I am not a “muh freedom” guy, I don’t drive more than 10 over anyway. But this is just logistically a bad way to stop speeding.
Where does my car get the current speed limit information? How and when does it update as speed limits change? Will school systems around the country have to submit a list of which days are “school days” for school zone speed limits?
What if the GPS registers you on the 30mph road below or next to the 70mph highway, long term or even for a momentary glitch? Who is at fault if that causes you to be in an accident?
Will school systems around the country have to submit a list of which days are “school days” for school zone speed limits?
Story time!
There is an elementary school a few towns over from me which happens to straddle the only viable throughfare in that area. Note that this is out in the country, so it’s not like it’s on Main Street or anything. There is no other road. Well, it’s got one of those blinker signs that says “15 MPH speed limit when flashing.” It’s meant to be used during pick-up and drop-off times, for obvious reasons.
A few years ago some cantankerous asshole at the school with no real authority decided that people were “zOoMiNg ToO FaSt!!!” on “their” road and during summer vacation flipped the sign on and left it blinking all day and night. Then a bunch of “anonymous” calls starting coming in to the local PD about people exceeding the 15 MPH speed limit. They had to get somebody with keys to come out and turn the fucking sign off. And the next morning, lo and behold the sign was once again mysteriously turned on. This process repeated for several weeks until the culprit was finally caught, who unsurprisingly was some low-grade administrator for the local school district. Insofar as I am aware no actual punishment was meted out.
Tl;dr: If you give petty egos even a tiny amount of perceived control over people’s lives they absolutely will abuse it to the fullest extent they are physically or technically able to, without fail. It’s not a matter of if, it’s only a matter of when.
What about in an emergency? What is someone needs to go over that limit for evasive maneuvers or something?
I get it, people speed, but put the cameras up and just fine them. That’s all.
It says it allows the driver to temporarily override the speed restriction.
Then people will be doing that all the time.
Yep, I would have to hack it and disable it if I could. I’m not going to drive a nanny-state bullshit car like that.
What about in an emergency? What is someone needs to go over that limit for evasive maneuvers or something?
(Technologically speaking) Do it. Since we’re talking communication and electronics, you’ll be automatically reported. Present your excuse and let’s see what happens.
(I’m not saying that I’m in favour of this.)
Oh, and I’ve driven a car with speed limiter. It’s like cruise control, but it doesn’t let you go above the speed you choose. It was an amazing experience, I loved it. You press the accelerator, you get to that speed and it stays there. You feel a resistance on the pedal. If you want, simply force the pedal a bit more. It will turn the controller off and let you drive faster.
I actually quite dislike cars but this is fucking insane
I saw a video yesterday of cars fleeing the 2011 tsunami in Japan, I’m willing to bet those people exceeded 10mph over the posted speed limit trying to get away from the water.
Limiting the speed of the vehicles isn’t going to improve driving skills or eliminate distractions. It isn’t going to make people drive safer, just slower. I’m sure any situation where people need to go 10+ miles over the speed limit is going to be exceedingly rare and limited to things like fleeing forest fires or tsunamis, but limiting the speed isn’t going to have a huge impact on accidents.
It could decrease fuel consumption and emissions though 🤷♂️.
But it still seems like a problem that could be solved with better enforcement.There are reasons other than natural disasters that happen all the time. Health emergencies are a fine example of this. Yes, ideally you’d wait for an ambulance but oft times that’s just not viable.
I’ll risk bleeding out in the highway trying to get to the hospital on my own than pay $15k for a five minute ride in the wee woo wagon
Haha, as someone currently in the states, I agree whole heartedly. I’d rather drive myself to the hospital with a stab wound than deal with an ambulance bill.
Excellent point!
As a somewhat recent arrival to NZ, I found it interesting — starting with our rental car — that the speed limit is displayed on your dashboard. It changes colour as soon as you go 1 km over the limit.
All very cool. The most notable issue with this is there are sections of roads where this doesn’t work at all.
That said, there is a LOT of traffic calming here.
There’s still the occasional assclown that goes way over the limit. Unsurprisingly, that usually happens on long, straight roads without traffic calming.
Authoritarian nonsense.
Yes, enforcing “laws” is authoritarian.
