The European Union is currently making widespread changes to vehicle safety standards and practices, and if these changes are accepted, new car owners will have their driving activity recorded.
The new changes would require all manufacturers to build cars that included a black box-style data recording device as well as “speed assistance” in an effort to enforce speed limits. Additional expected changes include a connection point for alcohol interlocks, autonomous emergency braking as well as a crash data recorder.
If introduced, these changes would most likely be implemented across all European brands sold in Australia, such as Mercedes and Volkswagen.
Talking about the inclusion of intelligent speed-assistance (ISA), British journalist Andrew Frankel wrote in Drive Nation: “this means you’ll have to tell the car if you intend to speed, and it’ll record the fact, if you do”.
“Actually, it’s the data logger that concerns me most because, combined with the sat nav information that determines the speed limit of any given road, you car will retain every detail of your every journey, and you don’t need to be an Orwell scholar to spot something disturbingly Big Brother about that,” he said.
Exactly what effect these changes will have on the future of policing, insurance and privacy is anybody’s guess. My view is that it can only result in a safer driving environment and pushes us one step closer to having self-driving cars on our road.
What do you think? Would these changes make our roads safer? Or are you concerned about the privacy of your data?
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