Your next car won’t just deploy airbags in a crash – it might send footage of the crash, along with forensic data, to police and other agencies.
There are few things more boring than reading the privacy notice on your new car — but it might be worth spending a bit of time digging through the menus before you hit the road.
In the new Volvo EX60, passengers can agree to send their car and driving data to the carmaker in an option labelled “vehicle analytics and improvements”.
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That information will be used for fault tracing, product research, and the development of new safety features.
While sharing your data may appear harmless, some motorists might be surprised by just how much information can be sent to manufacturers.
According to the car’s privacy policy, in the case of a crash, the outward-facing cameras may record the accident.
These videos can be sent to Volvo, along with location data, and information on the car’s configurations, timestamps, passenger occupancy, acceleration, steering, brakes, and use of the screen.
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It’s the sort of data that police, insurance companies and employers would love to have – and that some manufacturers have provided to them.
Anders Lindbom from Volvo says the carmaker is “super protective” of that data.
“We will not share that with anyone else, and will anonymise as much as we can,” he says.
But, according to the Australian privacy policy, Volvo may also share personal data with police or the courts to “comply with a legal obligation … when a severe crime is suspected, or when it is necessary to establish, exercise or defend ourselves against legal claims.”
“We will of course follow the regulations in all countries,” Lindbom said.
If the thought of your car being capable of dobbing on you doesn’t appeal, ensure the option stays off. Volvo says the information sharing is voluntary, and not set as ‘on’ by default.
But Lindbom would prefer customers volunteer their information.
“For us we really like people to opt into that data from the active safety systems and driver systems to improve that.”
Privacy protections in modern cars are a growing area of concern.
Most new vehicles already contain Event Data Recorders, or EDRs. These devices are often compared to an aircraft’s “black box”.
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Attached to the airbag system, EDRs can capture a snapshot of what the car was doing in the moments before and during a crash, including speed, braking, throttle position, seatbelt use and steering inputs.
While the systems are primarily designed to help investigators and manufacturers understand how crashes occur, in order to improve vehicle safety, privacy advocates have warned many drivers remain unaware their car is storing the information at all.
Car companies claim to do the right thing with customer data. But can they be trusted?
Elon Musk was caught lying to Tesla customers in 2021 when he said a driver-facing camera hidden behind the rear vision mirror was “not turned on”, and was “meant for vandalism monitoring in a robotaxi future”, when the camera was actually used to watch drivers to make sure they pay attention.
Then Tesla employees were busted sending customer footage back and forth, passing naked images and road rage incidents around their offices without customer consent.
The company was sued by furious owners who objected to in-car video being used as a form of “tasteless entertainment”.
Consumer groups have also begun scrutinising how carmakers collect and use driver data.
Earlier this year, Choice raised concerns over privacy terms tied to connected services offered by Toyota vehicles, warning some features could allow extensive data collection from motorists.
The consumer watchdog argued drivers often have little understanding of what information is being gathered, how long it is retained, or who it may ultimately be shared with.
Dr Vanessa Teague at Australian National University told Choice “what these car companies are doing is totally unacceptable. It should be illegal … none of this should be acceptable in our country”.
And University of New South Wales researcher Katharine Kemp made plenty of headlines in 2024 when she found that some vehicles “automatically send data not just about the vehicle’s operation, but also about the driver and their family members, in real time to various
overseas companies and Australian companies”.
“There are also concerns regarding state surveillance, including the potential for law enforcement to access the data without a warrant,” she said.
We’ve heard of cops extracting interesting information from vehicles that can then be used to mount a case against drivers, their friends or family.
In all cases, it’s good to read the fine print on all your car’s systems before getting behind the wheel.
– with David McCowen
