The European Union has switched on the final phase of its updated General Safety Regulation, and the headline requirement lands squarely on the driver. As of July 7, every new passenger vehicle sold in the bloc must carry an eye-tracking driver-monitoring system. Plenty of automakers already run some version of this hardware for fatigue warnings, but the law turns an optional feature into a legal requirement across all new cars and vans.

 

American drivers shouldn’t treat this as a distant European problem. Federal safety programs aimed at impaired and distracted driving move toward the USA’s own mandatory rollout of driver monitoring systems for new cars by 2027, so the tech arriving in European showrooms today is a preview of what lands stateside tomorrow.