The European Union has officially crossed another privacy-related red line in the name of “safety,” mandating that all new vehicles come equipped with inward-facing cameras to monitor drivers.
Beginning July 7th, every new car registered in the region must include a camera facing the driver’s face, as part of the final phase of the EU’s General Safety Regulation.
The system, called Advanced Driver Distraction Warning, tracks a driver’s gaze, head position, and eye movement to detect when attention has drifted from the road, triggering an alert after 3.5 seconds of distraction at highway speeds or 6 seconds at lower speeds.The rule has been in place since 2019 and phased in gradually, mandatory for new vehicle types since July 2024, and now mandatory for every newly registered vehicle on the road.
While regulators insist the technology will reduce accidents, they have offered little clarity on how the collected data will be stored, used, or protected from misuse. In an era when digital surveillance already outpaces oversight, this latest requirement raises serious questions about privacy, accountability, and who ultimately controls the information collected in your own car.
The system is explicitly barred from identifying who is driving. Under the EU’s own technical requirements, ADDW systems “must function without the use of biometric information, including facial recognition, of any vehicle occupants,” meaning the camera tracks head and eye geometry to gauge attention, not identity.
The bureaucrats assert that this system will not act as a facial recognition mechanism. However, the data obtained from this system may not be all that secure.
For one, the EU regulation does not impose any independent audit to ensure that the ADDW systems installed actually operate on a closed-loop basis. Meaning both the car manufacturers and the tech companies selling them these systems could theoretically circumvent the rules and stealthily collect data on drivers.Secondly, the EU offers little clarity over how the data is handled. We don’t know how much footage the system captures once a “distraction” decision has been made, nor how long that data is stored or when it gets deleted, if it ever does.The implications are obvious. The continuous surveillance of the inside of a car can net car companies (or any third party that’s capable of hacking into it) a treasure trove of data that’s too valuable to pass on. Put simply, driver behavior can be turned into precious consumer data to be used internally or sold to the highest bidder.And this is not just a hypothetical, but something that already happened. In 2024, GM, Honda, Acura, Kia, Hyundai, and Mitsubishi were all caught sharing driver behavior data—including mileage, speed, hard braking, and rapid acceleration—with multiple data brokers. These turned the data into “risk scores” and sold them to insurance companies, which then freely used them to increase their personalized rates by over 20%.
Furthermore, the continuous warnings themselves prove to be problematic:
Above 50 km/h, glance away for more than 3.5 seconds and the system triggers visual, acoustic, or haptic warnings — beeps, dashboard lights, seat vibrations. Below 50 km/h, you get a generous 6 seconds. Warnings escalate if ignored. The system activates around 20 km/h and cannot be permanently disabled; it resets every ignition cycle.One renter described getting distraction warnings every 10 minutes in a Ford Puma — the alerts themselves becoming the hazard.Belgian automotive platform Gocar.be tested an Xpeng P7+ and found the system flagging a driver for glancing at scenery on an empty highway. The technology meant to keep your eyes on the road apparently wants them bolted there.
However, there are opportunities for the inventive and entrepreneurial!
“Good news! A new market just opened for aftermarket removals of driver cameras,” wrote another Reddit user, debating that the regulation may encourage drivers to remove the camera and reinstall it before a car checkup, thus avoiding being monitored.
While regulators insist the technology will reduce accidents, they have offered little clarity on how the collected data will be stored, used, or protected from misuse.
In an era when digital surveillance already outpaces oversight, this latest requirement raises serious questions about privacy, accountability, and who ultimately controls the information collected in your own car.
Featured image by Grok.
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