Ah. No thanks. New cars already bend us over a barrel for our data. I don’t need you monitoring me 24/7 on my speed and location. I like the side guards on semis idea though. Run with that one, Wiener.
Isn’t this already happening though?
Some have them. Wouldn’t mind seeing them on all trailers.
Nothing about the proposal requires any tracking.
Can’t go 10 over the speed limit, right?
How the hell will they know the speed limit where I am at?
Pre-download speed maps or passively receive speed broadcasts from the roadside.
Good God, use your imagination just a tiny little bit!
Ok. I’m using it.
My car has the hover ability from Back to the Future 2, and they are still going to track me. What now?
How about your car has maps stored on it that contain stored limit information?
Not everything is about tracking you.
How about let people actually own the fucking car they purchase
You will own nothing and be happy
Maybe the corporate overlords will let ChatGPT have my car go a little faster to my wage slave camp!
There are plenty of rules your car has to comply with in order to use public roads.
Rules are different from taking direct control away from the driver.
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This tech should be developed and used to stop chase vehicles. Also if it is used to stop people from going 10 over then we shouldn’t have cops checking people’s speed anymore.
Come to Omaha, where they already don’t.
Well, city cops don’t. State patrol ain’t got shit to do and will absolutely fuck up your day. But they don’t leave I80.
Despite all the chest-beating and holier-than-thou bullshit they spout whenever there’s a high profile traffic incident or chase, not a single police department on Earth actually gives a fuck about enforcing traffic regulations for “safety.” Maybe at some point in history, but no anymore. In modern times, traffic stops have only two aims in mind for police departments: Money, in the form of reliance on fines and citations for their budget; and as a pretext to harass, intimidate, search, and otherwise attempt to violate the 4th amendment rights of sections of the population they don’t like.
The police will vehemently oppose any mechanism or proposal that will in any way limit the volume of traffic stops they initiate and number of tickets they write. Even if it is demonstrably “for safety.”
I totally agree and that’s why the people need to stand up against them. Everyone likes to think they can’t change everything it we need to stand united. Calling representatives and demanding change and if they don’t then replace them. We need people to actually stand up for once
They dont violate the 4th amendment.
10mph over? Have they driven on CA freeways? The vast majority of traffic is moving at 15+ mph over.
This will cause traffic slow downs and more road rage.
One interesting about speeding in traffic. Often you’re rushing just to stop.
It’s been proven that if you cap the max speed in heavy traffic everyone gets through it faster. Less stop and go with merges and guesses.
Think of all the times someone sped up to prevent you from changing lanes? Or someone blocks you during a zipper merge.
Traffic wouldn’t suck as much if people didn’t suck. I can’t wait until a few decades from now we’ve got AI cars Managing it for us.
Variable speed limits just keep the road ticking over and they’re great. In the UK there were a bunch of highway improvements being rolled out, like reversible lanes, traffic flow monitoring and, yes, full-time variable speed limits and they all worked really, really well. But they also got rid of the hard shoulder (refuge lane) and the whole thing was collectively referred to as “smart motorways”. Needless to say that lots of people were injured or killed by the lack of hard shoulders, so now the government is poised to announce a rollback of all the smart motorway measures, including the absolutely superb variable speed limits.
Ah yes, the all-or-nothing approach, typical anglosphere reaction to a problem.
Canada does this shit too, it is infuriating.
I’m citing the Smart motorways in my response but I forgot my source.
I also didn’t know about the shoulders. Thank you
This will cause traffic slow downs
That’s literally the point.
Especially since they won’t be able to make older cars follow this.
Sounds like a roundabout way to track everyone
You don’t have to track a car to limit how fast it goes. Speed governerors exist inside gas powered cars already. All that has to be done is 1) legally require a manufacturer to limit speeds of their vehicles, and 2) prosecute them when they do not implement those restrictions. The rest is lawyers and lines of code (and lines of coke I guess)
You need location data to be able to determine what limit to impose.
And I bet you anything it will be a cloud based system.
How do you think GPS receivers work?
They don’t transmit the speed limit of the current road, and for things like construction they’ll need real-time updates.
I’m certain they won’t want to push the entire database out to every vehicle for every update…
I have a hard time believing it would be impossible to wire up a device that sends out a wireless signal with the local speed limit at every speed limit sign.
Why does it need to go to a database for it instead of have a receiver on the vehicle itself to pull data as it passes speed limit signs?
