this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2026

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All Cars Sold in the EU Now Require a Camera Aimed at Your Face. It’s Still Not Clear Where That Data Goes (allaboutcookies.org)

submitted 1 day ago by beep@piefed.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

236 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

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[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 6 points 12 hours ago (3 children)

For anyone thinking they can just cover it or something...

Those cameras are for detecting distracted and tired drivers. They run special AI models that track eye movent and other queues. Covering them will obviously be detected by so will be putting a picture in front of it.

When it detects it's disabled a warning light will light on the dashboard. For now it's not specifically forbidden to cover it but the warning light may mean issues when passing technical revisions. In case of an accident insurance may also treat it as a proof that you were at fault. For now it's all just speculation as the rules are new but most likely it will go this way.

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[–] Tryenjer@lemmy.world 28 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

The primary purpose of AI systems is mass surveillance.

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[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 30 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] tristynalxander@mander.xyz 4 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 5 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

Should read up on the history of medical insurance, e.g. blue cross blue shield. The idea was that expensive payouts can happen early on during someone's coverage, before they have a chance to build up savings. No one wants that to happen to them, so if everybody is in the pool of people who will pay for coverage, that risk is mitigated by being spread over a large group who only need to pay in a little at any time.

Rich people or institutions who can afford to self-insure don't need insurance.

This original insurance was non-profit. The capitalist insurances are the ones realizing they can choose to only cover people who aren't likely to need payouts, and profit off of the difference between pay ins and pay outs. I also agree this is a morally dubious system.

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[–] dogslayeggs@lemmy.world 3 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

I used to think like you do. "How does this benefit me?"

But as a pedestrian who was hit by an uninsured driver, I can firmly tell you that you have no idea what you are talking about. Driving is not a constitutional right. It's a privilege that the state gives to you. It's extremely dangerous for those around you, so limiting the ability to drive very dangerous vehicles to people who are financially responsible isn't the worst idea. You might even say, "but you can just sue the person who hit you if they don't have insurance." The response is to think about the kind of person who can't afford $100/mo and how much you might be able to squeeze out of them in a lawsuit over $20,000 in repair bills.

[–] tristynalxander@mander.xyz 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

as a pedestrian who was hit by an uninsured driver

Sorry that happened to you, that's genuinely terrible.

That said, I think you should be angry at the cost of medicine and medical care rather than being angry at all poor people because one acted terribly. We should do everything we can to prevent people from being hit by cars, but I don't think exploiting poor people for needing to get from one location to another is going to help lower incidence of pedestrian collisions. In my personal experience it's usually the wealthier cars who drive more recklessly, but there's certainly no mechanistic relation between being poor and being a bad driver. The poors aren't inherently less capable of driving. (Unless, you know of a way to get insurance for free...)

$20,000 in repair bills

Just buy a new car. If your car repairs costs more than a year of my rent you need a cheaper car - or a better mechanic. I'm very sympathetic to people hit by cars - I think that's terrible. I'm not at all sympathetic to rich (or "middle class") people complaining about damage to their $100k+ vehicles. You can buy an used electric fleet van for ~$40k, and that's just about as fancy as you could practically need. Anything beyond that is a show of status (many things below that are still a show of status), and I'd rather not pay a second tax to an oligarch so people with more money than sense can show off how much money they can waste.

Maybe 16 wheelers should have insurance, but it's exploitation of the poor elsewhere.

[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

It's not a $20k repair bill I'm worried about, it's the potential of $100k+ in medical liability that I'm really buying insurance for.

In my area there's plenty of expensive cars driving around too, I somehow doubt the minimum $25k insurance would cover even half the cost of a totaled car + everything involved.

[–] dogslayeggs@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

I didn't mention the medical liability, since a modern civilized society shouldn't need to have me worried about medical liability. I was lucky to have good insurance when I was a pedestrian hit by an uninsured driver. I wasn't on the hook for my $60,000 in medical bills, because I had insurance. In a good society, I shouldn't need private medical insurance to protect me if I get hit by an uninsured driver.

Now, if my new car gets totaled by a shitbox '88 Cutlass Cierra driven by a person who can barely even afford THAT car, then that's where requiring insurance comes into play.

[–] FudgyMcTubbs@lemmy.world 11 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

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?

[–] Dnb@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

Couldn't you just sit on top of the buckled seat belt?

[–] FudgyMcTubbs@lemmy.world 2 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

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.

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[–] Zink@programming.dev 8 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 2 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

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.

[–] FudgyMcTubbs@lemmy.world 8 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Soup@lemmy.world 7 points 13 hours ago

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.

[–] Zink@programming.dev 4 points 14 hours ago

DONE, lol.

I kinda want to get something with a manual transmission again, so it will very likely be a japanese brand.

[–] stretch2m@infosec.pub 33 points 22 hours ago (4 children)

No way in hell I'm buying a car with that BS. I'll ride a bike first.

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[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 51 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Every new car. So congrats on further destroying the new car market, good job.

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[–] realitista@lemmus.org 4 points 15 hours ago (5 children)

Can they see my girlfriend giving me a blowjob?

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[–] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 10 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Score one more point for fucking bikes, Jesus...

Now about all those CCTVs

[–] doingthestuff@lemy.lol 18 points 18 hours ago (6 children)

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.

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[–] Escape13@slrpnk.net 4 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

You know you can just tape it?

[–] betanumerus@lemmy.ca 7 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] Bytemeister@lemmy.world 6 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

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.

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