cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1247209/all-cars-sold-in-the-eu-now-require-a-camera-aimed-at-your-face-its-still-not-clear-wher
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.
Automakers have known this was coming for years. What they, and EU regulators, have never spelled out is what happens to that footage after the alert goes off.
While the intention behind the new system is difficult to dispute, its implementation has raised several concerns. Early real-world testing suggests the distraction warnings can be overly sensitive and potentially distracting.
Im sorry, but this is just silly.
If a camera rocords your face, it can be used to identity you. Thus it falls under GDPR regulations as PII. That requires that the footage is kept no longer than needed for its purpose and that what happens to the data is spelled out exactly. My car already comes with a privacy policy that you can read.
So the answer is: Anything that can be used to identify you will deleted - or rather it will never get stored.
And the reason this regulation doesn’t spell out what happens to the data is that it doesn’t need to because GDPR covers ALL data already.
The EU is guilty of many things, but this is solely about increasing driver awareness and preventing deaths and injury - and it’s working, with each generation of requirements, less people die.
What sucks is you know the US is going to put it in their cars “to simplify production” and we dont have GDPR to protect us, so you know that data is going somewhere.