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Every new car sold in the European Union must include a driver monitoring camera

Every new car sold in the European Union must include a driver monitoring camera

nickslaughter02

Comments (708)

  • larelli
    The only time our 2025 Kia warned me about being distracted was about 30 minutes into a highway drive in Europe during heavy snowfall. The roads were covered in snow, people were generally cautious but traffic was still flowing and I was checking mirrors more frequently than usually to make sure lanes around me were clear and I was aware of everything going on. I guess staring straight ahead without situational awareness is the way the car prefers. :|
  • EagnaIonat
    I rented a car that had this feature and instantly hated it. I forget the make, but if it detected you were not looking at the road for a period of time, it would slam on the brakes and release. A way to jolt you awake.The problem was it routinely misclassified where I was looking, so I would get random brake slams which would panic me more.I returned it after a day and asked for a new car.
  • A_D_E_P_T
    All new cars.At this point I don't know if I'd buy anything made after 2008. Whenever I rent a new car around here (in the EU) I find them very annoying. The worst is the cruise control that tries to stick to the speed limit -- but its sensors don't always read the signs very well, so you'll often slow to 50 km/h (about 30 mph) for no reason. Then there's the incessant beeping at you, "lane assist" that you can't turn off (looking at you, Volkswagen,) and many more small annoyances. A camera pointed at your face just adds insult to injury.
  • WalterBright
    Boeing found out the problem with "beeping" alarms.The first time they installed a warning horn, I think it was the stall warning, it was a big success. So, they started adding different horns for other situations. At one point, in an emergency, the pilot got confused about which horn meant what, and had an accident.So now, Boeing replaced horns with a voice, like "pull up". Sounds obvious, right?But car beeps generally give no clue what they're beeping about.Decades ago, I wondered why elevators announced floors with a beep. If you're blind, you have no idea what floor you're on. I thought a voice would be better. 50 years later, I heard some elevators announce the floor with a voice.P.S. It's not a technology issue. The IBM PC had an I/O port wired to the speaker. You could give the speaker +5V or 0V, making a square wave only, an annoying buzzing sound. But then some genius discovered that if you ran a wave form through a clipper which gave a sequence of 1s and 0s, running that produced quite a credible voice sound.P.P.S. My furnace gives its status in the form of a blinking LED. A fast blink means broken, slower blink means A-OK. Of course, when you're faced with a blinking LED, is it blinking fast or slow?
  • awakeasleep
    Ford has had that since Blue Cruise 2.0, or thereabouts. It really shocked me how often it catches my attention being diverted. Things like talking to my passengers, adjusting the climate controls, or eating- I'm not even talking about 'advanced distractions' like my phone.It also seemed really accurate. I never remember it beeping at me when I was actually paying attention.It's totally plausible to me that this kind of nudge will save a lot of lives.
  • aljgz
    New cars are UX nightmares. I'm driving an electric Toyota bz4x. Lovely mechanics, but the general UX (some are because of Android Auto) is terrible. The remote's lock/unlock don't do anything when the car is on. Example: I'm by the trunk and it won't open unless I go back to the driver's door and unlock the doors. App's remote function has too many conditions to do anything. For instance, I'm resting in the back seat and want to turn on the car for some air conditioning, but it says: the doors should be locked, the key fab should be out of the car to start the car.I'm listening to an audio through a webpage, as soon as I change the volume it starts my last music. This is really annoying. I should guess the right volume, unlock my phone, resume my audio. Old physical volume knobs only changed the volume, not start one of the few apps they know about.Oh and if I've been listening to loud music and now someone's in the car, I can't lower the volume without starting the music. I want to start with a low volume and then increase it.These are some of the many stupid UX decisions. I would still not drive an old car. Especially ICE. But would pray that the equivalent of Frame.work appears, I can get an open source car with an open source infotainment.With Chevrolet starting to sell DIY EV packages and the general simplification of the mechanics of EV cars, I believe such a thing would eventually happen.
