[awakeasleep]

Ford has had that since Blue Cruise 2.0, or thereabouts. It really shocked me how often it catches my attention being diverted. Things like talking to my passengers, adjusting the climate controls, or eating- I'm not even talking about 'advanced distractions' like my phone.

It also seemed really accurate. I never remember it beeping at me when I was actually paying attention.

It's totally plausible to me that this kind of nudge will save a lot of lives.

[Dries007]

My experience with my Volvo EX30 has been the complete opposite. Although the false positives have gone down with software updates, it's still wrong so often I turn it off every time it bothers me. Due to some other regulation, this setting is unfortunately not remembered. That means every time I get in the car, I have to spend time going trough the settings to disable it, often while already driving. Seems like a great idea.

The biggest false positives involve singing or talking being mis-interpreted for yawning. Which then triggers a notification and a noise telling me "maybe it's time for a beak", which makes me look at the screen in the center console, which then triggers a second notification telling me to "please look at the road".

Great system over all. 10/10 no notes.

[borosuxks]

I'm not sure it's actual regulations, but the Euro NCAP safety tests requiring all these "features" (like not remembering when you turn them off) to get a max score.

And who doesn't want the safest car?

[hparadiz]

People that have a perfect driving record.

[mint5]

Everyone starts with a perfect driving record until one day it’s not perfect.

[DaSHacka]

And annoying beeps and chimes that distract you from the road get you closer to that

[calvinmorrison]

how much have cars safety improved in terms of crashes, airbags, etc, versus the robot will stop the crash?

[aenis]

Impossible to measure, many other uncontrolled variables - esp. significant improvements to infrastructure in Europe, and regulations. Take NL, where a crash involving a pedestrian or a cyclist effectively forces the driver to prove their innocence. I can walk across a Dutch town blindfolded with the biggest risk to my wellbeing being cyclists (well, and the canals). I'd guess the impact of those intervention dwarfs the "i will beep at you until i make you deaf if you don't put your seatbelt over your grocery bag" innovations.

[teki_one]

I grew up in/with cars which would score 0 (more like -3 to -5) and made it to adulthood, so I have a feeling that these features are not strictly neccesary.

At the same time what if it saves at least one life a year? (same goes for riding with/without helmets)

[aucisson_masque]

My father grew up drinking a ton of alcohol and smoking, like his friends. Many of them are dead.

By your logic, we should keep drinking and smoking.

[bigstrat2003]

Everyone dies eventually, so that means very little by itself. Did they die young? How much younger than their peers? Did they gain enough enjoyment from drinking and smoking to offset the fewer years of life (subjective, of course, but important to consider)?

Every intervention has a cost. Not all results will be worth the cost we pay for them. I think we are well past the point in Western society where we are giving up too much in order for too small a return, personally. With cars, but also just in general, people have lost the ability to do cost-benefit analysis and act as though every safety improvement is an unalloyed good. But they aren't, and I think that this thinking is making all of our lives significantly worse.

[AuthAuth]

Given that its society that invests in them during development and has to pick them up when they're broken its only fair to also nudge towards a preemptive solution. The economics of people dying needlessly in their 20s is worth the intervention.

[slopinthebag]

We should ban driving by your logic?

[gogusrl]

I also have an EX30 and while I have many many MANY complaints about this car, driver monitoring isn't one of them.

Also disabling this feature is only 2 taps (because EU says it can't be only one tap), Settings -> toggle Driver Monitoring.

[decryption]

I have an EX30 in Australia and it's been excellent in regards to its driver attention system. Never had any false alerts. If anything it's not accurate enough as when I look away it sometimes doesn't warn me! Crazy how we can have such different experiences in the same vehicle, presumably with the same software.

