Anyone who bought or buys a vehicle after July 7 in Europe will have an excess of safety features to contend with, including a camera focused on their faces, tracking their eye movements. Experts praise the technology, claiming it will help save lives, but critics warn this is another invasion of privacy and the information could be sold to third parties.
Europe Tracking Drivers
Remember the good ‘ole days when driving a car was simple? You had gas and brake pedals, perhaps a clutch, turn signals, and a steering wheel. A stereo kept you entertained and awake while you drove. Today, new cars are equipped with so many gadgets, you almost need to be an air traffic controller just to drive down the street to the local grocery store.
Now, though, Europeans have even more distractions – things that are supposed to make driving safer and easier are disruptions. As Tech Radar explained, “I've lost count of how many times a system has warned me to pay attention when all I'm doing is trying to find a simple function in a baffling series of touchscreen menus.”
The European Commission’s latest regulations require all new vehicles to be fitted with Advanced Driver Distraction Warning (ADDW) systems. These include several features, but the primary one is a camera that “monitors the driver’s eyes and facial expressions, intervening if it detects that the driver is looking away from the road too long,” Tech Radar reported.
Apparently, different focus points can be looked at for varying amounts of time, as well. Whatever the system allowances are, though, when a driver keeps their eyes on something longer than the AI deems safe, they get a warning. If the offense becomes too serious, there’s a kill switch that can shut off the vehicle’s engine. Other safety features include a way to monitor the driver’s lack of attention or drowsiness, a black box that records behaviors such as speed and the use of seatbelts, as well as an automatic emergency braking system.
“The tracking [has] quite a high accuracy … So if you sit in your car and you’re driving your car, and then you look at the speedometer, then what happens is that the tracking realizes that this is the speedometer that you’re looking at,” Martin Krantz, CEO and Founder of Swedish AI company Smart Eye, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. “And then you’re allowed to take your eyes away from the road for a certain time period. Let’s say, for example, two seconds … You have a time … that you can spend on different objects [in your car].” He added, “This is a driver support system. It’s a life-saving technology. It really helps to prevent accidents. It’s probably gonna be just like with the seat belt and the airbag.”
The Privacy Issue
“While we worried that our doorbells and watches that connect to the internet might be spying on us, car brands quietly entered the data business by turning their vehicles into powerful data-gobbling machines,” Mozilla Foundation wrote in a 2023 survey. “Machines that, because of all those brag-worthy bells and whistles, have an unmatched power to watch, listen, and collect information about what you do and where you go in your car.”
Their survey found that “All 25 car brands we researched earned our *Privacy Not Included warning label – making cars the official worst category of products for privacy that we have ever reviewed.”
While the ADDW should have a closed-loop system so that data is only processed in the car and not uploaded to any third-party servers, Tech Radar explained that, since April 2018, all new approved vehicles in the EU have been required to include an eCall emergency system that automatically contacts emergency services such as in the event of a serious car accident. However, McKinsey consulting firm told the outlet that it “predicts that 95% of all vehicles will be connected to the internet by 2030, means it isn’t a huge stretch to think that driver-monitoring data could eventually leave the vehicle.”
As AP pointed out, the problem is not just that data is being collected, but who it is provided to, which can include insurers, marketing companies, and even data brokers. For example, General Motors was banned for five years from disclosing data collected from drivers to consumer reporting agencies. The Federal Trade Commission accused the automotive giant of not getting consent before they shared the data, which included instances when a driver was speeding or driving late at night.
“It was ultimately provided to insurance companies that used it to set their rates,” AP informed.
Coming to America
Liberty Nation News Co-Founder and Executive Editor Leesa K. Donner reported on a similar law passed during the Biden administration. Although it hasn’t yet taken effect, the technology already exists and is being used in some vehicles, including Teslas.
“The purpose is to ensure the driver monitors the car while in self-driving mode,” Donner explained. “So purchasers who want full self-driving capabilities must submit to monitoring to ensure they continue supervising the car. Should an owner run afoul, Tesla reserves the right to suspend the vehicle's full self-driving technology. Essentially, the driver swaps their privacy behind the wheel for the pleasure of allowing the vehicle to drive itself.”
Seatbelts and airbags protect people without knowing who they are or where they're looking. The debate over Europe's new driver-monitoring systems isn't just about automobiles. It's about whether privacy remains the default in daily life. Safer roads and personal privacy are both worthwhile goals, but they don't always travel the same path. As vehicles become smarter and more connected, lawmakers, automakers, and drivers will continue wrestling with the same question: How much oversight is necessary to protect the public, and at what point does protection begin to feel more like perpetual surveillance?
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