  • avaer
    "The cars have all have cameras checking for bad behavior, why shouldn't your phone and laptop?" said the esteemed lawmaker."Oh course there will be exceptions for politicians and authorized individuals, for national security reasons."
  • Humphrey
    I hired a Chinese Haval Car for a weekend last year (Australia). It started beeping at me for being distracted because I was checking for traffic in the other lanes - which is crucial when driving in a 4 lane highway.Of cause, I had never experienced such a beep before, so I had to take my eyes off the road tp look at the screen to see what the reason for the beeping was.Then, on a multlane highway, I would indicate to signal my intention to change lanes. The car then started beeping at me. After a couple of days I figured out it was warning me that there was a car in my blind spot. WTF! The whole point of indication is to signal my intention to move, so that the car in my blind spot creates room for me to merge into their lane.So - if you have to ignore beeps in order to drive safely - then the beeps are making the car more dangerous than not having them.Also, the cruise control +/- controls, would only ever move the speed up down to speeds that are divisable by 5. Such a joke, because if the speed limit is 110, your only options for cruise control at 105, 110, or 115. I won't use 110, because as soon as I go downhill, it will creep over 11, but 105 is too slow.It was such a relief to arrive home and return to driving my 2006 Suburu Forester. It felt much safer, didn't beep at me... and the cruise control +/- were in 1kmph increments.After that experience, my current plan is to keep this 20yo car running as long as possible.
  • mr_toad
    To start your car please look into camera and repeat: "Doritos™ Dew™ it right!"
  • aenis
    If I hate anything about the EU, its the morons writing regulations for cars. My car constantly distracts me with some beeps, sometimes loud enough to be dangerous. Its surely one of the reasons far right is on the rise -- with things like 'drivers party' in some European countries winning serious votes. I spend 1-2hrs in the car each day, and I hate what those regulations did to driving.(Worst offenders: Japanese cars since they seem to take the regulations most seriously. Least annoying: generally BMW, Volvo, though they are both getting worse each year).
  • aetherspawn
    This stuff is a nightmare for new manufacturers and is usually lobbied-for by large OEMs or to keep startups out of the market or as a patent trapThe most recent regulatory disaster that blew up a bunch of startups was mandatory lane keep assist for trucks in overseas western markets, which meant all new startups needed fancy steering racks which are very much not off-the-shelf, and it virtually tripled the cost of the software stack too
  • jamesgill
    I found this useful: https://seeingmachines.com/understanding-advanced-driver-dis...From that article:"Like DDAW systems, ADDW systems must function without the use of biometric information, including facial recognition, of any vehicle occupants. It must also operate within a closed-loop system, only recording and retaining data on the device that is necessary for the system to function."
  • msm_
    >Regulators are responding to a real problem: EU-funded research estimates driver distraction plays a role in 5% to 25% of car crashes>Article 6(3) of the GSR states that the system should be designed in such a way that it does not continuously record or retain data other than what is necessary for its purposeI get that there are problems, but it doesn't sound that bad to me? Car drivers kill tens of thousands of people every year in Europe. If we can improve this 25% (more realistically, 10%) it's a huge step forward.
  • xvxvx
    I was recently in the Uk and one of the cars I was in would alert the driver if he was over the speed limit. Fair enough. But the alert itself is distracting. Are we to review every single alert from these cameras? Is that not just another distraction?
  • yalogin
    This is alarming. Very soon there will be no point driving because insurance is going to jump in and mandate strict rules around how to sit, hold the steering wheel and how I should be looking and the fun of driving will be gone. This is all converging towards autonomous driving without a steering wheel.
  • throw0101d
    I have a manual 2003 Golf TDI (purchased in 2003; has a tape deck!) that's slowly rusting, and I'm not looking forward to when I have to replace it.I don't have a garage/drive way, and so have to park on the street, which makes me leans towards another short [1] vehicle: currently thinking about VW Golf, Mazda 3, Mazda CX-30, Kia Niro.From what I've seen from almost all cars, lots more screens and lots fewer buttons.[1] https://www.carsized.com/en/
  • frollogaston
    Does it at least have more cupholders for your verification cans?
