Car Manufacturers Want To Monitor Drivers Inside Their Cars (reuters.com) 218
Startups are demonstrating "sensor technology that watches and analyzes drivers, passengers and objects in cars" reports Reuters -- a technology that "will mean enhanced safety in the short-term, and revenue opportunities in the future."
SonicSpike shares their report: Whether by generating alerts about drowsiness, unfastened seat belts or wallets left in the backseat, the emerging technology aims not only to cut back on distracted driving and other undesirable behavior, but eventually help automakers and ride-hailing companies make money from data generated inside the vehicle... Data from the cameras is analyzed with image recognition software to determine whether a driver is looking at his cellphone or the dashboard, turned away, or getting sleepy, to cite a few examples... European car safety rating program Euro NCAP has proposed that cars with driver monitoring for 2020 should earn higher ratings...
But automakers are more excited by the revenue possibilities when vehicle-generated data creates a more customized experience for riders, generating higher premiums, and lucrative tie-ins with third parties, such as retailers. "The reason (the camera) is going to sweep across the cabin is not because of distraction ... but because of all the side benefits," said Mike Ramsey, Gartner's automotive research director. "I promise you that companies that are trying to monetize data from the connected car are investigating ways to use eye-tracking technology...." Carmakers could gather anonymized data and sell it. A billboard advertiser might be eager to know how many commuters look at his sign, Ramsey said. Tracking the gaze of a passenger toward a store or restaurant could, fused with mapping and other software, result in a discount offered to that person.
The Cadillac CT6 already has interior-facing cameras, Reuters reports, while Audi and Tesla "have developed systems but they are not currently activated." And this year Mazda, Subaru and Byton plan to introduce cameras that watch for inattentive drivers.
But where will it end? One company's product combines five 2D cameras with AI technology to provide "in-vehicle scene understanding" which includes each passenger's height, weight, gender and posture. And while low on specifics, Reuters reports that several companies that sell driver-watching technologies "have already signed undisclosed deals for production year 2020 and beyond."
SonicSpike shares their report: Whether by generating alerts about drowsiness, unfastened seat belts or wallets left in the backseat, the emerging technology aims not only to cut back on distracted driving and other undesirable behavior, but eventually help automakers and ride-hailing companies make money from data generated inside the vehicle... Data from the cameras is analyzed with image recognition software to determine whether a driver is looking at his cellphone or the dashboard, turned away, or getting sleepy, to cite a few examples... European car safety rating program Euro NCAP has proposed that cars with driver monitoring for 2020 should earn higher ratings...
But automakers are more excited by the revenue possibilities when vehicle-generated data creates a more customized experience for riders, generating higher premiums, and lucrative tie-ins with third parties, such as retailers. "The reason (the camera) is going to sweep across the cabin is not because of distraction ... but because of all the side benefits," said Mike Ramsey, Gartner's automotive research director. "I promise you that companies that are trying to monetize data from the connected car are investigating ways to use eye-tracking technology...." Carmakers could gather anonymized data and sell it. A billboard advertiser might be eager to know how many commuters look at his sign, Ramsey said. Tracking the gaze of a passenger toward a store or restaurant could, fused with mapping and other software, result in a discount offered to that person.
The Cadillac CT6 already has interior-facing cameras, Reuters reports, while Audi and Tesla "have developed systems but they are not currently activated." And this year Mazda, Subaru and Byton plan to introduce cameras that watch for inattentive drivers.
But where will it end? One company's product combines five 2D cameras with AI technology to provide "in-vehicle scene understanding" which includes each passenger's height, weight, gender and posture. And while low on specifics, Reuters reports that several companies that sell driver-watching technologies "have already signed undisclosed deals for production year 2020 and beyond."
No One Has Respect For Consumers (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck you. I can't wait to see the industry that pops up having to protect us from THE SHIT WE OWN!
Re:No One Has Respect For Consumers (Score:5, Insightful)
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They just want their cake and to steal our ice cream.
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Today - Normal car €25,000
Tomorrow - Car with Spyware €24,000, Car without Spyware €30,000 and a double insurance premium.
I'm not against this sort of technology on principal grounds, but what scares me is that we'll end up in a situation where we will have no choice but to have them invade our privacy, either because all products do it or they make the non spying ones prohibitively expensive. I'd be in favour of beefing up the GDPR a little, so that any dat
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"The solution is simple - create 3D printers large, fast & sophisticated enough to let a few hundred consumers band together and create their own mini-car-manufacturing plant"
OK. Let's forget for a moment how astoundingly stupid your idea is and let's imagine that it works.
There: here's the car, at the factory's door. Now, what? You don't expect to put it on a public road, right? Where's the crash safeness approval for it? and the anti-pollution one? and the other few dozens you will need?
