Hacker News Reader

Comment by nikisweeting | Hacker News Reader

Tracks, private roads, autobahns, dynos, plenty of places to go fast legally.

Not to mention the extra power goes towards faster acceleration, not just top speed. The same force that gets you an extra 10mph top speed also works to get you from from 0-60mph that much faster.

View on HN

Especially Autobahn in Germany is interesting. Generally there is no speed limit, but something called "Richtgeschwindigkeit" (the advised speed you should go, which is 130km/h). But there ARE speed limits on most parts of the Autobahn (construction sites are generally limited to 60 or 80km/h, dangerous sections, etc. so it's often limited to 100-140 km/h). Sections without speed limit are a lot of fun and created a whole industry around them. There are car rentals with sports cars you can get for a few hundred/thousand Euro a day, depending on the car (and they have almost everything, from Porsche and Mercedes AMG to Ferraris and Lamborghinis).

As someone living near a luxury car rental place (but in a country with a national speed limit), I want to point out that the main target audience for renting Lamborghinis and Ferraris isn't passionate drivers.

It's 28 year old males with money and no sense of self-worth. There are regularly reports of people doing nothing but driving up and down a nice street downtown. Flooring it from red light to red light, dropping the clutch on every gear change. All. Day.

The completely unrelated question I would like to ask is "Why is it allowed to show your middle finger to random people on the street, but as soon as they're in a car, it's a crime?"

Woah it's a crime to flip someone off in a car in Germany? TIL

It's also a crime to insult people outside of cars in germany. When doing so behind the steering wheel it may result in a temporary driving ban in addition to a penalty.

IANAL, but in the German legal system, one can only be convicted on an insult charge if the insulted party explicitly requests it.

Behind the steering wheel, the situation is different because road rage will usually not be litigated as an insult, but as attempted coercion.

We should add that traffic flow on normal days will prevent you from going _real fast_ for longer durations. People who try that will regularly provoke dangerous situations.

A general speed limit on the Autobahn is long overdue. Lots of our neighbours (see Austria, Switzerland, Netherlands, Italy) are doing fine that way.

Of course, street-legal automobiles could simply be governed with a top speed of the fastest legal speed limit in a given region.

How do you imagine this working for someone who drives across Europe frequently, including sections of unrestricted Autobahn? Or someone who takes their street legal car onto (private) tracks from time to time?

GPS :)

But then you need an up-to-date database of allowed speeds on roads all over the world, and since those already aren't reliable when they're used as indicative data, I don't think that's a viable solution.

It also wouldn't work on road sections with variable speed.

Doesn't need to work everywhere for it to be useful. You can always fail fast, literally. The data is available for wide swathes of Europe, for example. Last time I checked it was very accurate even for temporary construction sites.

Variable speed roads, either make the limit the highest speed that's in the range, or come up with a way to communicate the current limit. Most new cars are always connected, anyways. And again, you can fail fast, at least initially. As with all driving aids, the person in the driver's seat bears the ultimate responsibility.

Yet failing anywhere can be dangerous, even fatal.

An example: A construction site goes away, raising the speed from 35 to 70mph. Someone governed to 35 is suddenly a virtually stationary obstacle. Theoretically (and legally), the onus is on the other drivers to avoid it, but practically speaking it's just begging for an accident.

Limit it to 130 km/h, which is appropriate for almost all or Europe[1]. If you're e.g. in Germany or Poland, you can have it unlocked, but the car stops being road legal anywhere else.

Ideally, they'd just harmonize the speed limit in the EU; a majority in Germany approves of introducing a general speed limit on motorways anyways. But that'd hurt the bottom line of car manufacturers and we can't have that.

Also, GPS-validated speed limits for new cars. And I don't mean just the top speed in a country, I mean the posted speed limit on whatever road you are. Doesn't need to be a hard limit, in case of emergencies and for maneuvering, but make something interesting happen: online registration, enable the hazard lights, I'm sure there are many good options. It's ridiculous we're talking about fully automated driving and we don't even have this simple automation which would get rid of an entire class of everyday offense.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Freeway_speed_limits_eur...

All new cars sold from May 2022 in the EU will be fited with intelligent speed assistance systems (sign recognition etc) with speed limiters.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20190410IP...

Interesting, thank you. Just a feedback mechanism, not a limiter, though. And I imagine you'll be able to turn it off...

wait, so now all cars in the world have to optimize for a fraction of roads in Germany? or having a universal ability for everyone to take their Chrysler Pacifica or Chevy Equinox to a private race track? This explanation makes zero sense, tons (if not most) of cars that have 120-140 mph on the dashboard (such as the two above) will never go anywhere near Germany or a private race track. I'd rather go for the "acceleration" explanation elsewhere here - but what do I know.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com