Every new car registered in the European Union as of July 7 must now include a camera pointed at the driver’s face, part of the final phase of the EU’s General Safety Regulation.
The system, called Advanced Driver Distraction Warning, tracks a driver’s gaze, head position, and eye movement to detect when attention has drifted from the road, triggering an alert after 3.5 seconds of distraction at highway speeds or 6 seconds at lower speeds.
The rule has been in place since 2019 and phased in gradually, mandatory for new vehicle types since July 2024, and now mandatory for every newly registered vehicle on the road.
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The system is explicitly barred from identifying who is driving. Under the EU’s own technical requirements, ADDW systems “must function without the use of biometric information, including facial recognition, of any vehicle occupants,” meaning the camera tracks head and eye geometry to gauge attention, not identity.
Images are also required to be processed locally inside the vehicle rather than stored or transmitted externally under normal operation.
Real-world testing by Belgian outlet Gocar found the system can become intrusive in practice, flagging ordinary glances, such as checking a mirror, adjusting the radio, or turning to check on children in the back seat, as distraction.
In the Xpeng P7+ model it tested, the system could be manually disabled but automatically reactivated once it detected “problematic” viewing behavior again, meaning it can’t be permanently switched off. One driver who rented a Ford Puma described a similar experience on Reddit, saying the warnings escalated from an amber light to a red one with a loud alert within 20 minutes of driving, calling it “incredibly distracting.”
The regulation also leaves a real gap. Footage must stay local to the vehicle under normal operation, but neither the EU nor automakers have specified what happens to that data if it’s ever accessed for insurance, law enforcement, or manufacturer diagnostics.
New vehicles must also include an Event Data Recorder under a separate GSR requirement, a black box that captures speed, braking, and steering inputs in the event of a crash, distinct from ADDW but part of the same broader shift toward vehicles that continuously log driver behavior.
Industry, meanwhile, has welcomed the mandate as a long-sought safety milestone. Smart Eye, a Swedish driver-monitoring technology company whose systems are now required across the bloc, said the rule covers an estimated 15 million vehicles a year.
“July 7 is a landmark day for road safety in Europe,” said CEO Martin Krantz.
The European Commission has cited its own estimate that driver distraction contributes to 10% to 30% of road crashes. It projects the broader GSR package will save more than 25,000 lives and prevent at least 140,000 serious injuries by 2038.
