In cars (are we really safest of all?): interior sensing and emotional opacity

TLDR

Driver‑monitoring systems are promoted as enhancing road safety, cabin comfort, and automation, driven by European safety policy, growing interest in affective sensing, and autonomous vehicle trends. This paper examines expert and regulatory views on driver‑monitoring systems that use body signals to detect emotions, fatigue, and attentiveness. Through 13 expert interviews, the study identifies features of in‑cabin emotional AI and biometric profiling and evaluates regulatory implications under data protection laws and the EU AI Act. Participants expressed a deep ambivalence about the deployment of emotional AI in cars and the optimal regulatory approach.

Abstract

This paper analyses expert and regulatory perspectives on car driver-monitoring systems that measure bodies to infer and react to emotions, fatigue, and attentiveness. Developers of driver-monitoring systems promise increased safety on the road, alongside comfort for cabin occupants through personalisation and automation. The impetus is three-fold, namely: (1) European road safety policy seeks to vastly reduce road deaths using computational surveillance; (2) there is a growing interest around in cabin safety solutions that sense emotion and affective states of drivers and passengers; and (3) autonomous driving trends are changing the nature of interactions between vehicle and driver. Safety led applications are of special interest because they are backed by policy and standards initiatives including the European Union's Vision Zero policy and the industry led New Car Assessment Programme (NCAP). Informed by 13 interviews with experts working in and around in-cabin sensing technologies, this paper first identifies and explores features of emergent in-cabin profiling through emotional artificial intelligence (AI) and biometric measures. It then examines how in-car sensing should be regulated by analysing data protection laws and the proposed EU AI Act. A deep ambivalence emerged from our participants around the emergence of emotional AI in cars, and how best to regulate these technologies.