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Comment by hhmmmsms | Hacker News Reader

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

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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?

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.

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...

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.

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