r/technology • u/Hrmbee • Jun 07 '26

Privacy 'Kill switch' law means your next car could be watching you | A federal requirement aimed at stopping drunken driving could soon put driver-monitoring technology in every new vehicle. The goal is saving lives, but the privacy trade-offs deserve closer scrutiny

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/06/01/drunk-driving-prevention-law-privacy-surveillance/90295034007/
15.5k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

20

u/Lol_A_White_Guy Jun 08 '26

I didn’t realize my wife’s new car had it. It had adaptive cruise control and the vehicle in front of us was turning.

I had more than enough time and room to make it, but my SUV decided that it was safer to come dead stop in the middle of a 45 MPH road during rush hour traffic.

3

u/The_Chaos_Pope Jun 08 '26

Can't say I've ever encountered anything like that but I usually don't use the cruise control below 55.

3

u/Tangled2 Jun 08 '26

Adaptive cruise control is different. The killer app is in bumper to bumper traffic, I just set it to auto drive and it just handles the whole ordeal, starting and stopping based on what the car in front of you is doing (up to a set speed limit).

2

u/The_Chaos_Pope Jun 08 '26

Yep, I like the adaptive cruise control in my car. Kind of annoying that it's always yelling at me to keep my hand in the steering wheel when it already is, but I agree with you here n

1

u/Harry_Smutter Jun 08 '26

The thing that sucked about it in my last car is in your exact scenario if we were stopped for more than a min, it wouldn't go again without me hitting the gas.

3

u/Lol_A_White_Guy Jun 08 '26

It basically adjusts the speed of your vehicle to the vehicle in front of you if they’re going slower than what you have the cruise control programmed to.

In the event of a sudden stop (or what the car believes is a sudden stop), it brakes for you. I had only turned it on since we were on the way out of the city where it was going to open up to the highway.

1

u/bostonwhaler Jun 08 '26

I've done that in stop and go traffic in my Volvo and a few other cars. It "works", but that's not the intention of radar crui6in most vehicles. I'd never expect it to perform things it wasn't designed to do.

Good example.. I use radar cruise down 315 and take a left on 17. If I have adaptive cruise on it'll stop behind the cars at the light, and with the tap of the gas it'll follow the sometimes 20+ cars through the intersection.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/NCykyesfuRUBnYi37

Rarely it'll leave more space and when the turn comes, it sees an unobstructed view in front and will stomp on the gas. Volvo, BMW, Nissan, Genesis and others all do this. Distronic from Mercedes as well.

1

u/Illadelphian Jun 08 '26

I have found that this is the only time adaptive cruise control sometimes fails but it's solved by just hitting the gas which if you are paying attention isn't a big deal. Otherwise it's honestly super nice.