EU requires all new cars to have cameras facing the driver’s face to monitor their behaviour

Oh bloody hell yes! I’ve found my people, who are actual people! Who the hell decided to put computers that already can’t do the huge number of jobs that they’ve been poked into, into cars?? They’re so dangerous.

I turn off the lane warning as soon as I get into the car now, the first few times it tried to hijack the steering and force me to steer into parked cars lining the side of the road. It also has a tendency to suddenly scream at me because a leaf is blowing over its camera or something and it nearly caused an accident doing that to me while another car was far too close behind me. It forced braking over rough ground in roadwork traffic lights too which made the car stall and caused a bit of grumpiness.

Technology is not anywhere near replacing human senses, common sense and ability to react sensibly and safely to a variety of situations. In my car manual fully half of the book is given over to problems like this and when you should ignore the damn computer. SO WHY THE HELL IS IT THERE!!!

Aaand… breathe, breathe, breathe.

Those cameras are also recording every conversation you & your passengers have & gauging your facial reactions to everything you hear from them & from your devices. Just don’t buy that sh*t

That’s why I drive an older car, OP.

You're making assumptions about my age, the longevity of cars, and my future ability to pass a driving test that you should not rely upon.

On the latest VW and Kia they've made a point of going back to physical buttons where they can, it's much better.

I hate the touch screen in my car, but I struggle with my TV remote. Much prefer a button, switch or a dial.

The Chinese are building some amazing cars but all the screens are confusing.

Absolutely, modern cars save lives and eye tracking technology is an amazing tech addition. The amount of drivers who fall asleep at the wheel is shocking...with lane assist, crash avoidance, eye tracking and behaviour monitoring it's all for the better. Maybe this is what they are talking about rather than storing videos of people at the wheel.

I was talking about "you're not looking at the road" eye tracking.

I saw a young man drive round a roundabout looking down to the side as he texted with this thumb a few days ago. The sooner all cars have alerts for talking your eyes of the road, the better.

If they are concerned that people are distracted by the dashboard then maybe dashboards need to be designed to be less distracting. We upgraded our 15yo car last year to a new model and I hate the display, there's too much unnecessary information on it. When I think back to how clear everything used to be when it was all analogue I could weep.

Who has access to the video? This is positively fucking Orwellian. Typical overreach by an undemocratically elected political body.

Well I cannot and will not drive without sunglasses when it’s sunny so good luck tracking my eyes!

Not really, I've just spent 90k on two new cars. The cameras are private. What is proposed changing that and feeding it to a central unit....that will cost thousands. Not forgetting subscriptions etc....
But a family SUV is now around 70k so to add even more cost that offers the motorist nothing in return seems like stupidity.. it won't happen.

It's already in most, all? , new cars.

I can't see this coming into force, prices are getting to the point where people can't afford to buy a new car. Adding yet more costs will push away even more.

you'll have the old die hards who will think that their driving is far better than a driverless car, aged 69

No they won’t. We’ll be into driverless cars.

33 other countries drive on the left, not just the uk

you'll no longer be driving as they'll retest 70 year olds by then

When all the cars without it have been scrapped because of old age or crashes, what then?

Presumably, yes - unless their own country realises that the tech is there, ready to go, and so decides to make it compulsory there too.

Presume the rest of the world will just turn off the feature then?

As PP have said, they do indeed have variants for different territories where a 'either this one or that one' situation is unavoidable, such as which side of the road they drive - and there are also EU countries where they drive on the left, but they have km as their main speed unit rather than miles like us, so their odometers will differ... but no manufacturer is going to want to include countless variables in their vehicles when they can instal features that are legally required for 90% or more of their customer base as standard but which are not disallowed or incompatible for the rest.

They already do. We drive in the other side of the road.

Fair enough if this feature doesn't affect you negatively when you're driving every day on French roads; but it clearly does affect PP in her regular experiences.

It's all about a vehicle that's programmed to assume (often wrongly) that it knows much better than you do - and even if it 'only' tries to cause accidents but it does allow you to prevent it from doing so, how is that better than what we had before?

My post was hyperbolic - and of course this law hasn't been brought in because of just one unsuitable/careless driver - but we find that we all lose so many various rights and freedoms in life because of the combined idiocy/selfishness/arrogance of particular minorities of people who feel entitled to ruin it for everybody else and put themselves front and centre.

So I concede, of course your husband isn't THE problem; he's 'just' one small part of it.