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

[NutellaEllaElla]

https://www.carscoops.com/2026/07/eu-driver-monitoring-mandate/

Is anyone else unhappy about this? I hate how technology is invading my life. In my car it gets speed limits wrong all the time, it fights me trying to change lanes without indicating (and I don’t need to, again the car doesn’t know), there’s just so much it gets wrong and the tech itself is a distraction. I’m all for options, but I want to be able to turn it off as well please. Is there no end? Can we resist??

Nope, I'd rather have a classic car which I need to work on to keep it on the road than have my choices taken away by a computer!

Through choice.

I hate all this nonsense.

At home we have a basic car that doesn't make any noises. Whenever we hire a car abroad DH is having to fight it all the time because it's trying to steer, it's constantly beeping because it's got the speed limit wrong, it even told him once that he was about to collide with a van when he really wasn't. It's all really distracting. He hates reversing because as soon as it starts beeping he thinks he's going to hit something

Yes, because many new cars are imported from EU and some exported to EU so the cameras will be built into the dashboard regardless. Companies won’t go to the expense of having two lines of production

Why are you changing lanes without indicating? The indicator is there to indicate you are going to move, to give other cars warning of your intention.

Get into a good habit of always indicating. You never know who is looking for it - pedestrians, bikes, cars you haven't seen....

What a lot of luddites you all are. I wouldn’t be without all the gizmos on our car. Recently I was hemmed into a parking space by the cars in front and behind. Thanks to parking assist I was able to shuffle my way out. It took about five minutes but I got there in the end. Without it I’d have been imprisoned 60 odd miles from home.

It’s pretty easy to put shopping in the boot or on the floor, automatically always indicate and generally use the features to your benefit.

OK, so don't buy a new car then?

Also - please indicate when changing lanes. Even if you think there isn't anyone there. There could be pedestrians, bikes, cars you haven't seen....

Which is exactly why second hand cars are holding their value so much more than historically they used to . Plus of course cost of living crisis means that many people just can't afford but new cars anymore.

Imprisoned, seriously? If it was possible to get the car out with tech it would have been possible without, simple physics...

The data gathered from monitoring your behaviour will be sold to other companies who will use it to calculate how much money they can extract from you.

The data will NOT be used to keep unsafe drivers off of the roads because that would hurt the profits of the car manufacturers and other associated industries.

One thing I'm concerned about with all these sensors and alarms is that some people will start to rely on them and stop actually looking with their eyes and then if the alarm doesn't sound for whatever reason, they crash into another vehicle or whatever, and they blame 'the alarm not going off' as the reason for the crash.

Not at the moment
one of the reasons I’m glad we aren’t in the EU anymore

I don't know that much about cars really, but it seems to me cars should be lasting longer too since I was younger. And the designs are becoming more generic too, as they become optimised for shape in wind tunnels and so on.

They don’t record - its a closed loop system without data storage. Unlike journey data which is captured by the telcos on behalf of the car companies - that is sold (for cars with active SIMs).

This literally already happens.

Yes, indeed. And again with the 'tin foil hat' on, it serves governments better if they don't have to wait for potentially 25 years or more of 'grandad rights' to pass every time before their new systems and requirements are current in (virtually) all cars on the road.

That simply isn’t true. Without the tech - or another human guiding me - it would have been impossible without hitting either or both of the other cars. Simple human imperfection.

That makes no sense! Did the tech make your car smaller or the gaps bigger?

Closed loop to start with...

It gave me visibility I wouldn’t otherwise have had. Are you going to continue to derail the thread?

Some tech is good but there should be some debate about how far it goes and you should have the option to switch things off. Some of it is more distracting than helpful and could actually cause accidents.

It annoys me that my car has lane assist as default. I can switch it off but have to every time. It's helpful on a motorway but not for most journeys!

Do you have the faintest idea how much storage it would take to hold the data? Compared to the monetization value derivable on top of SIM data?

It makes bad business sense. Journey data alone uses petabytes of storage and that equates to huge compute requirements to read and process the shit - just for the pings against masts as you pass them.

Detailed behavioural data is an order of magnitude greater per person.

I agree with @blossomtoes. Now I’m used to the driver aids, they’re definitely an advantage, particularly the reversing cameras and the sensors. There’s nothing wrong with exploiting available tools.