There is a video monitoring system inside a Tesla Inc. car. raises privacy concerns, Consumer Reports said Tuesday.
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vehicles have an internal camera that can monitor whether the driver is paying attention, and the video footage can be sent to the company to review the times before an accident occurred.
But Consumer Reports said that the saved and provided internal videos raise privacy issues, and could weaken the benefits of monitoring drivers in the first place. .
“If Tesla is able to detect that the driver is not paying attention, it needs to warn the driver right now, as other manufacturers are already doing,” said Jake Fisher, chief executive automated test center Consumer Reports, in the report.
John Davisson, senior consultant at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, raised concerns.
“Video is being recorded at any time, it can be accessed later,” Davisson told Consumer Reports, adding that this could involve anyone from the police to companies. insurance to spies.
A number of other automation manufacturers use built-in cameras to monitor drivers, but these systems do not pose similar privacy risks because their video is not saved or transferred, he said. Consumer Reports. Instead, they use infrared technology to warn drivers who are being towed or downed, or to slow the car down if it senses a problem.
Tesla’s monitoring system is basically disabled, but video can be sent to the company if the driver is enabled and gets into an accident.
Kelly Funkhouser, Customer Reports program manager for vehicle interface testing, said Tesla’s in-car camera may have a self-service reason. “We have already seen Tesla blame the driver for not paying immediate attention following news reports of an accident while a driver is using Autopilot,” she said in the report. “Now, Tesla can use video footage to verify that a driver has been distracted instead of addressing the reasons why the driver was not paying attention in the first place.”
Tesla disbanded its media friendship team last year and did not respond to a MarketWatch request for comment.
Meanwhile, Tesla’s external cameras have come under scrutiny in China. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Chinese militants have banned employees and workers at some companies from driving Teslas over for fear that their car cameras could collect sensitive material that could be handed back to Tesla U.S. CEO Elon Musk called the laugh bids.
Tesla Autopilot – which is not a self-driving feature, but a driver support feature – has gone against several crash-related studies. Federal transportation officials are currently investigating two crashes in Michigan involving Tesla vehicles that may have been involved in Autopilot.
Tesla shares are down 6% year to date, but have risen more than 550% over the past year.