It’s an EU decision. It will be coming to many more cars as it will be mandatory from July 2026 for all newly registered vehicles. Renault 5 is simply one of the first new cars to feature it.

According to the same law, it is illegal to use the system in a way that can identify the person, it may not save biometrics, and it must function in closed loop without sharing the data. It’s looking for things like head nodding or looking away from the road for more than 3.5 seconds while driving over 50 km/h. The camera is likely using infrared lighting as it should also work at night.

Anyway. According to the manual, it can be disabled by double tapping a button on the steering wheel or through the touch screen menus, though it will default to being enabled everytime you start the car as per the legal requirement.

If you cover it with tape, wear a mask or drive somebody else’s car in which you don’t have a profile saved, it will simply use the last previous profile and show an icon in the dashboard as a warning that the function isn’t working.

• Camera
• Internet connectivity
• Proprietary software

No device should have more than two of these things.

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

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.

As an insider of the automotive industry I can say:

• these devices are added due to regulations
• Yes. It is creepy
• functionality is computed and performed onboard the car, it doesn’t rely on any connection to the outside to function
• however, it could very well be sending data back to the mothership. They are legally obligated to get your explicit consent as per GDPR law
• the software is completely closed-source and there is no chance we get any information about it. It’s all private intellectual property. Actually, the Car manufacturers (in this case Renault) almost always requires all suppliers of such equipment to ensure there is ZERO Open-source code in the delivered product. Suppliers are audited to prove they have not reused any Open-source code, piece of code or libraries.

It will be used against you at every opportunity.

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.

Destroy the camera bro

Loyal Moses has a vid on these cameras re Ford patenting tech that won’t let you start the car if your mood is deemed incompatible with driving.

Whatever the case re drive ability, 100% your insurance company will have this data.

Does the car stop complaining if you cover it or is it a constant ear assault? Can you start the car if it’s covered? Is there a workaround to disable it?

ETA: what’s weird is that your parents aren’t aware that most people cover laptop cameras. I’m parent aged, and I do. Many laptops come equipped with a slider device to cover it.

This car also comes with a ChatGPT based AI assistant which has a cursed Microsoft’s Clippy vibe, so it watches, listens to everything. Why would anybody want that?

Required in the EU and will be required in the US soon. BYD’s big export market is Australia which doesn’t require them yet but they’re mandatory to get a good crash safety rating.

Renault and a lot of BYDs use Android as the software os, so probably it’s Android doing the facial recognition (and also probably the attention eye tracking) and that’s onboard.

Renault has a dashcam function that records from the built in cameras, but you have to plug in your own USB drive, so the upside of memory price-fixing is it’s probably not worth it for Renault to spend $300 to store the data now.

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.

It’s creepy even if it has a legitimate purpose. There’s a move to make this kind of tech mandatory in all cars, with the purported aim of stopping drunk driving. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/federal-surveillance-tech-becomes-mandatory-161321992.html

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.

Fatigue detection is a real thing that doesn’t use the type of AI that people think of when they hear that word today most often. It’s not language based but instead it’s able to recognize faces and posture, tell where your attention is focused, and recognize signs of fatigue like head drop, eyes closing, and attention drifting from the road.
It, along with other attention based driver safety features, are real and effective and can be done on device with a computer with less power than a modern cellphone.

It is, however, at least a little creepy. It’s made a lot more so by it not being disclosed upfront with disclosures and full user awareness. It should be explained by both the website, the car manual, the salesperson and the car itself exactly what it’s doing and where any video data is being sent. It’s probably processing the video locally and at most sending telemetry about which driver just sat down and such, but 1) you might not want that 2) unless they actually tell you that you don’t know.

It’s not paranoia to want an explanation and appropriate assurances, or for it to be in your control. You don’t need to assume it’s the worst case for that to be true. It’s probably a real safety feature with a couple of quality of life features taped on so people can see it do something, since you don’t really see a passive safety feature. But without actual communication you don’t actually know that.