  • zero0529
    The overregulation and the constant attempt to destroy any notion of privacy has really pushed me towards being anti EU. I wonder if ressources are spent seeding that sentiment.
  • 6LLvveMx2koXfwn
    I have a 2012 Skoda Yeti, 170000 miles. Serviced every year, never had anything go wrong with it yet. If it starts costing me money I will buy a 2012 Skoda Yeti from Autotrader with 50000 miles on the clock. At my age that should just about do me :)
  • dagenix
    I have no idea how well such a system works, but, I found these lines pretty jarring:> They found it fires on ordinary driving, not just distracted driving.> Glance away from an empty highway to take in the scenery, or look at the infotainment screen to change a song, and the warning goes off anyway.Like, isn't that the point, that if you aren't looking at the road it should go off?
  • Aboutplants
    Goal - make driving so annoying that customers will be begging for fully self driving cars!
  • 55873445216111
    "self-driving safeguards fooled by $30 doll heads" https://electrek.co/2026/06/15/chinese-drivers-plastic-heads...
  • ronbenton
    Weird dark surveillance state stuff. I thought EU was trying to champion privacy?
  • leipie
    My Hyundai Ioniq 6's "safety" systems have caused several near accidents and scary and distracting moments, as soon as I forget to turn them off. I have to disable these every time I start the car.
  • jstsch
    The regulations are great, in theory. In practice, I've noticed that implementation of the technologies are lacking. So on paper, lane keeping will keep you on the road when distracted. In practice, it does not. You'll be beeped at a million times, though.
  • vvoyer
    Cars are becoming shittier in Europe, dumb regulations and people building cars are clearly NOT driving them.My wife got a new Volvo recently:1. You can only open it with your phone (find it in purse, unlock it, find the app, wait, click) or a card that can only open on the driver side (can’t open the trunk). What was fucking wrong with keys?2. No behind the steering wheel screen, only a large tablet center of the car. No way to know your speed without looking to the side.3. No physical buttons aside from the ones on the steering wheel.4. And the infamous speed limit beep sound. You can turn it off with a shortcut button on the steering wheel. Which is so dumb if you think Europeans spent millions creating and implementing this rule. A friend of mine has no shortcut (kia) so he just starts driving then look away from the road to the screen to tap a few times. I’ve seen this many times now.Overall cars are more dangerous to drive because of all this shit. Europe is spending millions creating laws to protect us on the road and making driving shitty. While Youtube, social networks and movies keep promoting cigarettes and alcohol.
  • amelius
    Smart cars are the new Smart TVs
  • tempestn
    I like a fair bit of what the EU does, and in the past they've been behind some significant advances in vehicle safety, but boy do I hate most of what's coming out of there lately as far as driving . All these driver "assistance" features that arguably do more harm than good for competent drivers and are forced to be enabled by default on every drive. And now this. Bleh.
  • jjcm
    This feels like a regulation whose effectiveness will expire in the next couple of years (as driverless cars become the norm), but which will set a precedent that this is the norm. This with the EU chat control coming up really set a tone.
  • satvikpendem
    This is already in Teslas for supervised self driving, not sure what the big deal is. People can be very distracted while driving and the Tesla OS makes sure to let them know.
  • like_any_other
    It's a bit disturbing how easily and quietly our own property is being slowly weaponized against us, isn't it? Instead of guarding us from manufacturer hostility, they mandate it.And this and similar laws just keep coming up, no matter what the public says. I guess from now on I'm voting for the most anti-EU party I can find. Too bad, because I like the idea of cooperating to protect our interests, but the EU just keeps growing and invading areas it has no business in (like social media content moderation - I'd prefer not to outsource free speech rights away from our national constitution and to the EU). It needs to be rebuilt, with strict limits to its authority, to stop it from continually draining sovereignty from its constituent countries.
  • drnick1
    1) Unplug the cellular modem.2) Unplug the camera or put a piece of blackout tape over the lens.3) Enjoy!
