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.
I don't know the purpose of this camera but sadly I have seen numerous driver battling against falling asleep, including on highways, so going faster than 100km/h on a 1ton machine.
You all might be excellent conscientious drivers who are horrified that the car might check on your ability to drive but I can tell you with 100% certainty that not all drivers, including otherwise very kind and caring people, are not always able to drive, yet still do so.
To be clear I am not advocating for any data to leave the car at any point. I'm only point that some usages of cameras pointing to the driver might be both beneficial to everybody and not be a privacy problem. How? Well detect the presence of eyes and if there is not, demand a conscious action (e.g. pressing a button) and if this does not work, increase stimulus, etc. This does NOT require any data from being sent to anybody.
Unrelated but I'm also for speed limiters for cars. I also do not think it's a privacy issue.
Still, to clarify, safety MUST be improved WITHOUT hindering on privacy of anybody involved.
except this sort of thing is already in use in amazon trucks to judge a driver at all times by an outside entity judgements made without context. why would you own something that can only make your case harder? you can’t not give it over as evidence if you have it. so it’s best not to have it.
there is an accident because the car ahead of you slammed their breaks on the open freeway, causing a crash, in court they point that you were at the moment before the crash were checking your rear view mirror and not the road based on the eye tracking, and argue if you were looking forward you would have avoided the accident.
or you could tape up the camera
This has nothing to do with work though and the power relationship between a boss and their subordinates, does it?
To be clear, again, I'm not saying what Amazon does its workers, in trucks or not, is good. It's not.
it’s not good. which is why the inward facing camera in cars is not good. for the exact same reason.
But that's not the same power relationship. The usage I explained is about safety for yourself, passengers and people on the road and nearby. The usage for Amazon is about increasing productivity and send the data up the hierarchy. They are not the same usage with the same technology.
the problem is you think there is or will be a difference
I clearly defined the context. You can argue for things outside of what I defined but then you're not discussing about what I proposed. I can still repeat it in a simpler way at the risk of being condescending : if it's misused, it's bad. If it's used properly for the reason I mention I do believe it's good.
i am arguing what you proposed has not conformed to reality, that the actual result is already seen, and there is no defensive reason to allow inward facing cameras, there is only an additional risk when arguing culpability of an incident. and for that argument of ai helping to keep drivers alert, the full consequence of that thought has already played out as a detriment to truck drivers, with no noticeable gain
So you don't think me witnessing drivers falling asleep at the wheel is sufficient?
no
I do not support creepy driver facing cameras at all (my car has one, I cover it 100% of the time), but in the case of rear ending someone, it's pretty much always your fault regardless of what happened. Maybe not the best example 😅
operating a vehicle runs on the assumption that the cars around you are operated in the realm of sanity. with acceptable human reaction the trained standard is a car distance of 3 seconds back. but that assumption is unblinking focus, which is not true in many cases. if you are preparing for a lane shift your attention is demanded by law elsewhere. break checking, or slamming unnecessarily on the break, does not defer guilt to the victim. the problem is that it’s hard to prove, unless you have a front facing camera which is a defensive measure. there is no defensive measure for an inward facing camera
I'm afraid you're mistaken here.
Outside of brake* checking or other reckless behavior by the lead driver, rear ending someone because you were looking away to check mirrors is generally strong evidence that you failed to maintain a safe following distance given the circumstances. A driver facing camera would support that conclusion rather than absolve you of responsibility.
In the case of someone driving erratically and causing a front end collision, your typical front-facing dashcam would be all you need to prove your innocence.
correct, because a front end can is a defensive measure you add to your car to protect you. an inward facing camera can not ever be for your benefit.
Ah, I thought you were saying you could use the inward camera for the inverse. I misread your initial comment, my apologies.
Yeah, it's like, I'm all for guns existing, I even think every human should get a free assault rifle, because reality is rough and they're very useful.
Just as long as no one ever shoots each other. That should be totally off the table.
No idea what you are talking about. Are you saying a camera is like a gun?