuck them all.
The U.S. as well
Fuck this shit 100%
I always bought old used cars anyway.
And those cars age out. Eventually your old used cars have this.
And by then, there’ll be a bypass.
Or by then the surveillance system will break.
I bought a secondhand Ascent and since it relies on 3G it bitched about there being no network, then gave up. Radio and CD player both work fine though. That’s all I need.
