SMILE! YOU’RE ON A CAMERA INVADING YOUR PRIVACY!
In-car seclusion may become thing of past if safety conscious volvo has its way
Volvo has long been the company that has kept us safe. Years ago, we used to joke that everybody could buy a car, but people who loved their families bought a Volvo. Their reputation for safety and durability put those fourwheeled log cabins on the roads and kept them there.
Volvo pushed the entire industry to get serious about safety long before it was remotely sexy, or even a primary goal.
Volvo will introduce a feature called Care Key on all models, beginning in 2021. It allows owners to make an adjustment so the vehicle will not exceed 180 km/h. Now it is wading into territory that requires pushback — or at least discussion.
Volvo “wants to start a conversation about whether carmakers have the right or maybe even the obligation to install technology in cars that changes their drivers’ behaviour. Both the speed limit and the installation of in-car cameras illustrate how carmakers can take active responsibility for the aim of achieving zero traffic fatalities by supporting better driver behaviour,” according to its news release.
Statistics indicate by removing driver error, we can reduce crashes and fatalities by upwards of 95 per cent.
The problem is that in my small, dark heart, I hate the idea of not driving because I love it.
I like driving and road trips, more than I like wine and cheese and new boots. If I’m stranded on a desert island, I want a vehicle — not music, movies or a strapping cabana boy.
A road trip in an autonomous car would compare to being stuck on the It’s a Small World After All ride in Disney World, though mercifully without the earworm. But I can’t admit any of that, because I don’t want the carnage to continue on our roadways.
So, autonomous it will be — at some distant point in the future.
Volvo, it seems, doesn’t want to wait. It’s introducing technology that aims to achieve the same results as autonomous cars, but by using a different bridge to get from here to there.
The “big three” in vehicle deaths are speed, impairment and distraction, and Volvo has teed up all three. First with the introduction of the Care Key, and beginning in the early 2020s, with the plan to use “in-car cameras and other sensors that monitor the driver and allow the car to intervene if a clearly intoxicated or distracted driver does not respond to warning signals and is risking an accident involving serious injury or death.”
Your newish car is already sending real-time information back to manufacturers as you drive, and in some cases, you’re giving that to your insurer, too.
Do you ever stop to think what is being done with that information? Vehicle systems will be co-ordinating with advertisers to tailor ads just for you.
In fact, the auto industry can’t wait for autonomous cars so they can run billboards on your vehicle windows. You’ll be able to order anything and pick it up en route. Your information is already being sold.
Now Volvo wants to add cameras to the equation? One of the world’s leading experts in privacy, Ann Cavoukian, a distinguished expert-in-residence at Ryerson University, chatted with me last year, and her warnings stayed with me.
“You have to ask so many questions about this type of information gathering, and determine what is actually happening to your information,” she said.
Here’s an example: I’m driving and swerve to avoid a cat. Volvo cameras decide I look drunk, and stop my car. Can I get going again? Are police called? Do I have to prove I’m sober and the cat is real, or does Volvo haul out video proving I was distracted? Who decides?
Our cars already know if we’re weaving, texting, speeding or nodding off. Sensors go off and pre-collision braking systems are getting better every year. But drunk, angry, excited, relaxed or nervous looks different on everyone, and I don’t know if I want someone viewing a camera image, making the call and taking over control of my vehicle.
Volvo, I say this with love, but I’m going to say it anyway: Get your cameras out of the interior of my car.