  • lemontheme
    According to my Volvo EX30 I’m always tired. It feels like they’ve dialed down the sensitivity in recent updates, but for the first year it was beeping at me five minutes into every drive. Really easy to trigger the alert by fake yawning. I turned it into a little game. Oh, and I can’t look over my shoulder to check my blindspot. Nope: driver distracted.My steering wheel has one macro button, which I can bind to EITHER disabling speed alerts or driver monitoring alerts but, very unfortunately, not both. So guess who’s sometimes poking at their touchscreen while they should be focusing on the road?Not against alerts in principle but it should be a less is more kind of thing
  • nickslaughter02
    The EU is quickly becoming the surveillance capital of the world.
  • Bender
    Gadget Idea: Small display with a lens that can be mounted over the camera that hooks into the material around it, plays an AI generated video of $RANDOM_CELEBRITY singing karaoke off-key and driving very carefully.I am unsure what would be the most annoying song for the remote viewers to listen to when off-key.
  • reactordev
    Modern cars are user hostile
  • nixpulvis
    If they make cars irritating enough, people might give up the joy of driving and pivot to more economical transit modes. I have mixed feelings about this, and I doubt the car companies are thoughtfully doing this, but I do wonder sometimes.
  • extraduder_ire
    > 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.[1]Is the [1] meant to be a footnote pointing to the law or something? I don't see that anywhere on the page.
  • CircuitSeuss
    Driver monitoring systems will be required in all 2027 vehicles in the US as well.https://www.gadgetreview.com/federal-surveillance-tech-becom...
  • 1e1a
    I read a paper a while ago (which I have failed to locate) which used around binary masks, each in front of a single photodiode, as input to a neural network, which estimated the number of people in front of this effectively ~9-pixel "camera". The binary masks and NN weights were trained at the same time. Presumably, something like this could be used to detect lack of driver focus in a far less invasive manner.
  • BeetleB
    I love the warning about not having hands on the steering wheel.It goes off all the time. And each time, my hands are on the steering wheel.It doesn't actually detect contact - it checks to see if you're actively adjusting the steering wheel.Except I don't need to! The lane keep assist is so good that it's rare I have to give it additional help.So - I kid you not - I've gotten used to giving a nudge to the steering wheel every so many seconds to prevent that warning (you cannot disable it).Imagine a car gave you cruise control, and then checked if you were paying attention by requiring you to press down on the accelerator every so many seconds. Does that make sense?
  • SoftTalker
    Black vinyl tape over the camera?
  • edwinjones
    This is why I like modern Renaults/Dacias. They all come with a single button to turn all of this stuff off, or to a preset of your choosing. No need to fiddle with a screen, nothing you cannot disable. Bliss.
  • wnevets
    Good thing we have those cookie banners warning us about websites tracking us.
  • drdebug
    Any one knows what happens when duck tape is being used to cover the camera?
  • wolvoleo
    I'm so happy I don't need a car anymore. It sounds like hell driving these days with when the car second-guessing you the whole time.
  • fsuts
    Phone use whilst driving is a huge problem so not surprised.
  • idonotcare
    i welcome this and bought a car specifically for this and more. -its not constantly beeping stop looking at your phone -its a good security feature -the article is actually wrong since last year cars come equiped with this function mandatory and many others, automatic radar breaking, lane assist, blind spot lane change assist and many more. -in europe gdpr works, don't worry usa does not buy eu law cars nor do we buy your behemots.
  • aucisson_masque
    What prevent you from putting a sticker over it ? 0.1€ cost, can be removed in case of control otherwise you can pretend the camera wasn't working.End of story...Honestly, I'm all for more automated system while driving because I drive but I also bike and walk. Some people are complete nuts that shouldn't have their license and the least you can do is hold their hand, with as much algorithm as you can, like they are toddlers driving a 3 Tonne car.
  • lasky
    I love driving.But my 12 lb bucket of brain cells guiding itself, and other lives, is the wrong tool for the job of staying in between the two bright lines.Self-driving, here we come.
  • tgma
    All these years we heard Germans are anal about privacy.Is that only when mass hysteria is pushed against internet companies? How are they okay with this?
