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Government Transportation

New Bill Could Mandate Driver-Monitoring Systems In Future Cars (cnet.com) 83

Posted by BeauHD from the safety-first dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: The most recent crash involving a Tesla Model S and alleged connections to running driver-assist features without a driver behind the wheel spurred a lot of talk on how to handle advanced technology and its growing impact on drivers. Following Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Ed Markey's calls for enhanced guidelines from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the two introduced new legislation on Monday that aims to tackle the problem.

With Sen. Amy Klobuchar signed on as a sponsor, the Stay Aware for Everyone Act would compel the Department of Transportation to study driver-monitoring systems installed in vehicles. With findings delivered to the appropriate committees within 180 days, the Transportation Secretary would then need to finalize a rule within four years deciding if the systems should become mandatory on all new vehicles. Not just vehicles with any level of driver-assist system, like Tesla's Autopilot, but all new cars sold. Automakers would then have two model years to meet compliance with any new vehicles going on sale.

The language in this bill, however, is interesting since it covers all new vehicles, rather than vehicles equipped with advanced assist systems. Naturally, this opens up privacy concerns, and all the bill says on this front is that the Transportation Secretary would determine "appropriate privacy and data security safeguards." The SAFE Act is one of four new bills the pair of Democratic senators introduced today, proposing potential legislation to speed up recall reporting from automakers, to bolster vehicle seat backs to reduce related fatalities and to set up a system to help automakers report possible vehicle defects earlier for NHTSA to investigate.
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New Bill Could Mandate Driver-Monitoring Systems In Future Cars More

New Bill Could Mandate Driver-Monitoring Systems In Future Cars

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  • 1996 Civic (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jason Earl ( 1894 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @07:06PM (#61321938) Homepage Journal

    It looks like I will be driving my 1996 Civic forever. Thanks Congress.

    • Re:1996 Civic (Score:5, Informative)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @08:22PM (#61322124) Homepage

      And they're pushing it based on BS, too. "The most recent crash involving a Tesla Model S and alleged connections to running driver-assist features without a driver behind the wheel " - It. Was. Not. On, Period.

        * Autosteer reported that it was not engaged, and the owner didn't even own FSD
        * An attempt to recreate the scene on the street of the crash found that AP could not be engaged as it lacked lane lines, that TACC only got up to 30mph in the distance before the crash (vs. an estimated crash speed of 60-100mph)
        * Examination of the wreckage found that the steering wheel was deformed by an impact, in a manner typical of severe driver impact
        * All seatbelts in the car were determined to be unbuckled.

      (The SD card logging all internal data could not be read, and there's an attempt to recover the data off of it ongoing, but regardless, how much more do you need?)

      Autopilot. Had. Nothing. To. Do. With. This. It was a joy ride gone wrong. Nor was there a "four hour fire" . But everyone is exploiting this tragedy to push their own agendas. And all the glee from Tesla short sellers about this, it's sickening.

      • Tesla Autopilot seems to be the most misunderstood technology out there today, and the FUD is sky-high on it.

        It was funny two years ago reading how everyone was mad at the term "autopilot", and I kept wondering to myself if 10% of the people complaining about the name have ever flown or experienced a pilot's interaction with an autopilot system in an aircraft (for which the driver (pilot) has to pay attention, and for which the pilot has to handle anomalies).
      • It. Was. Not. On, Period.

        You're confusing me. Literally the only place where that sentence must have a period got a coma from you. You even said it out loud!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tragedy ( 27079 )

          Why bother saying this though? Rei clearly can't respond to you while in a coma!

          • Good point, except that it was an intervention by my spell checker...

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by tragedy ( 27079 )

              It's just almost a law of the universe that a post nitpicking on grammar will have spelling errors (and possibly grammar errors too). Likewise for nitpicking spelling.

              • Are you proposing the Law of Tragedy? I'll certainly back you up... :-)

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by tragedy ( 27079 )

                  That's odd. I thought I posted a reply to this. Anyway, I cannot claim credit. It's already Muphry's Law.

                  • I've never heard of Muphry's law, so I still think you should claim it as Tragedy's Law. PS did your spelling checker "fix" the name Murphy...?

