Your Car Will Watch You Starting in 2027
Starting in 2027, federal law will require cameras and sensors in every new car to monitor drivers, even though regulators admit the technology does not exist and will strand millions of sober motorists.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told Congress that no technology exists to reliably detect impaired driving. Congress mandated it anyway. Starting in 2027, every new car sold in the United States must monitor drivers with infrared cameras, breath sensors, and surveillance systems — even though federal regulators admit the technology would strand tens of millions of sober drivers each year through false alarms.
This federal mandate heads toward implementation despite NHTSA's own March admission that no commercially available technology meets required accuracy standards. Section 24220 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed by President Biden on Nov. 15, 2021, directs NHTSA to require "advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology" in all new passenger vehicles. Advocates call it the HALT Drunk Driving Act. The law compels surveillance technology that federal regulators themselves say does not exist.
NHTSA's report to Congress states bluntly: "To date, there are no in-vehicle technologies in production that can measure BAC [Blood Alcohol content] or BrAC [Breath Alcohol Content] above 0.08 g/dL passively." The agency added, "At this time, NHTSA is not aware of any technology that claims to achieve anywhere close to [the needed] level of accuracy." Regulators project that even a 99.9 percent detection accuracy would produce "millions to tens of millions of instances each year" where the technology would incorrectly prevent sober drivers from operating their vehicles or fail to stop impaired ones.
The mandated systems will include infrared cameras tracking eye movement, pupil dilation, head position, and drowsiness patterns. Passive breath sensors will measure ambient cabin alcohol. Touch-based sensors embedded in steering wheels will monitor blood alcohol through skin contact. Subaru's Driver Monitoring System already previews this future, recognizing up to five individual drivers via facial recognition and adjusting cabin settings accordingly. Subaru's Emergency Stop Assist can take full control of steering, braking, and lane selection when it detects an "unresponsive" driver.
"There are 'a million scenarios' that could make the vehicle believe you're intoxicated when you're actually just under duress," said Lauren Fix of Car Coach Reports. "Maybe your mother fell and she needs your help. Your house is on fire. Your wife is about to give birth. Maybe you're just stressed. And your car refuses to start?" The technology could strand drivers during wildfire evacuations, lock out diabetic drivers experiencing low blood sugar, or immobilize vehicles at 2 a.m. based on faulty readings.
While the law does not require automakers to share impairment data externally, it contains no prohibition. The data pipeline is already active. In January, the FTC banned GM and OnStar from sharing driving data with consumer reporting agencies for five years after GM sold precise geolocation and driving behavior to LexisNexis and Verisk for insurance risk scoring. Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen subpoenaed Ford and Stellantis on April 8 over identical practices, naming the same data brokers as recipients.
Mozilla's 2023 analysis declared cars "the worst product category we have ever reviewed for privacy," finding 19 of 25 automakers might sell consumer data. California's new DROP platform recorded vehicle identification numbers in 24 percent of 242,000 consumer deletion requests during its first eight weeks. "They're taking all the information they collect on you, which is a lot, and using it to make inferences about who you are, how intelligent you are, what your psychological profile is, what your political beliefs are," said Mozilla privacy analyst Jen Caltrider.
Congressional efforts to defund the mandate failed on Jan. 22 when the House voted 268-164 to defeat Rep. Thomas Massie's amendment blocking implementation funding. Fifty-seven Republicans joined Democrats in preserving the surveillance requirement. "The car itself will monitor your driving, and if the car thinks that you're not doing a good job driving, it will disable itself," Massie argued on the House floor. "So the car dashboard becomes your judge, your jury, and your executioner."
Rep. Keith Self stated on April 27, "Americans want freedom, not remote controls and mass surveillance. We must move to repeal this mandate before 2027." Sen. Mike Lee echoed the sentiment: "Raise your hand if you don't want a government-surveillance hub and kill switch in your car."
The surveillance infrastructure created by this mandate can expand post-purchase. "Any connected vehicle that has over-the-air update capability means the pipeline between your dashboard and a cloud server is one firmware patch away from being live," said attorney Alan Heimlich. Ford filed a patent in April for in-cabin cameras that read lips, scan irises, track facial expressions, and monitor heart rates. Mercedes-Benz holds biometric patents including fingerprint recognition and stress detection via heart rate monitoring.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which supported the legislation championed by Rep. Debbie Dingell following the 2019 deaths of the Abbas family, maintains the technology has a singular purpose. "The only purpose of the anti-drunk driving technology is to prevent deaths and injuries caused by drunk driving," the organization states, adding it does "NOT support a system that collects, stores, or sells driver data." The financial incentives run counter to that stance: Fortune Business Insights projects the connected car data monetization market at $29 billion this year, growing to $95.1 billion by 2034.
The original November 2024 deadline for regulations passed without action from NHTSA. No new timeline exists, but once implemented, automakers will have two to three years to comply. The used car market may become the last refuge for actual driving freedom. The federal government has ordered every new vehicle to become a rolling data-harvesting platform, regardless of whether the technology works or how many law-abiding citizens it strands. Once that infrastructure is in place, the question is not whether surveillance will happen. It is what else that surveillance will be used for.