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The EU's General Safety Regulation is set to be expanded

Driver Distraction Warning systems will need to be fitted to new cars

Privacy advocates are already voicing data concerns

As of this week, the European Commission has stated that all new vehicles registered in the European Union will have to be fitted with Advanced Driver Distraction Warning (ADDW) systems to comply with new, more stringent safety legislation.

While European roads are among the safest in the world, the European Commission said in its announcement that "the number of deaths and injuries from road accidents is still too high." As a result, it is set to expand its General Safety Regulation to include several new requirements.

Among the new requirements are advanced emergency braking systems that detect pedestrians and cyclists, as well as "better forward vision" and camera-based driver distraction technology that audibly warns drivers to pay attention to the road.

Many new cars already feature this technology , which uses a small camera mounted behind the steering wheel or somewhere above the infotainment system in the center of the dashboard.

Constantly active, the system monitors the driver's eyes and facial expressions, intervening if it detects that the driver is looking away from the road for too long.

(Image credit: DS Automobiles) Today's manufacturers' systems range from audible bleeps and on-screen safety notifications when it detects distraction, to the deactivation of automated cruise control and other functions.

Critics have already hit out at the decision, with the European Conservative describing the commission's move as the "latest annoying piece of EU overregulation," which arrives with little clarification on how the data will be handled.

These ADDW systems should operate in a closed-loop system, where all data is processed locally in the car and never uploaded to any third-party server.

However, since April 2018, all newly approved passenger cars and light vans in the EU have been required to include an eCall emergency system that automatically contacts emergency services in the event of a serious crash.

This, coupled with the fact that consulting firm McKinsey predicts that 95% of all vehicles will be connected to the internet by 2030, means it isn't a huge stretch to think that driver-monitoring data could eventually leave the vehicle.

Analysis: a data privacy nightmare

(Image credit: Volkswagen) Analysis by Mozilla in 2023 examined the privacy policies of 25 car brands and found that every single one failed to meet its own privacy and security standards. Mozilla concluded that cars were "the worst product category we have ever reviewed for privacy."

In 2024, the Texas Attorney General opened an investigation into several automakers following reports that they had been collecting large amounts of driver data and selling it to third parties.

As the European Conservative points out, there is currently very little clarity from the EU over how driver data is handled, meaning there is the potential for these systems to eventually help determine insurance premiums or act as evidence in a court of law, for example.

Beyond this, ADDW technology can also prove extremely distracting when implemented poorly.

I've lost count of how many times a system has warned me to pay attention when all I'm doing is trying to find a simple function in a baffling series of touchscreen menus.

On the one hand, Euro NCAP says it will target "annoying" safety tech, but on the other, the European Union is mandating greater reliance on these systems. Now is a confusing time to be a motorist.

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Plenty of Warhammer 40,000 novels have been written from the perspective of humans and space marines, but it took a while before Games Workshop really got into publishing books from the perspective of 40K's many alien species. If you're into orks I recommend Ghazghkull Thraka: Prophet of the Waaagh, and for swashbuckling aeldari pirates there's Voidscarred, but the peak remains The Infinite and the Divine by Robert Rath.

It's the story of a long-term feud between two necrons, Orikan the Diviner and Trazyn the Infinite, immortal robots who were once flesh-and-blood and went a bit loopy in the uploading process. An argument over who owns a particular artifact becomes a heated rivalry (not in the sexy way, though now that you mention it… ) that encompasses, as Games Workshop's own summary puts it, "clashing with Exodite armies, xenos uprisings, and a spell in Necron small claims court."

As the part about small claims court suggests, The Infinite and the Divine has a sense of humor. While it's not all comedy all the time, it's the 40K book that's closest in tone to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with a perfect sense of the absurdity of these bitter old robots turning their petty grudge into the entire universe's problem.

While it was a self-contained story, I'm delighted to hear it's getting a sequel by the same author. As announced on Warhammer Community , Orikan and Trazyn will be back in The Wicked and the Warped, in which the two rivals have to work together to find out what happened to an expedition lost on a planet corrupted by Chaos. As Dawn of War showed, if you want to force an unlikely alliance in 40K, throw Chaos at some enemies and they'll have to work together. I look forward to Orikan and Trazyn bickering their way through a few hundred more pages while trying not to get eaten by daemons.

The Wicked and the Warped doesn't have a release date yet, but The Infinite and the Divine is being reprinted in hardback in the meantime. I've heard good things about the audiobook narrated by Richard Reed too.

Best Warhammer games : Fantasy epics

Best Warhammer 40K games : The complete ranking

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Remakes for video games are becoming increasingly common, from masterful reimaginings such as the recent Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy to simple ports like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe to 1-to-1 remastered remakes including Metroid Prime . 2026 in particular has been home to some incredible remakes such as Halo: Campaign Evolved and the recently announced Ocarina of Time remake . They are a good way to improve upon an old game and play into the nostalgia factor by making it better, but a good remake also gives gamers who haven't played it the opportunity to experience it with updated controls and modern design. It's exactly what Assassin's Creed is doing, because just today, the franchise released Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced , a full remake of the beloved 2013 game.

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Vicki Brady grilled at first public appearance since returning from overseas as SA police say call to triple zero failed before death

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Telstra has admitted it knew of the dangers of a failure of its time systems and is now investigating why backup measures failed to stop this weeks outage, as its chief executive says she’s “deeply sorry” about its impacts.

It came as South Australian police said an investigation was under way into whether a death during the outage can be linked to problems in calling triple zero, despite Telstra claiming it has no record of any failed call from family members.

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It's the mark of a high-quality television show when the characters are allowed to grow and evolve . When you're watching a series in which all of the characters stay exactly the same , it can feel like the show is stagnant. Procedurals can sometimes fall into this trap, but ABC's 9-1-1 is proving that they're willing to take some risks when it comes to their characters' development. Perhaps the biggest risk was their decision to kill off Captain Bobby Nash ( Peter Krause ) back in Season 8, permanently altering the shape of the core team. Now, with the procedural heading into its tenth season, 9-1-1 is allowing one other character to change in a major way .