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.
Sorry that happened to you, that’s genuinely terrible.
That said, I think you should be angry at the cost of medicine and medical care rather than being angry at all poor people because one acted terribly. We should do everything we can to prevent people from being hit by cars, but I don’t think exploiting poor people for needing to get from one location to another is going to help lower incidence of pedestrian collisions. In my personal experience it’s usually the wealthier cars who drive more recklessly, but there’s certainly no mechanistic relation between being poor and being a bad driver. The poors aren’t inherently less capable of driving. (Unless, you know of a way to get insurance for free…)
Just buy a new car. If your car repairs costs more than a year of my rent you need a cheaper car - or a better mechanic. I’m very sympathetic to people hit by cars - I think that’s terrible. I’m not at all sympathetic to rich (or “middle class”) people complaining about damage to their $100k+ vehicles. You can buy an used electric fleet van for ~$40k, and that’s just about as fancy as you could practically need. Anything beyond that is a show of status (many things below that are still a show of status), and I’d rather not pay a second tax to an oligarch so people with more money than sense can show off how much money they can waste.
Maybe 16 wheelers should have insurance, but it’s exploitation of the poor elsewhere.