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by tragedy ( 27079 )

                      PS did your spelling checker "fix" the name Murphy...?

                      Nope. It's a deliberate mis-spelling of Murphy. There's a Wikipedia article on it: Muphry's Law [wikipedia.org]. That article also discusses Umhöfer's rule, Skitt's Law, Hartman's law of prescriptivist retaliation, The Iron Law of Nitpicking, McKean's law, and Bell's first law of Usenet. Those are all variations on the same theme.
                      Muphry's law mostly applies to books of course and it has some additional corollaries that do not apply here, so Bell's first law of Usenet is probably the closest to what I was trying to exp

                    • Oh, thanks! I think I've seen Skitt's Law, but Muphry's certainly never caught my eye, perhaps had me thinking it was an unintended mistake...

      • What steering wheel?

        https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]

      • It's an opportunity for worthless crooks to introduce legislation and brag about how much they care. That it's based on nothing just means they don't think it can hurt, By which I mean, "blow up their faces", not, "hurt taxpayers, especially if they want to buy a car", which it will do.

      • Notwithstanding whether the features were engaged or not in this specific case, depending on the faultlessness of a system reporting whether or not the system itself has a fault is an excellent example of the original meaning of "begging the question".

    • Already has driver monitoring installed. It's called a dash cam. It includes a GPS receiver to record on every video frame the exact time, speed and location. It's reasonably easy to fit a hard wired kit to this car, the RHD twin carb good looking model by picking up accessory power from a spare terminal on the fuse panel.

      The main purpose, of course, is to record the behaviour of other drivers. I am very much of the opinion that the reason for antisocial behaviour in any society is that the perpetrators fir

      • Bad driving could be stopped almost overnight by requiring perpetrators to re-take the driving test and, if they fail, be put back to what in the UK we call provisional, or learner, driver status. Considering the disruption caused to thousands of others, anybody proved to have caused a collision on a motorway would receive at least a lengthy ban. We are far too tolerant of careless driving and the chaos it causes.

        That would unfortunately stop almost nothing. People would carefully pay attention during the test, pass said test, and go back to giving zero fucks and paying no attention immediately.

    • How hard is it to build and register a custom-made car? Or modify existing chassis?
      If I wanted to take the wheels and suspension from a wrecked car and build a tube frame with a couple electric motors (and without nanny-features), can I get that legally registered? Could I pay someone else to do it for me? Or sell it to someone else?
      Asking for a friend.

      • If I wanted to take the wheels and suspension from a wrecked car and build a tube frame with a couple electric motors (and without nanny-features), can I get that legally registered? Could I pay someone else to do it for me? Or sell it to someone else?

        As far as I know, it is pretty easy.

        Building your own car is just as legal as building your own gun.

        There are plenty of kit cars out there...I was looking into a kit car to build my own Cobra replica.

        All it has to do, I believe, is pass whatever local insp

        • Depends on the state, but in general it is a whole lot easier to build your own firearm. Firearm: pay the tax (or have effectively prepaid with your manufacturers ffl if you have it,) build, properly mark/serialize it, done. The car will need to have everything needed to be roadworthy, which is pretty much standard minimums everywhere, but some places are more stringent. It will need to be inspected, same as if you were rebuilding with a salvage title, and then of course the constant "inspection" of eve

    • It looks like I will be driving my 1996 Civic forever. Thanks Congress.

      Dear citizen, we have noted that you have purposefully evaded our program for driver monitoring. Please be advised we have suspended your licence and any further travel in your Civic will be considered illegal.

      Sincerely,
      The big eye.

  • They know it won't get anywhere, that's not the point. This kind of travesty is proposed on an ongoing basis every few years. They let people spend all their fucks protesting it again and again. When there aren't enough people left to give a fuck they pass it, buried 5 layers deep in the budget omnibus bill.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by CaptainLugnuts ( 2594663 )
      Don't be so quick to dismiss.