[bigstrat2003]

My wife's Volvo XC40 Recharge is the first Volvo we've ever had, and it's certainly the last I'll ever have (can't speak for her). The software is so flaky. The map screen on the dash doesn't load sometimes, the side mirrors don't tilt down (which they are set to do) when reversing half the time, and every so often the sound completely stops working in the car without a hard reboot of the info system. To make matters worse, it turns out that car operation signals (like turn signal clicks) play through the stereo, so when that happens you are driving without important audio cues because they were too damn cheap to put electronic clickers in the dash.

It's probably the worst car I've ever owned, worse even than cars I got for way cheaper than the $50-60k they wanted for this thing. Never again, fuck Volvo.

[senordevnyc]

Sounds about right for Volvo, sadly. I’ve owned four over the years, all great, but my most recent one has such dogshit software that I’ll never buy another Volvo.

[aucisson_masque]

Is that the regulation that is bad or the way the manufacturer implemented it ?

I think your comment and the one you were answering to explain it very well.

Don't buy car that sucks.

[cellular]

What happens if you wear sunglasses?

[Dries007]

Normal sunglasses it sees trough, but if you somehow block it, you can't enable some features anymore (pilot assist).

That was different in the early sw versions, where blocking it would simply do nothing, so I had a 3D printed thing to block the camera.

[joenot443]

> It's totally plausible to me that this kind of nudge will save a lot of lives.

I think an in-car breathalyzer which gates the ignition would also save a lot of lives.

Most people agree that kind of manufactured paternalism is an overreach and would be against its introduction. Other people say the same about the diverted driving detector, and I imagine others said the same about the seatbelt sensor.

The intersection of personal freedom and personal safety is an interesting topic, I don't think there's a right answer and it's ultimately pretty subjective.

[throw2ih020]

> I think an in-car breathalyzer which gates the ignition would also save a lot of lives.

> Most people agree that kind of manufactured paternalism is an overreach and would be against its introduction.

Congress already passed a law in 2021 to start the process of requiring alcohol impairment detection in new cars around 2030 - the HALT Drunk Driving Act. It had broad, bipartisan support. I would say "most people agree" does not appear to be the case.

[hparadiz]

I have a hard time believing that the public at large is gonna be okay with having to blow into a hose anytime they turn on their cars.

[throw2ih020]

No need. There are now sensors which can passively detect the presence of alcohol on anyone's breath within the cabin, and sensors which can detect BAC when you put your finger on them.

    if alcohol_detected_in_cabin:
        promptDriverForFingerprint()

The same cameras used to monitor if the driver is falling asleep can also check for cheating.

[hparadiz]

That's nice. You can pay for it. I won't be.

[throw2ih020]

I hardly drive anymore since COVID, I'll gain the benefit of being less likely to be killed on my bike and not have to pay a dime :)

[awakeasleep]

The law only specifies the outcome (alcohol detection) not the implementation (hose blowing)

[ShinyLeftPad]

Maybe transdermal alcohol monitor could be put on the wheel

[joenot443]

I didn’t realize this!

I’d love to see an opinion poll on the topic, I imagine people’s opinions are going to change depending on the implementation.

If the pitch is “you won’t even notice it unless you’re drunk” then I’d imagine you’re right, and maybe people are more receptive than I thought.

[Gigachad]

It only sounds like overreach because we have become numb to an incredible amount of killing from distracted drivers.

[oalae5niMiel7qu]

What we've become numb to is the massive amount of overreach that has already happened.

[mattrighetti]

Did a quick research and saw that in 2024 there were around 12k deaths in which one or more drunk drivers were involved. Doesn’t seem like much for a country with around 350 million people. In comparison, drug causes 7x those deaths. Cancer and heart diseases even more.

[Klathmon]

I feel like we have the technology to prevent a car from starting if the driver is significantly impared, but "solving" addiction, cancer, and heart disease are much harder problems.

Obviously it would need to be implemented carefully, but I personally would be more than fine blowing into a tube to start my car if it meant saving 12k lives a year with a very low false positive rate.

That being said I know it would never be implemented in a sane way in the US, and you would probably have situations like your car insurance automatically increasing due to a faulty sensor, so I'm ultimately against it unless a lot of other stuff changes.