What the in
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"So you think a large 3D printer capable of printing a fully functioning state-of-the-art production car in 20 minutes is completely out of reach? Not technically possible?"
It's certainly not technically possible, neither now, nor in ten years. And even if it were technically possible, it would be financially stupid.
But the real problem is not that 3D printing a car is not technically possible, but that it is irrelevant: the key is not *how* a car is built but *who* does build the car. You can build a (kit
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Your personal info is probably only worth about $250, unless you're wealthy, so the only $100 car you're getting is a Power Wheels model.
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Re:No One Has Respect For Consumers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No One Has Respect For Consumers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No One Has Respect For Consumers (Score:4, Interesting)
>"Unfettered capitalism and Soviet-style Communism are just two sides of the same authoritarian coin."
You don't need to imagine extremes to describe the existing and ever-growing nanny state we have RIGHT NOW that tells us what we can put in our bodies, that we have to wear seat belts, that we must have 1,000 restrictions on Constitutional rights, what words we are allowed to say, that we aren't allowed to use plastic straws, etc.
I am certainly not in favor of anarchy, but there is a line we crossed, sometime, a long time ago. And each generation is more than willing to allow more government intrusion into their lives for "safety" or "convenience". Generation after generation, it is rapidly adding up. My great, great grandparents would be utterly shocked what the "land of the free" has become, especially people's lack of responsibility for their own actions and lack of respect for one another.
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I see your point, but I also see that you're throwing out some false equivalences.
Having restaurants not give out straws unless a patron asks for one is good policy -- no one is losing anything, and straws that people don't use don't end up polluting the environment.
It's a real reach to compare such a policy with cameras inside homes and cars.
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A good nanny state doesn't prevent what you put in your body, but instead stops companies from selling you poison while labeling it as food. This is what starts nanny states, cracking down on crackpot devices that hurt, maim, or even kill customers. Why do we test cosmetics on animals? Because in the past cosmetic products could be dangerous, and people used them because there was no indication that they were dangerous, and there would be several people hospitalized before there was enough public pressur
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"You're not wrong. There has been for quite some time now a quiet movement by The Rich to put barriers in the way of everyone who is not The Rich from [becoming The Rich]"
What a surprise!!!
You know, they call it "capitalism" for a reason: capital is the goal and capital is the way to make it happen, so those that control the capital use the capital to make more capital and avoid others to get to the capital (as capital ownership is a relative measure: if everybody had a million, nobody would be millionaire)
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FORCED RENTALS = dealer only service so that will (Score:2)
FORCED RENTALS = dealer only service so that will not be very likely.
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I would say that "subscription autos" is closer than people think. M2M IoT is dirt cheap via 3G SIM cards. It is trivial to create a system where the vehicle sends a data stream and on occasion gets a signed certificate to continue operating. If that cert expires, the vehicle won't start, and perhaps the doors will not open from the inside until the user pays the subscription fee.
This can be done by forcing people to purchase the car, but the license for the ECM/TCM firmware be something that has to be l
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The autos will be cloud based in the future!
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The market is merely delivering what consumers want. You and I may not like that, but that doesn’t mean that market forces aren’t working. I just hope there are en
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You're confusing the free market with capitalism. The free market is about competition whereas capitalism is about getting rid of competition. The goal of the capitalist is to use his capital to have a monopoly on the world. Pragmatically the capitalist realizes they do have to share with a few other capitalists.
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That's the problem. Every bigwig views constant and invasive data collection as a money source. Standing in the way of that would be like a software company not charging for service contracts... it just wouldn't be done, because no CxO doesn't want to deny themselves, and their VCs the revenue stream.
I have worked on a startup. VCs will refuse to do business with you unless you can provide them with unstoppable analytics. With the fact that M2M cellular is dirt cheap, having a device to provide this inf
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Or they think "ooh, this app is free!", or "wow, I can use an expensive ride sharing service just by tapping a screen!", or "the food hear looks and smells good, but I have to look at Yelp first before I go inside", and so forth.
I mentioned to a coworker that I use ad blockers. He thought it was stupid, and even said that he *wanted* to see ads because that way he knows what new products are out there. Which was pretty dumb, there are so many other ways to know what new products are out there without a ba
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I've had people ask me why their Spotify or some online thing doesn't work "when the internet is down".
The collective dumbing-down of consumers has been a boon for business though. People who actually think are the ones who are getting ignored and insulted by everyone else.
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You sell us a car and spy on us to make money? Fuck you. I can't wait to see the industry that pops up having to protect us from THE SHIT WE OWN!
(Circa today) There will still be no such industry. You have to have demand for privacy, and that is obviously evaporating quickly from society based on the products being shoved down our throats. The 0.01% of us who still give a shit about privacy don't stand a chance. Ownership is dying.
