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.
You must log in or # to comment.
I’d sell the car.
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.
And they don’t pester you if you cover the camera either, and you have more control on whether they’re online too.
Wdym the car complains about it?
This feature is mandatory in all new cars sold in the European Union since 2024
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.
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.
It’s absolutely creepy.
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.
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.
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.
The car potentially can refuse to run because can validate that the driver is not impaired to drive.
That’s not the car’s responsibility
the locations of the cameras are no published and you’re likely to miss at least one.
For that we still have the Internet. Better nerds than I will find out for each car model where each last camera is located
yes, thankfully; but only for now and even then, they permanently have the advantage in this cat-and-mouse game.
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.
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.
Not sure if autocorrect or boneappletea but *Overton Window.
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.
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.
That’s interesting. OP implied they can’t be disabled but now I see it was specifically hardware vise.
Does the car still complain if the camera is covered when these are disabled?
I just put electrical tape on the IR sensors. This reminds me of
I’m guessing there’s a microphone as well? Most cars have then now.
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.
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
CARINT is becoming a thing as well (car intelligence), next to the ore existing disciples if HUMINT, SIGINT etc.
And my own government is the least of my worries. Between CRINK, fallen allies, and megacorps.
