EU Mandates In-Car Driver-Facing Cameras on All New Vehicles Under Final Phase of Safety Rules

What the Rule Requires

The final phase of the EU's updated General Safety Regulation, known as GSR 2, took effect July 7, 2026. From that date forward, every brand-new passenger car, van, truck, and bus sold or first registered in the EU must be equipped with an Advanced Driver Distraction Warning (ADDW) system, according to the European Commission's own public communications.

ADDW uses interior-facing cameras to monitor eye position, head orientation, and gaze direction. The system activates at low speeds and applies stricter thresholds as the vehicle goes faster. At speeds of 50 km/h or above, a continuous gaze into the "distraction" zone for more than 3.5 seconds triggers a warning. At 20 km/h or higher, the threshold stretches to 6 seconds before intervention begins. If the driver looks away from the road too long, the system issues escalating warnings: visual, acoustic, or haptic, depending on the severity.

The European Commission promoted the rollout on July 5, alongside a package of other safety measures: upgraded automatic emergency braking that detects pedestrians and cyclists, improved forward visibility standards, new worn-tyre tests, and expanded safety glass coverage to better protect pedestrians in accidents.

The Safety Case

Distracted driving is a documented killer. The European Commission and road-safety advocates argue that drowsiness and inattention cause a significant share of serious crashes, and that real-time feedback can interrupt a driver before a lapse becomes a fatality. From a pure road-safety standpoint, the argument has merit. Lane-departure warnings and automatic emergency braking have measurable track records. Monitoring attention is a logical next step in that technical lineage.

Martin Krantz, CEO and Founder of Smart Eye, a company specializing in driver-monitoring technology, called July 7 "a landmark day for road safety in Europe" and stated that "driver monitoring is now a required part of vehicle safety across Europe." He added that the regulation "will set a precedent for other parts of the world."

The Privacy Concern, Stated Fairly

Critics are not simply being paranoid. The concern is specific: the EU is mandating that a camera capturing real-time facial and gaze data be physically installed in every new vehicle on the continent. The regulation governs what that system must do today. It does not permanently foreclose what the hardware could be used for tomorrow.

Once the infrastructure exists across vehicles throughout the continent, the barrier to expanded use by governments, insurers, fleet operators, or law enforcement with legal access drops dramatically. The technical capability to record, store, or transmit that data would already be present. Critics, including commentators flagged by the Visegrád 24 account on July 7, argue that the transition from "safety warning" to "behavioral monitoring" requires only a software update or a regulatory amendment, not a new hardware mandate.

The concern here is about infrastructure. Once built, it can be repurposed. This does not require assuming current EU officials have malicious intent, only that systems designed for one purpose can be reused for another.

What the Current Rule Actually Says

Based on available public documentation, ADDW as mandated is a warning system, not a recording or transmission system. Current rules state the distraction cameras must operate without biometric identification or facial recognition of occupants and must function as a closed-loop system that retains only data necessary for immediate operation. No video is supposed to leave the vehicle for authorities under the present framework.

A camera that processes gaze data locally and triggers a beep is meaningfully different from a surveillance feed. Whether those prohibitions are enforceable across member states and vehicle manufacturers is a specific legal question the source material does not fully resolve.

The regulation also mandates an Event Data Recorder — essentially a vehicle black box — that captures speed, braking, steering inputs, and other telemetry in the event of a collision.

Scope

This applies to all new registrations across the EU. It covers passenger cars, vans, trucks, and buses. The transitional rollout period that allowed manufacturers to phase in compliance has ended. Vehicles already on the road are not retroactively required to be retrofitted.

The UK, which left the EU, is not automatically bound by GSR 2, though UK vehicle safety standards have historically tracked EU requirements closely, and manufacturers producing for both markets often use common platforms.

The Unresolved Question

The European Commission has not published a clear, binding statement on whether ADDW camera hardware may be used for any purpose beyond the distraction-warning function, or what data-minimization requirements apply to the raw sensor output. Until the EU's implementing regulations and any accompanying data-protection guidance explicitly address secondary use, the gap between "it's just a safety alert" and "it's a camera in every car" remains technically real, even if currently a concern rather than a confirmed practice.

Software updates, regulatory expansions, or integration with digital identity systems could, critics argue, transform today's "warning only" cameras into tomorrow's behavior scorers, usage trackers, or remote intervention tools. Regulators insist the current mandate is limited to safety alerts. The hardware installed to fulfill that mandate is not so limited by nature.