But it's still much more possible than "preventing drug addiction"

[mattrighetti]

> Obviously it would need to be implemented carefully, but I personally would be more than fine blowing into a tube to start my car if it meant saving 12k lives a year with a very low false positive rate.

I can already see two issues with these devices:

- They can’t reliably identify the actual driver. Criminals might simply ask someone else to blow into the device.

- With every car equipped with this safety feature, people might assume everyone driving isn’t drunk.

I’m not sure. It seems like this will only add extra hassle for law-abiding citizens while those for whom it was designed will likely find workarounds.

[zeratax]

i think of those 12k only a tiny minority would go that far. like at the point you are involving other people, why not just ask them to drive you home? like yea people will always find workarounds, but a solution doesnt have to be perfect to be effective.

[ryantgtg]

Every car safety post on HN has "guy who thinks 12k deaths is maybe not too bad." Thanks, guy! You really put things in perspective there.

[ShinyLeftPad]

Guy probably doesn't personally know any of those 12k...

[mattrighetti]

I was simply suggesting that perhaps this level of overreach isn’t justified. Of course, any road death is regrettable.

[ryantgtg]

Most every road death is the outcome of a poor decision made by a human. It's too much responsibility for many people, given the propensity to make choices that increase the chance of death and serious injury to others.

[ajnin]

12k is obviously a large number of preventable deaths, especially, and it's a huge difference with diseases, when you consider that some of those deaths are people getting killed by drunk drivers. I don't think there is any acceptable number of people that did absolutely nothing wrong getting killed by a drunk or inattentive driver.

[oalae5niMiel7qu]

If you simply lock everyone up for their whole lives, you can prevent all kinds of deadly accidents. Eventually, somebody will argue that we are all morally obliged to accept being locked up for this reason.

[basisword]

I'm sure if you were one of those 12k your loved ones wouldn't be saying "what's 12k in a country of 350m?".

[Gigachad]

That's already a huge number. But it's ignoring the much larger issue of distracted drivers, usually on their phone.

[ShinyLeftPad]

Cancer & heart disease you're counting basically all natural causes.

[lettergram]

> incredible amount of killing from distracted drivers

> 1.10 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled

https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/trumps-transpor...

For reference, fatalities on bikes:

> 9.32 fatalities per 100 million cyclist miles (6 deaths per 100M kilometers)

https://www.calbike.org/urban-transportation-research-bike-f...

[Gigachad]

The first link is a propaganda website so not really much use, and for the second one, pretty much all fatalities on bikes are the result of being killed by distracted drivers.

>The US has eight times as many pedestrian deaths per mile as Germany.

Clearly the US is unusually bad for distracted driving.

[lettergram]

The stats come from the government agency in the US which tracks driver fatalities.

Here's the source document: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

Regarding "distracted driving" causing cyclist fatalities, my point was more that bicyclists have a higher risk rate. If we're already going down this path for safety, banning bicycling would have a higher impact than reducing fatalities ~10% which is what the EU claimed it could prevent.

Regarding the claim that "pretty much all fatalities on bikes are the result of being killed by drivers", that's simply not true. It also largely depends on laws and location.

https://www.bikeattorney.com/bike-accident-common-causes.htm...

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2011/05/20/1364622...

[etiennebausson]

I would argue that any U.S. government data is pro-car propaganda.

For exemple, pedestrian killed by motorist are too often not counted as a motorist issue, but a pedestrian at the wrong place issue.

[dontwannahearit]

I think the average size of US vehicles has something to do with it. Being hit by a distracted driver in a Fiat Cinquecento is probably way more survivable than being hit by an F250 Super Duty twatwagon.

[CalRobert]

Personal freedom to drive a two tonne battering ram at deadly speeds where others are walking, biking, etc should be heavily regulated.

[oalae5niMiel7qu]

There is no limit to how much paternalism most people will accept. Therefore, we're bound to lose all of our personal freedom eventually, "for your protection."