      All of this crap will be mandatory in the EU next year. Once it's mandatory in a significant market, it's used everywhere.

      https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/eu-make-speed-limiters-driver-monitors-mandatory

    • You are already being monitored. Take the kick panel off the passenger side footwell. Look up. That is the usual location - standard ruggedised hard drive. Full record of how you drove and full telemetry from the car. Usually sufficient to hold 10+ years worth of data. It was there on my old 2007 truck, it is there on the new one.

      • Take the kick panel off the passenger side footwell. Look up. That is the usual location - standard ruggedised hard drive. Full record of how you drove and full telemetry from the car. Usually sufficient to hold 10+ years worth of data. It was there on my old 2007 truck, it is there on the new one.

        How difficult is it to remove....will your vehicle still function without it?

        • It is not listed in the expanded (8000 pages) vendor internal service and workshop manual. The wiring harness is not described either. All connections to the recording module (and there are quite a few) are not on the diagrams. The only way you can understand what are you dealing with is if you google the part - it comes up as a recording module. The drive itself is unmarked.

          Frankly - f*ck knows. I am not willing to try.

  • It depends (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @07:20PM (#61321960)

    We have seat belts and airbags and crash standards. In principle I don't have an issue with a driver monitoring system to reduce crashes.

    In practice, it can't require an Internet connection, it can't override me - just warn me I'm screwing up, and it can't massively increase the cost of the car OR cause the car to cease operating if the system fails. Any of those things, and there's a huge issue not just with privacy and property rights, but with the vehicle being able to function under all circumstances we've come to expect a vehicle to function.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      In reality, it WILL be internet-connected, and it WILL shut down your car if your government masters have decided you shouldn't be driving, and it WILL track your every move, every time you drive. You WILL pay the cost of it, and you WILL be responsible for keeping it in working order at YOUR expense.

      Just like every other government-mandated "safety" system in cars today.

      • Seat belts are mandated, but there's nothing preventing me from operating my automobile if I decide to not wear them, though I may get a ticket if I'm pulled over for some reason. Air bags are also mandated, but the car will run just fine if I tear them out. If I replace my impact absorbing bumper with one made from paper mache, the car will still operate as well as it always has. Much as I don't want my car connected to the internet, I think your argument is a tad overblown.

      • We have this already. Many automotive black-boxes keep a history that includes location data, occupancy, when the driver brakes or accelerates, speed at the time, etc. and are sending these telemetries over the cell network.
        Using this tech its possible for them to know when you were speeding and when you were near and how much time the car spent at a given location.

    • Re:It depends (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @09:08PM (#61322264) Journal
      You people always say things like this but you don't really grasp the implications of it now do you? You really want some government agency, or some corporation, up your ass every second you're in your car? No conversation is private, they can see and hear everything you're doing and saying, who is in the car, everything? Are you REALLY sure you want that? Don't EVEN tell me "I'm not doing anything wrong so why should I care", either.

      • Re:It depends (Score:5, Insightful)

        by vix86 ( 592763 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @10:47PM (#61322482)

        How the hell are people so outraged over their privacy in cars, but I hear next to nothing about phones. Nearly every person has a smartphone now with multiple high res cams, multiple microphones, cell radio, GPS, WiFi, and Bluetooth. People take them with them to shit, to shower, to drive, eat, sleep, and everything in between.

        If you're not on a dumb flip phone or a smartphone running a version of Android that can be publicly audited, then I don't want to hear about your paranoia over a camera stuck inside your car, when your phone is the biggest privacy hazard in existence. Maybe you do have one of those 2 things, in which case, congrats, you're rare, but most people don't fall into this category.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Because these fears have proven unfounded.

          We don't see evidence gathered from always-listening phones used in court. We don't have evidence of it being used in parallel construction. Remember when China was listening 24/7 and using it to sell you stuff? That didn't pan out either. Google doesn't monitor your conversations for ad targeting.

          If any of it was true then yeah, there would be outrage. Like there is over the sale of location data, or the supply of it to law enforcement. But stealing audio and video

          • What would constitute evidence of Parallel reconstruction to you? i.e. Specific official guidance to do that very thing, and a "A dozen current or former federal agents interviewed by Reuters [confirming] they had used parallel construction during their careers" ?

            Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              What I'm getting at is that showing the judge that report and saying "so any forensic evidence presented by federal agents must be discarded, as some of them omitted to parallel construction at least once" probably isn't going to help a defendant. The judge will want to see some evidence that it was used in that specific case, or that it is at least likely to have been (e.g. the particular agent in that case has a proven history of doing it).

          • But we aren't talking about phones. We're talking about camera(s) and microphone(s) being installed in your car BY LAW and recording and/or transmitting everything they see and hear when you're driving. That's bullshit and I for one would never put up with it, and I (and many others I'm sure) will say HELL, NO! to it.
            Honestly do you want to be under a microscope in your own car? Do you think it's okay for them to do?
        • I am on a flip phone, but the damned thing runs Android and the interface sucks. I keep it turned off 99% of the time anyway unless I'm actually using it.

      • You really want some government agency, or some corporation, up your ass every second you're in your car?

        I do. Especially for people who are too fucking stupid to obey the road rules.

        I've been in two accidents in my life.
        1. T-boned by someone on a fucking phone.
        2. Swiped by someone doing well over 150km/h in a 100km/h zone.

        Actually 3 if you count the drunk idiot who hit my parked car, along with several others in the street before driving into a canal.

        I'm in favour of the first traffic violation resulting in you getting a permanent ankle bracelet for full time idiot monitoring.

        • Then I think you're an idiot, and since you're using metric speed measurements you're not in the U.S., which is fine by me. You Euros want to be surveiled every waking moment like you're convicts in prison? You get what you deserve then. But here in the U.S. I don't think anyone is that dumb.
          Fucking hell. I'd sooner go back to riding motorcycles all year 'round before I'd put up with this shit.

    • Seatbelts, air bags I get. Crash avoidance systems I even get. Ultimately though, driver attention is qualitative and not quantitative. Different driving conditions necessitate varying levels of attention. We might prefer the idea that the driver has 110% focus on the road at all times... but that is a poor use of resources and causes its own type of fatigue.

      Should we ban having children in cars as well, or just mandate that children are muzzled and fully restrained for the ride?

      • Should we ban having children in cars as well, or just mandate that children are muzzled and fully restrained for the ride?

        Nah, just put them in the trunk...think how much more peaceful a long drive will be with the kids in the trunk....

  • Isn't it simpler to just let people be accountable for their own screwups?

    Society has already accepted and normalized the risk of reckless driving.

    • Society has already accepted and normalized the risk of reckless driving.

      This bill would suggest otherwise.

  • Insurance Lobby Dreams (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Arzaboa ( 2804779 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @07:34PM (#61321980)

    Who does Klobuchar work for? Anytime the Insurance lobby can pass these costs off to the consumer, they make a whole lot more money. How many crashes would this actually solve a year? I can't imagine that there is a large number of crashes in the world because someone isn't behind the wheel. This isn't to save lives, this is to pad the pockets of Insurance companies and data brokers.

    And how about the data? Will there be anything in these cars that limits what can be done with this data? Some companies will end up making hundreds of millions off of this data.

    --
    Today, credit rating agencies rate companies, countries and bonds. - Mike Fitzpatrick

    • Oddly enough, insurance companies love it when they have large payouts. In many states auto insurance rates are limited to a certain amount of profit. More payouts, more they can jack up rates and then they have more profit.

    • I can't imagine that there is a large number of crashes in the world because someone isn't behind the wheel.

      This isn't just "Someone crawled out through the window, this is all distracted driving where someone is texting or falls asleep or even potentially it should be able to detect drunk drivers.
      https://www.cdc.gov/transporta... [cdc.gov]

      In the U.S. in 2018, over 2,800 people were killed and an estimated 400,000 were injured in crashes involving a distracted driver.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ufgrat ( 6245202 )

        ... and cigarettes are still legal.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by flink ( 18449 )

          ... and cigarettes are still legal.

          Smoking (mostly) just kills the smoker. If some distracted asshole on his phone plows into me that's another matter. The two situations are not analogous.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ufgrat ( 6245202 )

      Won't help the insurance companies if no one can afford a new car because of all the nanny-state technology that has to be in every car. They'll have to raise rates to cove the spread.

