European Cars Are Spying on Their Drivers. The Same Tech Could Be Coming to the U.S.

European cars are now tasked with more than just moving people from one locale to another. A new safety regulation that applies to the 27 countries in the European Union (E.U.) requires automobiles to spy on their passengers too.

As of July 7, all new passenger vehicles sold in the E.U. had to come equipped with “advanced driver distraction warning” systems that watch for signs of “distraction” and, upon detecting them, issue a visual and an audio or tactile warning. Cars will warn drivers whose gaze drifts for more than three to six seconds, depending on their speed.

To comply with this mandate, cars will have to fix cameras on drivers’ faces at all times, turning private motor vehicles into efficient surveillance systems. The equipment is supposed to operate as a “closed-loop system,” meaning it “shall only continuously record and retain data necessary for the system to function and operate.” But it is not clear how that rule will be enforced.

Beyond privacy concerns, some critics worry that the system itself will become a dangerous distraction, issuing warnings every time a driver changes the radio station or glances at a passenger. Others have complained that the requirement will increase auto costs.

Car manufacturers can allow drivers to temporarily disable either the monitoring system or its warnings, although they must come back on every time the car is restarted. For now, the systems are required only to warn drivers who are deemed distracted, not to take over the car and stop it from moving.

Similar systems could be coming to U.S. cars next—with a twist. Once implemented, a mandate included in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will require that cars come equipped with a kill switch, and it is unlikely that drivers will be allowed to disable it.

That law requires automakers to equip all new motor vehicles sold in the U.S. with “advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology.” These systems, it says, should “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired” and/or “passively and accurately detect” excessive blood alcohol content (BAC), then “prevent or limit motor vehicle operation” by those deemed impaired.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was supposed to develop specific rules for such systems by 2024, but it has not done so yet, perhaps because no one seems sure how “passive and accurate” BAC-detection technology would work. The agency now aims to finalize the rules by 2027, after which automakers would have some time to implement the new technology.

In June, the NHTSA sought public comment on a proposal to conduct “a single, one-time experimental research study” aimed at developing and evaluating a “prototype” driver monitoring system. The goal, it said, is a system that “fuses data gathered from driver attention (e.g., gaze location), physiological state (e.g., heart rate variability), vehicle kinematics (e.g., lateral lane position) and environmental sensors (e.g., time to collision).”