In fact, a centralized database would likely have more problems with not being accurate or current. Have you ever dealt with government databases?
Edit: Part of the reason the database would be trash is because speed limits are set by cities, not by the state. So in the database scenario every time a city updates their speed limit, they have to document all the zones and upload them to the database. All it takes is paperwork getting backed up a week for that to cause problems.
The problem with proposing infrastructure is that people hate it. Even if it would be beneficial. Train traffic is limited to 79 mph in the US because the companies in charge were told “put in more safety devices or you’re limited to 79 mph”, and they said “okay sure”.
They usually act like anything that wasn’t around when they were born is impossible. I can’t imagine trying to get a smoking ban passed now, or capping the national speed limit at 55 because of an oil crisis.
i’d sabotage those signs’ transmitters so fast
We got a tough guy here.
EDIT: Also I’m fairly sure that destruction of government property is a felony and if it’s wired for this, it could easily be wired to take and send photos when tampered with, but you do you. I guess people do just hate infrastructure more than *checks notes… being spied on. Because when given an alternative without a database, they shit on it.
Generally temporary speed limit changes just go down, so the worst case is for a little while your car will let you speed. And if it goes up but the town fucks up and doesn’t update the database, people will complain while being forced to drive a little slower than the new maximum.
They don’t need real time updates to accomplish their goals. The car just needs accurate days most of the time. Having the car download periodic updates to a database that covers the whole state is perfectly feasible and involves no tracking.
You should be worried more about tracking through license plates and cameras.
It would work everywhere except construction sites, where we can just have cops like we do everywhere right now.
GPS is a great solution, it already tells you what the speed limits are depending on the software.
In the cloud…
You don’t, just just need localized broadcast and a receiver in the car. Or cameras and signs as other people have mentioned.
How do you determine the location of the car and the speed limit on that section of road? Sounds awfully close to tracking it.
Cars can already read speed limit signs without any form of tracking. What’s funny is it will read unofficial speed limit signs on private driveways. It’s anecdotal but a 2021 Camry I drove recognized a 10 mph sign that looked very similar to a DoT sign and displayed it on the dash.
Working in the industry on these technologies, this is a horrible idea. I’ve driven vehicles that already have it, and it’s nice when it’s optional, but would legitimately be a hazard if it was on all the time.
What happens when it’s dark and/or rainy, and it reads the 45MPH sign on the side road you were on, but misses the 70MPH sign when you’re actually on the highway? It limits your ability to actually accelerate to the flow of traffic as well, since it generally won’t change the speed until after you pass it. Or even better, you’re doing 70 and it catches a 35MPH on a side road adjacent to the highway? What happens if you just cover the camera and it can’t read anything? Does the car just go into limp mode and limit you to 25MPH?
This isn’t a hypothetical, I see it happen very, very regularly in even the best systems available. They also probably won’t work for the lighted school zone speed limit signs by me, or the express lane type signs.
Map based also eliminates school and construction zones, which is where you want this most,
As it stands today, covering or disconnecting the camera results in the car throwing a warning. The system will either partially disable only the directly related features, or will disable entirely. With the Camry I drove, you lose lane keep assist, sign detection, collision avoidance and automatic cruise control. All of the driver assistance features rely on the front camera. Some cars use a combination of radar and camera so not everything is lost.
That’s a perfectly valid reason for it cars to not do it today.
That’s not a valid reason for saying we shouldn’t legislate it as a requirement. “If a car can’t prevent itself from going 10mph over the speed limit on our roads, it’s not allowed to drive on our roads”. Done.
Nothing is fool proof. There will be failures, and that’s okay. We can handle them the exact same way we handle them today: speeding tickets.
Thanks. Now I could easily see the havoc one troll with a sign can do with over-regulating like this.
Yeah I’ve seen that technology. But it definitely isn’t widespread.
Oh it is. Pretty much every automaker selling a mid and high level trim for any model has the feature. If it has the driver assistance features included, it can read signs. Base models are less likely to have it, but it’s not unheard of. A 2018 and later base model, 2wd, 2d Tacoma comes with lane keep assist, collision avoidance, automatic cruise control, and sign reading. It’s a $22k truck.
Tracking is the action of a 3rd party.