  • syradar
    I guess I’ll keep walking, biking and using public transport.
  • toephu2
    Europe gave us cookie popups on every website, and now... in Europe you get a camera watching you in your own car while driving.
  • kazinator
    It's completely idiotic. Technology should be assisting in performing the attention itself, not nannying the driver.Sometimes there really isn't anything that needs your complete undivided attention. You're on a deserted, straight highway flanked by open, barren fields.
  • jonplackett
    What is the car’s reaction if you just block the camera. Will it still drive?
  • cadamsdotcom
    Wonder what the regulations have to say about a small, strategically placed piece of sticky tape.
  • 0x000xca0xfe
    Every year it feels more surprising how motorcycling is still allowed. No seatbelt, no ABS, no problem...
  • rswail
    When FSD actually works 100% (or as close as possible), manual driving will become obsolete, we're 5-10 years away.how long until a steering wheel is an optional extra?
  • t1234s
    Does that mean every car sold must have Level 1 autonomy? Similar to how ABS, Air Bags and Stability Control are required.
  • ryandrake
    So, 1. yet another beep/boop in the car contributing to alert-fatigue, and 2. another stream of data inevitably sent off-device and monetized in god knows what ways by god knows which third party "partners".
  • templar_snow
    (laughs in American)
  • stanislavb
    No more "making love" in the car. Sorry guys. That'd be left to Hollywood stunts.
  • inigyou
    We should make an open source one that provably doesn't transmit anything except the distracted driving warning signal.
  • josefritzishere
    This is not OK.
  • KashifNY
    That is a good initiative however what ever data is being recorded needs to kept in a responsible and safe manner
  • throwaway63467
    Good. The amount of people I see looking at their smartphone while driving, completely oblivious to what’s happening on the road is concerning. I don’t see why that footage needs to be transferred anywhere and GDPR should ensure it won’t be, so no need to spin this as a privacy nightmare cars have tons of sensors already and there’s probably little commercial interest in filming people’s faces while they’re driving so I don’t see what’s so controversial about this.
  • janpmz
    I wonder if they also have a seeker pointed at my face then, because I don't want that shining into my eyes.
  • zombot
    Who knew that my decision to not own a car would turn out to be so prescient. That I can still be killed by a driver distracted by the anti-distraction feature is just the usual irony of existence.
  • rurp
    I test drove a Subaru (in America) with this feature and absolutely hated it. The amount of false positives was ridiculous. Often I was literally staring straight ahead, driving on a straight road, and getting beeped at to pay attention.It felt like total security theater, which a huge surveillance tech vector as well. I will do my damnedest to never ever buy a car with this anti-feature. If I ever have to I'm sure those beeps will either get disabled one way or another, or eventually be completely filtered out by my brain like other predictably useless sounds are.
  • GardenLetter27
    But the EU still blocks self driving cars which would make this unnecessary.
  • malok4y
    A mandatory camera and a mandatory modem in every car is a privacy nightmare. The EU does not care about privacy of it's subjects, it cares about control. The US is not much different. It's over for freedom in the west. The frogs are boiling.
  • natas
    fortunately I'm old, I drive a 2007 car, and won't live in this new world for much much longer!
  • silexia
    Orwellian. What an absolute nightmare of government control. Advancing technology is giving too much power to the government, do not let them have it or you will never get your rights back.
  • hollowturtle
    I purchased a new a hybrid car a year ago. It is impossible to deactivate permanently speed limit and lane alerts. They are useless, dumb and dangerous if you ask me. Detecting a 40km/h on the highway from a road sign on a near by road it's not safety. It's been a year of touching and correcting touches for disabling these two alerts, of course you have to do more clicks no way of accessing it from a quick menu or from quick actions on the steering wheel. The car works perfectly but this thing is so annoying to me that I'm seriously thinking of selling it. The touch screen is slooooow, when the internal temperature is higher is even more slooow for a ui that should be 1200fps for what it does even on a underpowered throttled by heat waves board chip. I either sell the car of take my time and find a way to hack that damn firmware. This is not the way to go, the way to go is autonomous driving not all this annoying BS
  • m1coti
    proud to drive 2002 volkswagen golf in these creepy times
  • DrProtic
    That will definitely help their car industry.