(Circa 2035) Automated cars are now everywhere. Human-powered cars have been regulated off the roads due to safety concerns and liability of a human behind the wheel. All car maintenance is now strictly regulated and
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I can't wait to see the industry that pops up having to protect us from THE SHIT WE OWN!
Electrical tape already exists.
Consumers have no respect for themselves (Score:2)
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You sell us a car and spy on us to make money?
Fuck you. I can't wait to see the industry that pops up having to protect us from THE SHIT WE OWN!
It’s particularly annoying because a camera which monitors a driver for alertness could be a useful addition to a car... if all the information it collected stayed in the car. But no, even after we’ve given them tens of thousands of dollars, they still want to treat us like chattel.
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I understand that these companies want to make more money, but at this point it's just creepy that they are so open about their desire to extract more money from customers. This would seem to be something that normally they'd be quiet about because could scare away customers and definitely be alarming. But I think so many people now just don't care anymore, and so many who actively want to share data with strangers, that these companies can get away with divulging their evil plans in public.
Time for every
Highly advanced image recognition indeed (Score:4, Interesting)
But where will it end? One company's product combines five 2D cameras with AI technology to provide "in-vehicle scene understanding" which includes each passenger's height, weight, gender and posture.
How exactly will they "understand" the gender of the passenger? Check for pink hair and Tumblr stickers?
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What you should have said is 3-D processing, through multiple 2-D cameras. They're talking about more than two cameras, and fixed camera locations, but mobile passenger positions.
P.S.: There *are* 3-D cameras that could be used. They used (last I read about them) internal mirrors and beam splitters to pick up the details of the wave forms received. They were too expensive for reasonable use. Multiple 2-D cameras are a lot cheaper.
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I think you're still talking about paired 2-D cameras. The ones I'm talking about only use one lens (or none) and don't focus an image. They select raw wave forms and compute the 3-D object that the waves originate from. You can think of it as a dynamically simulated surface or lenses, though it's more like a reverse hologram computation. At the time I encountered the description of the device I don't think you could have gotten one for $100,000.
OTOH, eventually this should be a cheap way to capture ima
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How exactly will they "understand" the gender of the passenger? Check for pink hair and Tumblr stickers?
Well, with me, they will see me doing a line of coke off the dashboard, while drinking some gulps from a bottle of Jack to take the edge off the coke, while fingering my girlfriend next to me, while listening extremely loud to:
My pappy said, "Son, you're gonna' drive me to drinkin' If you don't stop drivin' that Hot Rod Lincoln."
So I guess I won't care, if they can "understand" my gender . . .
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How exactly will they "understand" the gender of the passenger? Check for pink hair and Tumblr stickers?
How do you do it? Or do you walk through the city taking DNA swabs of everyone to get a biological opinion?
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Probably the same way you do - by looking at them and seeing how they present themselves. It's inexact but this is marketing, most of it is a wild stab in the dark.
Aaaand The Carmakers Finally Went Crazy Too... (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:Aaaand The Carmakers Finally Went Crazy Too... (Score:5, Informative)
Call me when you figure out how to make a high-speed crash survivable
Current cars are vastly better at that than their counterparts from 1984. Airbags. Finite element analysis to inform a crash structure that uses 10 types of steel in the same monocoque, making sure a car crumples in just the right way to minimize deceleration for the occupants. ABS, ESP and dozens of other safety systems. 30 years of advances in tires.
At a cost of a few hundred kg in extra weight, modern cars have made crashes survivable that were absolutely fatal in a 1984 vehicle.
solve the aquaplaning problem
ABS, ESP, vastly improved tire technology have done most of that. All that remains is a boxing glove that comes out of the dashboard to punch the driver in the face when he insists on keeping his foot down in torrential rain.
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All that remains is a boxing glove that comes out of the dashboard to punch the driver in the face when he insists on keeping his foot down in torrential rain.
If it can be triggered by a plurality of the other drivers in his immediate vicinity, all the better.
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Problem is that a "twitchy" car is more likely to run off the road if a driver is startled. Joysticks excel at FAST control, steering wheels work well for FINE control, which is what's needed when you're driving close to other vehicles and pedestrians.
Also, a wheel provides enough leverage to steer manually if the power assist system fails.
"If it ain't Boeing, I'm not going!" :D
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Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road? (Score:3)
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"Orwell cars" is a good first try, but it doesn't have the reflex reaction that you get from "Glassholes". You need something tied into the reflex aversion to fecal material..or something equally reflexive.
(Also, unfortunately, those within the car are shielded from the reaction of those outside the car. So the term might need to be even more powerful. Something that would cause those who used the car to despise themselves for the action.)