The car itself has GPS, knows it’s own speed, and can read speed limit signs. This can easily be done without the government needing to know the exact speed, position, and velocity of every vehicle on every section of road.
That would only be true if there was only one speed limit everywhere. Which there isn’t.
A car can tell it’s own speed, can know where it is, and can read speed limit signs. It’s not rocket science.
I drove a rental car 10 years ago in the Netherlands that would beep when the GPS said I went over the speed limit.
This system can easily be implemented without needing a government spying program. You just need legislation, and enforcement.
Those systems are shit. I had one in a fleet truck and I had to explain to management why I was going 65 in a 45 mph zone. I was on the highway, but the GPS system placed me on the frontage road that runs next to the highway.
Now imagine if instead of an alert to the management it slowed my vehicle down suddenly. That’s a problem on a busy highway.
Implementation and regulation are separate. It doesn’t matter if the systems to implement it are shit, it’s still the government’s responsibility to put regulation in place on how the roads can be used.
If electric cars can’t implement a system to keep them 10mph or lower under the speed limit, then they can’t be sold in the state. And if they are sold in the state, they get fined, and if electric car drivers are found going more than 10 mph over the speed limit, they get a speeding ticket.
It’s not a complicated system. There’s no need to bring state wide fleet monitoring of every car on the road into this. It can be solved with much simpler systems, and more mature technology.
Since a lot of discussion is happening around how they’re going to implement this, and the article doesn’t go into the details, here’s more information: https://sd11.senate.ca.gov/news/20240124-senator-wiener-introduces-groundbreaking-bills-slash-california-road-deaths-epidemic
In line with NTSB recommendations, SB 961 requires every passenger vehicle, truck, and bus manufactured or sold in the state to be equipped with speed governors that limits the vehicle’s speed based on the speed limit for the roadway segment. The maximum speed threshold over the speed limit for that segment that the speed governor may permit the vehicle to travel at is 10 miles per hour over the speed limit. SB 961 also permits the vehicle operator to temporarily override the speed governor function. SB 961’s speed governor requirement does not apply to emergency vehicles.
And if anyone really wants to dive into it, the actual text for the bill is here: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB961
Old cars for the win!
Yet another reason that old cars are looking better and better. We’ll be Cuba at some point.
I love old cars and trucks.
Lots of people arguing about the practicality of this, or whether it can be done without invading privacy or slippery-sloping into mass surveillance.
The thing is: Even if it could be done perfectly — giving instant leeway when emergencies occur, being perfectly private forever, with perfectly accurate sensors — I still don’t think we’d want it.
That’s because laws are not just mechanical things. They are social things. When we put up a speed limit sign, it’s not just to configure a number in the driver’s mind. It’s to remind them to think about how they’re interacting with the community around them.
De-emphasizing that responsibility runs counter to this social purpose, which I think we intuitively understand at some level even if we reflexively bring out other claims in order to object to the policy.
Isn’t that just going to cause accidents? For all the non regulated cars on the highway, what happens if you need to merge into a lane where the flow of traffic is faster than the speed limit? It doesn’t even have to be a highway, but lane changes in any city can have that problem I imagine.
I can only imagine going to pass and failing to do so in as timeless manner as needs to occur…
That would make passing so much more dangerous as people are in the other lane even longer.
I’m currently in a rental that reads street signs and keeps the limit on the dash. Very handy for double-checking when you’re suddenly not going the same speed as traffic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic-sign_recognition
Had a Budget truck like this.
Going 70 down the Interstate when it saw a 15mph sign for a weigh station. Truck started slowing down real quick. It scared the piss out of me, and almost caused a huge pile up.
Fuck that shit.
In my experience with them by Dodge is the speed is wrong often enough where it can be a problem.
Saying 25mph when it is 45mph is one thing, but the 45mph when it is 25mph is another. There are a few rural roads where it said 30mph when it was 55mph. I would see the speed on the dash and think it was an odd speed for the road and Waze said something other than the car, so I would be in this total state of not knowing to trust the car, myself, or Waze. Eventually I just started to ignore the car and use my experience and observations weighted against Waze.
If it were a perfect system, that’d be cool.
Hopefully they improve it, sounds useful.
This is just a failure of road design. Roads should be designed so you don’t even need to see a sign to tell you how fast to go.
How would you do that?
Spend lots of money.
