Privacy@lemmy.mlbyaikhae@lemmy.ohaa.xyz
5 hours

Driver facing camera in cars

English
The dashboard of an renault 5 e-tech. The camera mentioned in the post is in the A-pillar.

Hello people, my family recently bought a Renault 5 e-tech. The car itself is great, but there are some aspects that creep me out, especially the driver-facing camera. We didn’t actually know that such a camera existed before we bought the car, it was only mentioned as the car was given to us.

The cameras official purpose is to see, if you are tired and paying attention to the road, by some “AI magic”, I suppose. You can also let it scan your face, so that you automatically get logged into your profile.

I personally think, that that is kinda creepy, especially as there is no visual indication if the camera is currently recording and no official way to disable the camera hardware-wise. When it is being coverd, the car immediately complains about it.

When talking to friends or family about it, I got one of two reactions: equal concern, or “nice feature actually”, “what about the camera on your laptop?”, “you are way too paranoid”, “I have noting to hide; it is only me driving being recorded”.

I have also seen such cameras in other cars, BYD for example.

What do you think, is this creepy or am I too paranoid? Does anyone know where the actual data is processed, on device or on some cloud server? Do you have any experience with such cameras? I couldn’t really find any information about it on the internet.

104
    • astropenguin5@lemmy.world
      1 hour

      Yep, creepy, and point about the laptop camera is often invalid because depending on the model some laptops have a hardwired switch or cover for exactly this reason. Also usually have a light to tell you it’s on, and aren’t constantly in use.

      • usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca
        1 hour

        And they don’t pester you if you cover the camera either, and you have more control on whether they’re online too.

    • mctoasterson@reddthat.com
      22 minutes

      I believe this is (or will soon be) a regulatory requirement in many countries, for self-driving features in modern cars.

      For me I don’t do long highway trips often enough to justify having it. I would rather not have inherently invasive blackbox tech as a tradeoff for a feature I will seldom (if ever) use.

    • bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works
      9 minutes

      Need to be smashing them. Call up the dealer and scream at them. Do not buy new cars.

      Still can’t believe we allowed this to happen. Well, I’ll be repairing old cars till I die I guess.

    • MeetMeAtTheMovies [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      2 hours

      Reminder that people with ADHD are regularly falsely flagged as not paying attention by eye tracking software. This camera shit is not only creepy and invasive. It likely doesn’t work well and has an ableist bias.

      • isame [he/him]@hexbear.net
        1 hour

        Wait really? My work truck uses Samsara, and it alerts me for not paying attention while I’m looking at the road at least once a week.

    • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
      3 hours

      I always bring up the magic of Scotch’s Magic Tape.

      This tape lets most of the light through (useful for dynamic light features) while blurring the image as if out of focus or behind frosted glass. It is also mostly discrete unlike opaque tapes.

      • eldavi@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2 hours

        the locations of the cameras are no published and you’re likely to miss at least one.

        • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
          2 hours

          For that we still have the Internet. Better nerds than I will find out for each car model where each last camera is located

    • toebert@piefed.socialEnglish
      2 hours

      We got a modern BYD recently as a rental on a holiday that had this, it was really annoying. Anytime anything happened the car beeped, it was near constant different beeps - super distracting. Most of the things could be turned off, but had to be turned off each time the car was started, on a tablet buried in various menus.

      The attention thing also wasn’t working great with the driver wearing sunglasses, it’d randomly start complaining. It also complained when the driver would lean forward to get a better view around a corner or anything.

      It was a very fancy car, but I’d definitely never choose a car with these features, even though some may probably be useful.

      I’d also never trust one of these companies not to change the policy on what they can do with this camera in the future, at which point you’ll have little to no choice about it. Or, to find out they messed up and now anyone can watch you in your car.

      I’d go back to the dealership and complain, either ask for a refund or a way to be able to cover the camera, especially if they only disclosed it as you got the car.

      • Summzashi@lemmy.world
        59 minutes

        One thing the Renault does great is the ability to turn all those systems off with a dedicated button to the left of the steering wheel.

        Unfortunately all these systems are mandatory for car manufacturers these days. Renault handels it about as well as a car maker can to be honest.

    • stoicEuropean@lemmy.ml
      3 hours

      This is creepy as hell. I liked the Renault 5 - until now. Fuck this shit. I wont pay a small fortune, just to enslave myself to a 1984-style digital panopticon. I am getting angry just by reading your story. Corporate greed is once again crossing the line, slowly shifting the overtone window. Everyone who is not concerned about this, is simply ignorant and/or borderline stupid.

      If it was my car, I’d probably cover it. And if it then starts beeping, I’d maybe even locate the speaker and deactivate that one, too.

      I wonder if it is even legal to sell you something like this without informing you prior to your purchase.

      • HAL_9_TRILLION@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        1 minute

        To me your comment brings to mind the underlying problem, which is: your action won’t matter because of the overwhelming behavior of the herd. The masses can’t comprehend/don’t care and profitability is absolutely not tied to consumer satisfaction anymore.

        The only winning move is not to play. Buy older models before this idiocy started. My vehicle is 2011 my SO’s is 2007.

        This is all just to increase the profit margins for insurance.

    • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
      3 hours

      This is one of those great ideas which can easily be implemented offline but they make it require phoning their data collection unit. Fuck everything about that. I would have stopped and said uhhh no. I want my money back.

      • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        40 minutes

        does not matter if it can be online, because it is part of an opaque system where its not possible to verify they are telling the truth

    • spacehulk@lemmy.zip
      3 hours

      This is being touted for safety reasons, yet there are still no guidelines and headlight brightness, headlight height, hood height of pickup trucks, etc. Regulate the vehicle exterior for actual and immediate safety benefits before trying to float this privacy infringing shit.

      • FatVegan@leminal.space
        2 hours

        Car regulations are so much fun. Atere you crazy? Your car can’t be that loud, there are several reasons for it, obviously. Oh wait, you mean a rich people car? Nevermind, those can be the loudest cars imaginable, because they need 900 hp

    • PennyRoyal@sh.itjust.works
      5 hours

      I’d love to buy an electric car, but I want one with no electronics, if that makes sense. Electric power train, but no screens, “driver aids” or other nonsense

      • bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works
        6 minutes

        Yep, I’ll never buy electric, becuase we aren’t allowed to have an analog one.

        ELECTRIC IS SO FUCKING SIMPLE. motor. Battery. Voltage regulator. Gearbox. Thats it. That is all it fucking needs. But we can’t have that.

        I think things need to start happening at dealerships. All those new cars just sitting outside unprotected. Hmm. Sure hope nothing happens to them. Do what it takes until we get what we want.

        • TiredTiger@lemmy.ml
          2 hours

          Would love it if they were making a sedan or a subcompact. Not everyone needs or wants a truck.

          • ironhydroxide@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            2 hours

            Already out of production, but the original fiat 500e is very much one of these barebones electric vehicles. I love mine

        • Zetta@mander.xyz
          1 hour

          They are going to be required to have the spyware cameras in 2027 as well. It’s federal law in the U.S. unfortunately. Hopefully there will be some published guides on tampering with and disabling them though.

          • ToastedRavioli@midwest.social
            4 hours

            Bezos has done a lot of horrible things, but making a $20k electric truck is not one of them.

            I avoid shopping on Amazon unless absolutely necessary, maybe 2-3 times in the last ten years. I think his financial existence is an abomination. But if his truck company is the only manufacturer offering a $20k base vehicle then people have good reason to hand him money. Hopefully undercutting every other manufacturer by $10k+ will result in there being more cheap cars, and alternatives within that price range

      • Grimy@lemmy.world
        2 hours

        I like the electronics, I just want anything that connects to the internet to be disabled. I’m close to needing to buy a new car, I plan on specifying at the dealership if they will stop me from disconnecting the GPS and other connections.

        • Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          1 hour

          I have a 2023 chevy bolt and I just pulled the fuse for all that stuff. It doesn’t really disable anything important. If you still want navigation or location-based charging, you can remove the onstar module behind the screen without issue, and the video tutorial made it look pretty damned easy to DIY. That disables all the spyware/internet stuff but leaves everything else working. I’ll probably do it eventually, for location-based charging and nothing else, but its very low priority at the moment, cuz I hardly ever go anywhere that can use the full level 1 12amp pull (my friends and family aren’t confident their wiring can handle it, which is totally fair, I don’t use 12amp at home for the same reason, and I’m getting a new outlet installed that will make it a level 2 charger anyway)

          It also has physical buttons for all the important stuff. That and being able to disable the spyware were my two main criteria, with cargo space as a close third (used to have a civic coupe, loved the size, but useless for moving stuff)

        • Summzashi@lemmy.world
          57 minutes

          Assuming you live in Europe, check out the citroen ec3. Base trim doesn’t even have infotainment and is affordable as hell. Still a great car to drive and very practical.

      • mindwanderer@feddit.orgEnglish
        3 hours

        buy an old car and convert it. It aint gonna be cheap but probably cheaper than a new EV.

        • ToastedRavioli@midwest.social
          35 minutes

          Converting an ICE car to an electric is insanely expensive. Far more expensive than buying a new electric car, even without factoring in the cost of buying the old car

      • Consti@lemmy.world
        5 hours

        Renault has some models with almost no gimmicks, only a typical navigation system, for example the Kangoo at least our older model, no idea if that changed)

      • aikhae@lemmy.ohaa.xyz
        5 hours

        YES! If you don’t need much range, maybe look the Renault Zoe from 2012. As its older it doesn’t seem to have that much tech in it.

        • ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          4 hours

          Be very much aware that these old Renault Zoe use chademo for fast charging, a connector that literally isn’t used anywhere anymore so you’re relegated to AC charging. Oh, and a funny little quirk with them; they cannot charge with less that 6KW AC because of how they use the motor inverter. sometimes with public AC chargers this is an issue due to load distribution between multiple chargers.

          • aikhae@lemmy.ohaa.xyz
            4 hours

            Oh, I just thought, that it just doesn’t do “fast charging”. Thank you for the heads-up!

    • mindwanderer@feddit.orgEnglish
      3 hours

      Cars collect data about you to sell them to insurance companies. There was a study by the mozilla foundation about this and they said that there is basicly no modern car that does not do that.

      The only thing you can do to avoid them is buy an old car.

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
        2 hours

        There was an article about removing the modem (or other essential piece of that data path) from a specific model of car (prius I think?), hoping to see more of those.

        • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
          3 minutes

          It’s a lot more than just video. It’s all your audio while you’re in the car. Your driving habits, your location, your devices, who is in the car with you so on and so forth.

          There’s a ton of data that can be gathered and associated without having to have a camera.

          If you ever talk in your car and it’s a modern car. Congratulations! That’s being recorded cataloged and sold off to the highest bidder.

        • scrion@lemmy.world
          2 hours

          Additional data about your driving behavior is also collected, completely unrelated to cameras. In fact, this data is the majority.