Why Driver-Facing Cameras Are Coming to Your Next Car by 2027

Every new car and van sold in the European Union now has to watch its driver. As of July 7, 2026, EU rules require an Advanced Driver Distraction Warning system in every newly registered vehicle, a dashboard-mounted infrared camera that tracks eye movement, blink rate and head position to flag drivers who look drowsy or distracted. American drivers should pay attention to that rollout: Washington already has a similar mandate on the books, and the only real question left is how soon it takes effect here.

The federal law already exists

Section 24220 of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act directs the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to write rules requiring “advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology” in all new passenger vehicles sold in the United States. Lawmakers did not specify exactly what that technology has to look like, leaving NHTSA room to choose between passive monitoring systems, breath-based sensors, or some combination of both.

The camera-based approach spreading across Europe gives a preview of where US regulators are leaning. These systems rely on an infrared sensor mounted near the steering column or rearview mirror that continuously reads a driver’s eyes and face. Software analyzes gaze direction, eyelid closure duration, pupil dilation, head position and nodding frequency, then sounds an alert, and eventually can dim infotainment functions or slow the vehicle, if it detects signs of drowsiness or distraction.

Why the US rollout keeps slipping

NHTSA missed its original 2024 statutory deadline to publish a rule and was granted an extension that is close to running out. In a March 2026 report to Congress, the agency effectively admitted the technology is not ready for a nationwide mandate. Even systems that achieve 99.9% accuracy at detecting impairment would still generate millions of false positives a year across the US vehicle fleet, flagging sober, alert drivers as impaired often enough to undermine public trust in the system.

That accuracy problem is the main reason engineers give for the delay. A false alert that dims a screen or sounds a chime is an annoyance. A false alert that limits acceleration or disables a vehicle on a highway on-ramp carries real safety risk of its own. Regulators have to weigh the crashes this technology could prevent against the crashes a malfunctioning or overly aggressive system might cause.

Even in the best-case scenario laid out by industry engineers, the technology will not appear in production vehicles before the 2027 or 2028 model year at the earliest. Once NHTSA eventually publishes a final rule, automakers typically get another two to three years to build compliant systems into their lineups, which pushes full compliance out toward the early 2030s for some vehicles.

What is already in American cars today

Drivers should know this technology is not entirely new or hypothetical. Millions of vehicles already on US roads carry a version of it. Tesla has used interior cameras to monitor driver attention for years, and General Motors’ Super Cruise system, along with Ford’s BlueCruise and several luxury brands’ hands-free driving features, all rely on a small camera aimed at the driver’s face to confirm eyes stay on the road while the system handles steering.

Those existing systems are narrower in scope than what the federal mandate would eventually require. They exist to enforce the terms of a specific hands-free driving feature, and they typically only activate when that feature is switched on. A full impaired-driving-detection mandate would apply the same kind of monitoring to every trip in every covered vehicle, regardless of whether any driver-assist feature is active.

The privacy question nobody has settled

A camera pointed at a driver’s face raises questions that go beyond whether the technology works. Privacy advocates want clear rules on how long footage or biometric data gets stored, who can access it, whether insurers or law enforcement could request it, and whether the data can be used against a driver in a crash investigation or a criminal case.

The EU’s ADDW rule addresses some of this by requiring that video processing happen inside the vehicle rather than uploading footage to a remote server, and by requiring automakers to delete data almost immediately after a distraction alert is generated. NHTSA has not yet proposed similar safeguards for the US market. The agency has not published a proposed rule at all, so there is nothing on paper yet for privacy groups to react to. Consumer and privacy groups are pushing to get those protections written into any eventual regulation before it reaches the public comment stage.

What drivers should watch for next

The practical timeline for American drivers looks like this: no federal mandate exists yet, NHTSA’s extended deadline is close to expiring, and the agency’s own report to Congress suggests it will ask for more time rather than rush out an imperfect rule. Shoppers who want to avoid the technology entirely have a shrinking window to do so, though most new vehicles with advanced driver-assist packages already include some form of driver-facing camera as an option or standard feature.

Buyers who are uncomfortable with an interior camera should ask a dealer directly whether a specific trim includes one. Manufacturers do not always advertise the feature prominently, and it is often bundled into a broader driver-assist or safety package rather than sold on its own. Reading the vehicle’s owner manual or the manufacturer’s privacy policy, usually posted on the automaker’s website, is the most reliable way to find out how any camera data gets stored and whether it is shared with third parties.

Fleet operators and rideshare drivers should pay close attention as well. Commercial vehicle rules often adopt passenger-vehicle safety mandates on a faster timeline, and companies such as Uber and Lyft have already tested driver-facing cameras in some markets for safety monitoring, separate from any federal requirement.

How the impaired-driving push began

The 2021 infrastructure law that created this mandate grew out of years of pressure from safety groups after crash data showed impaired driving deaths climbing even as overall traffic fatalities in other categories held steady or fell. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the National Transportation Safety Board had both pushed Congress to require passive detection technology rather than rely solely on roadside sobriety checks and post-crash testing, arguing that a system built into the car itself could catch impairment before a driver ever gets behind the wheel or notices trouble on the road.

Automakers were not uniformly opposed to the idea. Several manufacturers had already built driver-monitoring hardware into their vehicles for hands-free driving features, so adding a broader detection layer was, in theory, a matter of software rather than a full redesign. The resistance came instead from questions about false positives, legal liability if a system failed to catch an impaired driver who then caused a crash, and the cost of retrofitting the rule across an entire vehicle lineup rather than a handful of high-end trims.

State-level rules could arrive first

With the federal rule delayed, some states are not waiting. Insurance regulators in a handful of states have started asking automakers and telematics companies for data on how existing driver-monitoring systems perform, information that could feed into state-level safety requirements even before NHTSA finishes its own rulemaking. Consumer advocates expect California, New York and a few other large states to move on their own distraction and impairment rules if the federal timeline keeps sliding, much as several states moved ahead of federal seatbelt and airbag mandates decades earlier.

What to do right now

• Ask your dealer directly whether a specific trim or safety package includes a driver-facing camera before you buy.
• Read the automaker’s privacy policy for details on how camera or biometric data is stored and whether it can be shared with insurers or law enforcement.
• If you already use a hands-free driving feature such as Super Cruise or BlueCruise, know that the camera confirming your attention is separate from any future federal mandate and is limited to that feature.
• Watch for NHTSA’s next report to Congress, expected to give an updated timeline now that the current extension is close to expiring.

Sources:

• Forbes: Europe’s In-Car Cameras Could Soon Be Watching U.S. Drivers
• Motor1: Government Requires Driving Monitoring By 2027
• Carscoops: Every New Car In Europe Now Has a Face-Watching Camera