  • TheRealPomax
    Note that they must be sold with this feature. It does not say you have to keep this feature, you can aftermarket remove it or disconnect it just fine.
  • tjwebbnorfolk
    Maybe I'll get downvoted for being off topic, but when we try to say "EU has too much regulation", this is the kind of shit we're talking about.Nobody is arguing for zero regulation. But seriously, forcing people to pay extra for their own surveillance in their own car?
  • WalterBright
    I think I'll keep my 1972 Dodge.
  • senfiaj
    What happens if I cover the camera?
  • anon
    undefined
  • fnord77
    My bmw has this for the traffic jam self-drive (< 40mph) feature.My eyes wander a bit and it scolds me.
  • 2III7
    I'll keep my 2014 golf mk7 thank you. Euro5, no adblue bullshit. Still gets good mileage, is still cheap to maintain even after 260k km (the biggest expense has been the dual mass flywheel with a clutchpack) and the only high tech feature is a radar based adaptive cruise control.Considering how many mk7 golfs were made over the years it'll be easy to just get another one for the next decade. I'd also consider the Hyundai ioniq 5 or 6 which have a shortcut on the steering wheel to just disable all the nanny crap.
  • hollow-moe
    > On the positive side, the regulations require the ADDW system to work on a "closed loop" without the use of biometric data. lmfao, the regulations required antipollution systems too didn't they ? Even if by some miracle this is the case for all manufacturers I'm betting my first son the software can helpfully be updated to be cloud enabled once insurances companies catch up or regulations are updated for more safety. Hope you like walking a lot.
  • Invictus0
    I would rather die in a car crash than get nagged like this. Europe is the nanniest of nanny states, its inconceivable that people actually want to live like this.
  • lifestyleguru
    Ok I'm a citizen of EU country. I don't consent, I don't agree. I want a car without inside cameras, without systems beeping, blinking, nor vibrating at me. Don't you ever move the steering wheel under my hands. Why I'm screaming into the void?
  • oliv__
    This can't be real life
  • puppycodes
    buying a new car gets less attractive every year.
  • jojobas
    In many EU jurisdictions (like Germany) continuously recording dashcams are banned. Mandating a potentially continuously recording camera pointed at you at the same time is ridiculous.
  • sssilver
    I hate this new world we find ourselves in.And I triple hate that we've helped develop the technology that powers it.In hindsight, it was inevitable."Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
  • andrewflnr
    All the repeated discussion and warnings about Chat Control in the EU, and this shit just snuck through?
  • ReptileMan
    Every new driver in the European Union must include a roll of electrician tape.
  • jongjong
    My car would start beeping randomly and one day it wouldn't stop beeping. Turns out it was because we have a baby seat in the back on a window seat but it would slightly touch the edge of the middle seat. The solution was to clip in the seatbelt on the middle seat even through there was nobody sitting there.
  • sunshine-o
    One of the very dangerous side effect of this is it pushes a lot of people out of the ability to own a decent car legally. The camera, AI chip and all supporting electronic supporting it will raise the price of the entry level Dacia (a Dacia Spring is already more than 15k euros). So people will keep old cars as long as they can.You already see a lot of people driving very old car in Europe (20 - 30 years old). For those it becomes hard and often expensive to pass a yearly technical inspection. I believe without the mandatory technical inspection most insurers won't cover you, so why even pay for it?If you get in an accident with someone like this, who has its back against the wall legally there is a good chance they will just run away and you might not get the emergency life saving attention that you need.In my experience most of the electronic that appeared in the last 20 years is highly unreliable. I only had problems with it on premium german cars. On a new car I remember I was so blocked by the problems that I would literately turn off and on the car every dozen of kms on the highway at cruising speed to "reboot" the "computer". For a few second you loose all power steering and most of the breaking.I had to do that for a few years because the car maker had no idea how to fix it.