    • Well, it looks like doing something to make people safer, and that's all they care about. Appearance. The fact that it's a waste of taxpayer dollars leading to a waste of money for anyone wanting to buy a car for ZERO actual benefit means nothing to them. For Senators Unpleasant and Crooked, it's just free PR. Free as in we pay for it.

  • First let us state the obvious, that politicians are greedy and stupid. A deadly combination if there ever was one. But what can be said of the fools who have the politicians power? Everyone who voted for a clown should put the balls in a vice. Now anyway, since we are stuck with these politicians the only thing we can do is get them to pass a politician monitoring system. I am talking about full office cameras/audio and also whenever they meet or talk to someone I want to vet it. The only time I donâ

    • ... I want to vet it. The only time I donâ(TM)t want to see the video is when they are shitting or trying to screw an intern.

      I’m afraid thats going to put some politicians out of your view permanently.

  • I see such systems as adding cost to a new car, being expensive to fix (undoubtedly OEM stuff), using that much more energy (all the time, in millions of cars) and, if it's like most of the other "help the driver" ideas, being so annoying that they will get in the way more than they help.

  • Legislation with the word "SAFE" in the title (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @08:07PM (#61322082)

    What I find particularly telling is the SAFE act mandates a pre-ordained action in advance before any objective study or cost benefit analysis is even started.

    "Not later than 4 years after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Transportation shall issue a final rule to establish performance standards for driver monitoring systems and require those systems to be installed on all new passenger motor vehicles"

    What we really need is a SAFE act protecting the public from endless government regulation requiring independent peer reviewed evidence based risk/benefit assessments and a public vote on any new regulation that affects everyone. Also regulation should automatically die if any significant findings of the analysis are later disproven.

  • Must buy onstar and maybe even roaming data package if you plan to drive near the boarder. Also don't even think about useing that 3rd party repair shop (even jiffy lube) as any non dealer repair or service till take the motioning system offline. That sounds like an good idea

  • Bitten by a snake, Pregnancy or hat attack, Medical emergency, Life or death situation,Time critical rescue So we get 'Sorry Honey, the car wont start', The software drained the battery flat. The facial recognition failed' because I lost an eye, or had a haircut. My other phone is flat too. The dog/cat triggered the 'too many attempts' please wait 2 hours thingy. Recall in Texas the power was down, as were phone lines, so trapped in snow in an electric car was risky indeed. You do not invent new rules for

    • You do not invent new rules for the one in twenty trillion events.

      You talk about snake bites as if that's a daily occurrence unlike someone texting or doing their makeup while driving. I'm perfectly happy allowing every snake bite victim not being allowed to get behind the wheel if they are visibly impaired if it means we eliminate all texting while driving. Like someone wise once said, you don't design the rules for one in twenty trillion events.

      • You talk about snake bites as if that's a daily occurrence

        Have you heard of the continent of Australia, my friend?

      • Yes, makeup and texting are killers. As is with an arm or elbow protruding from the window. In Australia they have cameras that detect phones in drivers hands from 1/2 mile - and $1000 fines or more are increasing. Snakebite: https://www.who.int/news/item/... [who.int] So India in first place, and in Australia only a handful of deaths, because everyone knows how to do a tourniquet, and within 4 hours of anti-venom. https://www.smh.com.au/nationa... [smh.com.au]
  • You're not 'monitoring' me every minute I'm driving, like I'm some truck driver, with cameras and microphones? Fuck that shit, major privacy violation.

  • No (Score:2)

    by blastard ( 816262 )

    Just no.

    • You don't want to spend an extra grand or two on any new car just to have a pointless camera watching you so that a pair of crooked senators can look important? Okay weirdo.

  • So to check bad autonomous robo drivers we will monitor the human drivers ?

  • Let alone their robot overlords

  • Just add driver monitoring to vehicle tracking, social media monitoring, purchase and financial transaction monitoring, classroom monitoring.... what do you get? What the nanny state really is - the surveillance state.
  • I suspect that these devices will have a pretty high failure rate.
  • Just how isn't that data going to be used for political purposes?

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