European automobiles now shoulder duties that extend beyond simply ferrying people from place to place. A newly enacted safety rule covering the 27 member states of the European Union requires vehicles to monitor the behavior of their operators as part of safety measures.
Starting on July 7, every new passenger car sold within the EU must be fitted with “advanced driver distraction warning” systems that detect signs of distraction and, when found, deliver a visual cue and an audible or tactile alert. The system will warn drivers whose gaze drifts for more than three to six seconds, with the threshold varying according to the vehicle’s speed.
To satisfy this requirement, cars will need to mount cameras focused on the driver’s face at all times, effectively transforming private cars into compact surveillance devices. The apparatus is intended to operate as a “closed-loop system,” meaning it “shall only continuously record and retain data necessary for the system to function and operate.” Yet it remains unclear how this provision will be policed in practice.
Beyond privacy concerns, some critics worry that the system itself could become a new distraction, issuing warnings whenever a driver changes the radio station or glances at a passenger. Others argue that the mandate could raise the overall cost of autos.
Manufacturers may allow drivers to temporarily disable either the monitoring system or its warnings, but these controls must reset to the on position every time the vehicle is restarted. At present, the requirements call for warnings to alert distracted drivers rather than for the system to seize control of the vehicle and bring it to a stop.
Similar approaches could be headed for U.S. cars in the future—though with a twist. Once enacted, a mandate included in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act would require that cars be equipped with a kill switch, and it is unlikely that drivers would be permitted to disable it.
The law compels automakers to outfit all new motor vehicles sold in the United States with “advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology.” These systems 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 finalize specific rules for such systems by 2024, but it has not done so yet, perhaps because there is uncertainty about how “passive and accurate” BAC-detection technology would function. The agency now aims to complete the rules by 2027, after which automakers would have some lead time to implement the new technology.
In June, the NHTSA sought public input on a proposal to conduct “a single, one-time experimental research study” intended to develop and evaluate a “prototype” driver monitoring system. The objective, the agency stated, 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).