  • modzu
    legislate volume knobs
  • mrtksn
    The headline is wrong. The article and the headline seems to be written in a way to cause outrage by giving the impression that the EU requires cameras which should be recording your face all the time and storing/sending it to authorities or something but what the EU actually requires is "Advanced Driver Distraction Warning System" which may be implemented using cameras and no recording or transmitting is required, in fact actually recording and transmitting would be a problem with GDPR.
  • richwater
    I seriously can't believe all the commenters here advocating for mandated ability to spy on people
  • gib444
    They'll do anything but address the root cause of distractions: the addictive nature of mobile phones/the apps on them
  • shevy-java
    They hate us for our freedom.
  • greatgib
    Maybe would be the good time to create a company to sell webcam covers for cars...
  • allthetime
    Wish I could just buy a new car that was a car and not an app with wheels.
  • dfedbeef
    Imagine reading this headline in 1999 lol
  • exabrial
    I'm buying 0 cars with this nonsense. And 0 cars without CarPlay support.
  • miroljub
    And here we go again :)It's good to know that Big Brother cares about all of us.
  • willmadden
    Fun fact: there are significantly more heat deaths in Europe than car fatalities.Interesting priorities...
  • baggy_trough
    Many of these warnings are hazardous, especially in an unfamiliar vehicle. They are extremely annoying and often incorrect. They result in extended periods of distracted driving trying to figure out how to turn off the warning.I was in a rental car recently that was filled with random chimes going off. I had no idea what any of it meant, but it was sure a nuisance and took my mind off the road.
  • afh1
    And Europeans think they have privacy lol
  • dmitrygr
    This sort of nonsense is well studied in aeronautical world, and will lead to too many alerts, which, in turn, lead to predictable outcomes: https://flightsafety.org/asw-article/normalization-of-devian...
  • mrandish
    Like red light cameras, this is one of those genuinely good ideas that is likely to end up being much less effective than it could have been for two reasons:1. The regulators who implement it will set the detection times and thresholds shorter and tighter than what would have worked best. Why? Because Pareto says the worst ~20% of serial offenders are causing >80% of the serious accidents. So, the optimal settings would not trigger for brief detections or even for occasional longer detections. They would instead minimize interruptions, inconvenience and false positives for the majority of drivers and only trigger when long lapses start occurring frequently. Just targeting only the worst ~20% would save countless lives with so little disruption, it would be widely lauded.Unfortunately, the well-intentioned bureaucrats won't be able to reason past the implied moral hazard (and potential political blowback) of being responsible for permitting any lapse which might result in an accident. But any near-zero tolerance threshold forces a useful but inherently imperfect technology into failure modes that will cause resentment, resistance and demand for workarounds.2. Because the inevitable deterrent fines will be used to pay for enforcement, it will become its own sub-bureaucracy inside the system with its own staff, budgets and performance metrics, all with a vested interest in 'saving more lives' by increasing staff which can be made 'revenue neutral' by increasing fines. This is what happened with red light cameras in many municipalities. The 'free money' from mailed out 'photo tickets' was so good they eliminated reasonable grace periods and even shortened the yellow light time, so irate citizens got them banned in many cities.Personally, I'm not worried about someone who slides through an intersection a half second after the light turns red. It's vanishingly unlikely that person is going to cause an accident. Where red light cameras could (and should) be saving lives is >5 seconds after the opposite light has turned green and cars are in the intersection. I barely avoided a lady last year coming straight toward me at ~50 mph more 10 seconds after her light had turned red and multiple cars were stopped in all three other lanes next to her. If a car had been stopped at the light in her lane, she'd have hit and killed them. Despite every car at the intersection leaning on their horns she never slowed and never swerved. There's no sign she ever saw the light or the intersection at all. But someone had to fuck with the yellow times to make money.And I'm hardly 'soft' on distracted driving. My wife and daughter were hit by a distracted driver 9 weeks ago and both received serious concussions. Fortunately, they'll both fully recover but my wife is still in physical therapy and the broken rear axle on her car still isn't done being repaired. They were T-boned at a perfect 90 degrees by a 16-year-old boy going the opposite direction who was turning left across their side of the road into a side street. Here's the thing: it's a straight, extra wide, well-marked, divided residential boulevard with perfect visibility, zero obstructions and bright streetlights. It was 10p and no other cars were anywhere in sight. He wasn't intoxicated and the police just rolled their eyes when he repeatedly denied being on his phone. He was in a dedicated, uncontrolled turn lane, where you stop, check there's no oncoming traffic and then make your left turn. And he drove straight into literally the only other car on the road. We later timed it and he had to be looking away for more than THREE seconds to not see the big, bright, well-lit car approaching under the working streetlights. If my wife hadn't watched him the whole way and swerved when he didn't stop, it could easily have been a potentially deadly near-head-on collision. Until he grows up a bit, he's the ~20% worst-case, repeat offender that this tech could and should stop. Not someone who glances down at their phone while stopped at a light or looks away for a split second to turn down the volume on their radio.
