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White paperMichael Clark
Fatigue Is Not an Emotion
The drowsiness and distraction warnings the General Safety Regulation requires in new vehicles sit outside the AI Act's workplace emotion-inference prohibition and, under Article 6(3) of that Regulation, are by design not a source of performance data. The exposure lies in what the operator added: aftermarket monitoring inferring mental states from biometric data, depot analytics, and driver scoring that can be high-risk under Annex III point 4(b). The first steps are to list every output, trace who consumes it, and produce departure rate and review coverage.
Key findings
- DDAW and ADDW, required in all new vehicles registered in the EU or Northern Ireland since 7 July 2024 and 7 July 2026 respectively, sit outside the Article 5(1)(f) prohibition.
- Article 6(3) of the General Safety Regulation means a compliant DDAW or ADDW function yields nothing to aggregate into a driver score or place in a dashboard.
- Aftermarket products that score engagement, attentiveness or stress from biometric data need the safety exception, which the Commission's Guidelines confine to the protection of life and health.
In the paper
- Three layers, usually treated as one
- Fatigue is not an emotion
- The mandated systems are not a data source
- The safety justification does not travel
- Driver scoring without any biometric data
- What to do first
Michael Clark
Chief Executive Officer, Standard Intelligence
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