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Call them Pornmobiles. After all, they'll be recording and transmitting backseat teenage sex, infant diaper changes, swinsuit changes, etc.
Authoritarians & Capitalists (Score:2)
just drive safely (Score:2)
Four little letters... (Score:3)
G.D.P.R.
Wait for it... (Score:2)
Spray paint ... (Score:2)
... is one option.
Still-framing is another.
How about hacking?
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EAT SHIT AND DIE, 'STARTUPS'! (Score:2, Interesting)
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Interior-facing cameras (Score:2)
Conflict of interest (Score:2)
enhanced safety in the short-term, and revenue opportunities in the future
Only one of those is something manufacturers genuinely care about. The other one had to be imposed on them by governments.
Re: But where will it end? (Score:2)
I predict that there will a healthy aftermarket for ways to defeat/disable these cameras. For DIYers, there's a piece--or pieces--of duct tape.
I'll probably be in the market for a new car in a few years and I will greatly enjoy explaining to the salescritter what a dumbass idea it is for the car I'm paying huge $$$ for to be spying on me so that they can sell data to third parties. And I'll be sure to point out that if they want to make this an optional feature--er, so sorry... they're not called "optional
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Peopel will continue to give up on privacy (Score:2)
There are so many attacks on privacy that the public can't resist them all. Its easy to suggest that people not purchase products that spy on them, but when it becomes common for an entire industry (cell phones, TVs, etc), eventually the consumers just give up.
I think we are heading toward 24/7 surveillance that is almost impossible to avoid. That date will then be sold to the highest bidder - or hacked. Companies will use machine learning to look for marketing opportunities. Governments will do the sa
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>"But where will it end?"
When consumers, like me, put black electric tape over the camera lenses. Of course, then expect that the car will "fail to start" or issue never-ending nag messages. Sometimes the future looks depressing.
No. Just...no (Score:2)
You would have to be fucking insane to allow corporations to get away with monitoring you in your car. Or your house.
Anybody who voluntarily allows this kind of invasion of privacy is an idiot. And they deserve a good, hard kick to the crotch, because their acceptance will make it easier to force those of us with some common sense and dignity into choosing between being monitored or not driving. Sometimes there really IS a slippery slope.
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I agree, but no doubt they will sell this as some kind of safety feature so all the soccer moms will be all over it.
I'm hopeful (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, you read correctly. I'm hopeful.
See, there is a level where even the masses start to say "do not want". Placebo as it may be, look around and you'll see plenty of people putting tape over their laptop webcams. Amazon's "we can give delivery men the ability to open your door, which is totally safe because of the camera that goes along with it" initiative is one I have yet to meet literally anybody who said "I want that". I think "multiple cameras in my car, uploading video in realtime" might have a niche in Uber vehicles or driverless cars (keeps drivers safe and passengers accountable), but I think even the Alexa-owning masses will say "too far".
More to the point, I don't see how this technology won't pit the advertisers against the insurance companies. The crux of the issue hinges on what is truly meant by "revenue opportunities". How will these systems generate revenue? Consumers won't pay for the video footage. Law enforcement agencies won't pay for access proactively, especially because it would simply ensure none of their actual-suspects use those cars. Image or video ads are a guaranteed way to distract the driver (insurance companies will never allow it). Audio ads won't be okay; if nothing else ClearChannel won't want the competition. City planners won't pay for it; they can get that sort of aggregate data from Google Maps or those statistical boxes.
My point is that there is a point where even John Q. Public is going to care. Alexa provides entertainment and utility, smartphones the same, but a whole system dedicated to post-sale monetization while providing no utility to customers that Android Auto or the Apple equivalent can't also provide? Yeah, I think that even those people are going to have an uphill battle.
Nothing a little black tape can't fix (Score:2)
This will be put in only one model-year of car ... (Score:3)
... because people like me will go from dealer to dealer, saying that in-car espionage is a deal breaker for my purchase of a new car.
It happened with those motorized seat belts. It will happen with this.
Hammer and nail (Score:2)
Use those and your car will be private again. Fuck these guys. I donâ(TM)t text or drink and drive. I donâ(TM)t want them videoing me picking my nose or singing to the radio.
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Any company that mas this system in their cars is one I will NOT buy from.
You probably had the same mentality about removable batteries in smartphones. Look what happened.
Resistance, is useless. People don't give a shit about privacy anymore, and industry is gonna continue to rape that mentality in any way they can, especially if there's profits to be wrung out.
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Re:Musk Selling Your Info (Score:2)
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unh,,, To *claim* to disable the sensors.
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Hell, my '73 Vega howled like a banshee if I put a stack of textbooks on the passenger seat on the way to class. I had to fasten the seat belt around them to shut the warning off. No effin' video camera needed.
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