  • chaostheory
    This is just more evidence that the GDPR was just a set of protectionist laws for EU companies.
  • cess11
    Designing this machine vision system is insurmountable. It will never be actually good at its stated purpose, because how much you can look through some window or glance back at your kids is decided by the outside environment and it will be impossible to fit accurate judgement of it in the computers in the car.Also, lane assist fucking sucks. It places all cars in the same place on the road, i.e. all wear is in the same place as well, and in relation to the marked edges of the road, which often isn't the natural placing in curves and so on. As a consequence roads likely need maintenance more often, and as a proficient driver that does not let the car have opinions about placement on the road one commonly has much smaller margins when placing the car in the nice trajectory through a curve due to the sunken lanes from the assisted cars.
  • cmxch
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  • tokai
    If its closed looped its great. All cars should also come with alcolocks.
  • owenversteeg
    For those saying "disable all cellular radios", I don't recommend that; you would be in violation of European laws. To quote a previous comment of mine about a similar EU-mandated safety system:The EU-wide "911 eCall" system records your location at all times and has a cellular modem connected to government systems. It is illegal to disable this system. If you still do so, there are fines, and your insurance is no longer considered fully valid in case of an accident.Regarding specific legislation, for the Netherlands and our "APK" system, the relevant rule is under "Geluidssignaalinrichtingen en eCall", article 5.2.71 of the APK handboek, issued by our Rijksdienst voor het Wegverkeer.In the EU, automatic surveillance cameras on the side of the road enforce this APK system, so if you do disable the eCall system, you will fail your APK, and you will automatically receive a fine. Even if you don't leave your driveway, the government is working hard to keep you safe; government camera surveillance cars drive around constantly, scanning your license plates, cross-referencing surveillance images with other government databases to automatically issue fines if you step out of line.I really don't think there's anything to worry about, though; to quote another comment of mine:>Thankfully, we're safe. Car software is notoriously high quality and rarely hacked. All governments are fully trustworthy, especially around espionage and privacy, and have a perfect track record of never lying to the public.>Look, the European Commission stated that it cannot be hacked; "hackers cannot take control of it", from ec.europa.eu. They built an unhackable device. I am not sure what you could be worried about. If the government tells you something cannot be hacked, then it cannot be hacked. Furthermore, none of the EU member states have been found using other infrastructure to violate privacy laws.my earlier comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45560494
  • INTPenis
    As a pedestrian I love this.I actually suggested a solution like this 2 years ago, because so many drivers are bad at signaling. I wanted a camera that used machine learning to learn a driver's cues when they're making a turn, and eventually it would be able to activate the signals for the driver.I'm sick and tired of standing on the side of the road with my dog and waiting for a car just for it to make a turn. FOADI am rarely in a rush, if a car signals I will allow it to turn, I will stand back and wait, no problem. But 80% of them are really bad at this.
  • CalRobert
    For all the people complaining about driver distraction alerts… have you considered that perhaps you were in fact distracted? Looking at a passenger to talk instead of at the road, etc?It’s the kind of thing where, unless you’re way below the median, other people will hesitate to call you out on it.