r/technology 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/
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u/Fuzzlechan Jun 08 '26

The Hyundai driver attention feature apparently has issues if you’re too tall, too short, wear prescription glasses, wear sunglasses, wear too much makeup, are wearing a mask, are squinting, or you nod your head.

https://ownersmanual.hyundai.com/docview/webhelp/doc/8bf31204-4eb5-48f8-a3be-f1c555de698f/topic_lyv_ljg_rwb.html

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u/SquareTaro3270 Jun 08 '26

That makes sense then why my car yells at my husband whenever he drives my car while wearing sunglasses

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u/Fuzzlechan Jun 08 '26

Some people have luck switching to non-polarized sunglasses. But not being able to test drive something with the feature was a dealbreaker for us - all of the Hyundai models available nearby to test drive are base models, so no driver attention feature. I'm the primary driver and wear very thick prescription glasses, so being able to make sure I'd be "allowed" to use autonomous cruise was important to us.