[austin-schick]

I think I'd consider this kind of technology at the intersection of personal freedom and _public_ safety. Drunk or distracted driving puts others at risk, not just you.

[gmueckl]

Owned a Ford Mustang Mach-e with BkueCruise for about 3 years now. No obvious false alarms about missing attention. Interestingly, it doesn't get confused by my sunglasses and still catches me looking aside for too long. I think it is a rather good implementation overall.

[ErroneousBosh]

The Kia Niro EVs I drive at work have something that apparently detects driver fatigue. I don't know what sets it off but it starts beeping at fire alarm levels and makes the huge LCD constantly flash up warnings, usually before I've even left the yard. There doesn't appear to be a way to turn it off or stop it, so you just have to put up with a constant "BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING" for the whole journey.

[BeetleB]

> adjusting the climate controls,

Well if they hadn't removed climate control buttons, this would not be a concern!

Not being able to easily adjust climate settings is very much a safety concern. And the fact that it beeps at you is them acknowledging it!

[awakeasleep]

The truck I was driving had physical buttons for all the climate control functions, and for volume/on-off too. It wouldn't have been surprising to me if I was distracted fiddling with the screen, but it would give me the alert because I was playing with the buttons for an extended period of time.

[BeetleB]

Ah - whenever I had a car with physical buttons, I could typically press the ones I wanted without looking. Fairly quickly too.

That's why I hate screens.

[awakeasleep]

Yep I found that was only true for me after the distraction-detector made me put conscious effort into using the buttons without looking. By default I'm a button-looker

[oalae5niMiel7qu]

The fact that it beeps at you is also them blaming you for the problem.

[recursive]

It gives me false positives when I'm holding the wheel at the top and my wrist is blocking line of sight from the camera. On the other hand, sunglasses have never tripped it all.

[sanmarzano]

Thank you! I often feel like I’m in the minority on this site, it is nice to hear someone else articulate my feelings. Driving is a privilege not a right. But since America decided to decimate public transit in the early 20th century (and stick with it) we’re stuck with cars. So I’m in favor of anything that makes it safer. Hopefully this crosses the pond.

[Bratmon]

> It also seemed really accurate. I never remember it beeping at me when I was actually paying attention.

This is the exact opposite of my experience! The one time I tried BlueCruise, it went into "panic mode" every time I turned my head to check my blindspots.

[rurp]

I don't doubt your experience but I've had the exact opposite experience with a Subaru where there were so many false positives it was worse than useless and was instead an active distraction.

Given the general state of auto manufacturer software I would fully expect something like this to be janky and unreliable. It might work in some conditions on some faces but also perform abysmally in many other scenarios.

[dd82]

good way to get notification fatigue and tunnel vision. look ahead, ignore everything else and have a shocked pikachu face when you sideswipe someone because you're well trained to not check your blind spots

[gmueckl]

I need to call bullshit on this. I own the same system and it totally allows looking around for normal driving. Stare to the side or the center console for more than a few seconds and it will alert you - exactly at the point where it becomes recklessly unsafe to do so.

[cbg0]

This will not get triggered by blind spot checks and most new cars have these inside the mirrors, so you won't even need to look over your shoulder.

[deejaaymac]

I would argue that if someone can't safely operate a vehicle without this then maybe they shouldn't have a license

[Gander5739]

If locks are to keep honest men honest, then driving monitoring cameras are to keep attentive drivers attentive.

[rsanek]

Interesting perspective. In my experience the risk is actually that it results in alert fatigue, which means that drivers that would otherwise pay attention to such an alert no longer do.

[DaSHacka]

Yeah Subaru HQ clearly never heard of the term. On my recent vehicle it beeps for every damn thing. "Car has been driving for X hours" notification on the dot each hour. "WARNING: Washer Fluid Low" every 15 minutes or so while the washer fluid is low (that was a fun drive to autozone, getting nagged the whole way).

