Europe says your new car should watch you. Will America be next?

Imagine buying a brand-new car and discovering it comes with a camera pointed at your face every time you drive.

Not the road. You.

Most drivers never realized their vehicles were quietly building behavioral profiles.

As of this week, that’s no longer optional across the European Union. Every new passenger car and van registered in the EU must include an interior camera as part of an Advanced Driver Distraction Warning system. The technology activates at about 12 mph, tracking your eyes, head position, and attention. If it decides you’re distracted or drowsy, it issues a warning.

Officials say it’s about saving lives.

Camera-ready

No one disputes that distracted driving is a serious problem. The question is whether constant driver monitoring is the only solution — or whether it creates infrastructure that could eventually be used for much more than safety.

According to the European Commission, the system is designed as a closed-loop safety feature. It analyzes driver behavior inside the vehicle and issues warnings when it detects distraction or drowsiness. Officials say it does not record video or transmit footage outside the vehicle.

The more important question is what happens next.

Once every new vehicle is required to have an interior camera, the hardware is already in place. Expanding what that hardware can do no longer requires redesigning millions of vehicles. It only requires new regulations, updated software, or new policies governing how the data can be used.

Safety regulations have added new technology to our vehicles for decades. Seat belts, airbags, anti-lock brakes, electronic stability control, backup cameras, automatic emergency braking, and forward-collision warning systems all became standard because they delivered measurable safety benefits.

An interior camera is different because it monitors the driver rather than the roadway.

Big picture

Europe may be moving first, but the United States isn’t far behind. The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act directed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to develop rules requiring advanced impaired-driving prevention technology in future vehicles. While NHTSA has acknowledged that passive detection systems are not yet ready for widespread deployment, in-cabin monitoring remains one of the technologies under consideration.

In other words, this conversation is already happening here.

What makes that more concerning is how much information modern vehicles already generate. Over the past several years, investigations revealed that automakers, including General Motors and Honda, shared driving behavior data — including hard braking, rapid acceleration, speeding events, and time-of-day driving patterns — with data brokers. Those brokers, in turn, supplied information used by insurance companies to help determine premiums.

Most drivers never realized their vehicles were quietly building behavioral profiles.

Now add an interior camera capable of detecting whether you’ve looked at your navigation screen, reached for your coffee, glanced at a child in the back seat, or appeared drowsy after a long shift.

Americans have also watched roadside surveillance expand dramatically. Modern license plate reader systems now identify far more than license plates, using AI to recognize vehicle make, model, color, distinctive features, bumper stickers, roof racks, and travel patterns. Combined with connected-car telematics and interior cameras, those systems create an increasingly detailed picture of where you go, how you drive, and what you’re doing behind the wheel.

RELATED: The latest ‘solution’ to reckless driving could limit freedom for all of us

United Archives/Getty Images

Who pays?

Let’s not ignore the economic incentive behind all of this surveillance.

Every mandate creates winners. Camera manufacturers gain a guaranteed market. Software companies secure long-term licensing contracts. Automakers pass compliance costs on to consumers through higher vehicle prices. And the data generated by these systems may become valuable in ways nobody can fully predict today.

Consumers pay for all of it.

They pay more for the vehicle while giving up another measure of privacy inside what has traditionally been one of the last personal spaces they control.

Highway robbery

Supporters argue these systems only issue warnings, and today that’s true.

But history suggests technology rarely remains limited to its original purpose once the infrastructure exists. Software evolves and regulations change. Data that wasn’t considered valuable yesterday often becomes indispensable tomorrow.

We’ve already watched driving data migrate from vehicles to data brokers and, in some cases, insurance companies. We’ve also watched roadside camera networks expand well beyond their original mission. Neither happened overnight; both expanded gradually.

Every responsible driver wants safer roads. My concern is what happens after every new vehicle comes equipped with hardware designed to watch the person behind the wheel.

For more than a century, the automobile has represented personal freedom. When driving increasingly means being observed, analyzed, and potentially scored, the relationship between drivers and their vehicles begins to change.

Europe has already decided that every new car should watch its driver. Americans should decide whether they’re comfortable heading down the same road before it quietly becomes the default here as well.