Is Your Car Spying on You? Car Data, Privacy, and Impaired-Driving Tech Explained
By Mike, Fastbay Automotive ·
Lately a lot of customers in Pendleton, Clemson and Anderson have asked me the same thing: is my car spying on me? Will it check my pulse and refuse to start? Will it call the police on me? Some of this is real, some is proposed, and some is rumor. Here is what the facts show as of November 2026.
What's real today: your car collects data
Most newer vehicles have a built-in cellular connection, often called telematics. It powers things like remote start apps, navigation and crash response. It can also record location, speed, hard braking, fast acceleration and trip times.
In 2023, Mozilla's Privacy Not Included project reviewed 25 major car brands and every one of them failed its privacy review. It was the worst product category they had ever looked at.
In March 2024, The New York Times reported that some automakers were sharing driving behavior with data brokers, including LexisNexis Risk Solutions and Verisk, which supplied the insurance industry. Some GM owners said their insurance rates went up, and many didn't know they had been enrolled in a driving-feedback feature. GM stopped sharing that data with those brokers soon after.
In January 2026, the Federal Trade Commission finalized an order with GM and OnStar. It bans GM from giving geolocation and driving-behavior data to consumer reporting agencies for five years. It also requires clear consent before collecting or sharing that data, and gives owners a way to request a copy of their data and ask for it to be deleted.
What you can do
- Look through the privacy or connected-services settings on your screen and in the automaker's app, and turn off what you don't use
- Read what you are agreeing to when you activate an app or a trial at the dealership
- Ask the automaker what data it keeps. Many have a privacy request page, and you can request your consumer report from LexisNexis and Verisk
- On a used or rental car, delete old paired phones and saved addresses, and remove your own phone before you hand it back
- When you sell a car, do a factory reset of the infotainment system and remove the car from your app account
What's proposed: impaired-driving prevention
Section 24220 of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act directs NHTSA, the federal highway safety agency, to set a safety standard for advanced impaired-driving prevention technology in new passenger vehicles. The law describes systems that could passively detect an impaired driver and prevent or limit driving.
In January 2024, NHTSA published an advance notice asking the public and the industry how such a standard might work. That is an early step, not a rule. As of late 2026, NHTSA has not proposed or finalized a standard, and it has told Congress that the technology, testing and privacy questions are still unresolved. The law's November 2024 deadline came and went. No car is required to have this today.
Researchers are working on it. The DADSS program, a partnership between NHTSA and automakers, is developing a breath sensor and a touch sensor that reads alcohol through the skin. These are still research projects. Steering wheels that read your pulse and AI that decides whether you can drive are research and concept work, not features you can buy on a normal car.
What's in cars now: driver-monitoring cameras
Some newer vehicles do have a small camera aimed at the driver, mostly for hands-free highway driving and drowsiness alerts. It checks whether your eyes are on the road and warns you if you look away. It does not test you for alcohol or stop the car from starting.
Will your car call the cops on you?
Here is what's true: many connected cars have automatic crash notification. After a serious crash, such as one where airbags deploy, the system can connect to an operator or call emergency services and send your location. Many phones do the same thing. That can save lives when someone can't call for help.
What isn't true: no federal rule requires a car to report your driving or your condition to police. Data can sometimes be requested through legal process, which is a good reason to know your settings, but a car turning you in on its own is not a feature or a mandate.
We can help
If you're not sure what your car's connected features are or how to find the privacy settings, bring it by. We're happy to walk through it with you while it's here for service.