It also beeps indefinitely if you first open the driver's side door before turning off the engine. You have to close and re-open the door to get it to stop.

Also has 6 chimes on startup as punishment for daring to start the car without already having your seatbelt buckled.

Not to mention the annoying chimes for actually having any seatbelt unbuckled in the vehicle. It fluctuates them, so you can't even tune it out, and has a tendency to go off if you're hauling heavy cargo. (Though granted, 3 quick prints on a 3D printer later and you'll never have to worry about it again.

Next mod I'm doing to this car is ripping out the chime speaker. I'm just done. I learned to drive on a car that didn't have these chimes, and honestly it made for an easier driving experience.

[Gigachad]

In this scenario anyone who "should" have their license would never trigger this warning in the first place so it wouldn't be an issue.

[_carbyau_]

In a well implemented system that accounted for every edge case, sure. The systems are not there yet.

[thebruce87m]

What exactly are you arguing for? Changes to the driving test to detect how someone reacts to distractions?

[dzhiurgis]

In NZ we have to identify hazards. Distractions would be interesting. "Send a text to someone and include that obscure emoji". Or perhaps more vogue - go thru EV charging app registration including verifying your email address and entering credit card details, while driving.

[thebruce87m]

We also have hazard perception in the uk. Maybe they should have TikTok open at the side during it. Or make the test last an hour and “allow” use of your phone during it

[colechristensen]

I wear some pretty thick glasses and my parents' car CONSTANTLY beeped at me to pay attention to the road.

[xienze]

> It also seemed really accurate.

It's really not. When I'm cruising on the highway I like to rest my right wrist on the top of the wheel, which blocks the sensor.

"Watch the road"

"Watch the road"

"Watch the road"

[throw2ih020]

> When I'm cruising on the highway I like to rest my right wrist on the top of the wheel, which blocks the sensor.

Won't this shatter your wrist if your airbag deploys? I remember being taught to hold the sides of the wheel in driving class.

[xienze]

There's theory and there's practice. In theory you're supposed to maintain 10 and 2 at all times. In practice, that gets fatiguing over long trips.

[stubish]

Hello from the 80s! It is now 9 and 3. This changed due to airbags and too many people learning what 'degloving' means.

[throwworhtthrow]

NHTSA now recommends "8 and 4" hand position. Did see the memo about this?

I'll go ahead and make sure you get another copy of that memo: https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/steeringtechniqu...

[hsbauauvhabzb]

So what you’re saying is we need pressure sensors on the wheel to verify you’re holding it correctly?

[throw2ih020]

In practice I had a dislocated wrist once and getting it put back in was the most painful experience of my life.

[doublepg23]

My Subaru Solterra / Toyota bz4X is the same way.

[JsonDemWitOster]

> It's totally plausible to me that this kind of nudge will save a lot of lives.

Probable especially if it gets drunk drivers off the road but I, for one, would be deeply uncomfortable driving knowing my every twitch is recorded and _more importantly_ open to misinterpretation in case of a claim. I could easily believe otherwise averagely fine drivers being negatively affected by this if the surveillance takes up headspace.

Observation affects systems but not always for the better.

I also wonder how well this fares under night driving conditions where the inside of the car has poor exposure.

Related: https://petapixel.com/2025/07/11/dutch-woman-fined-500-after...

[Pxtl]

But killing innocent bystanders is freedom!

[mattrighetti]

> It's totally plausible to me that this kind of nudge will save a lot of lives.

It’s also totally plausible that insurance companies will use this data to try and find every single tiny, irrelevant detail to not pay you. Sorry, you blinked before crashing into this other car, we won’t pay for that.

Law enforcement could also use that data to create a nice profile of yourself and how “distracted” you are while driving, and maybe suspend your license forever, why not? And wait till you find how unreliable these sensors are.

Just another surveillance tool in disguise, this is what the EU does best.

[CGMthrowaway]

Eye tracking