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Comment by djyaz1200 | Hacker News Reader

"Imagine if we had the tech to apply speed governors in places with high crash rates! What if departments of transportation could lower speeds dynamically to make sure that risky road infrastructure is made safer."

This, of course, could be done, but what if people driving fast are rushing to flee a rapidly advancing forest fire, tidal wave, active shooter, etc?

As a check on the ever-growing power of government and surveillance tech, anytime a system is capable of taking away someone's liberty, there should be a human in the loop on the other side to make sure those decisions are reasonable.

Edit: Or just don't take away their liberty at all

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How do we balance safety regulations with these emergency situations?

We're experiencing some of the highest traffic fatality rates in decades and I think the liberty of those dying and being injured on our streets need to be taken into account as well.

I prefer the technological solution of a speed governor to automated traffic cameras because I think automated traffic cameras can easily become surveilance devices while speed governors tend to be implemented locally (i.e. within the car).

Are there other solutions that you prefer that can protect liberty law abiding drivers and pedestrians from the recklessness of speeding and dangerous driving?

Ticket drivers who drive dangerously. Address the problem (the person's decisions), not the tool they're using.

Maybe you could have a speed governor that can be overridden if the gas petal is fully pressed to the floor. (Fine for gas cars but probably not a good experience in EVs).

I live near a blind turn into an intersection where the speed limit is 50. When there’s heavy fog, it’s deadly. I’ve seen 2 fatal accidents, one with a dump truck and school bus, multiple people died. Another one I witnessed the next year was someone head on hitting a telephone pole. Same intersection. Same conditions (heavy fog).

Right now the only other solution is to reduce the speed limit or to add a red light. Or do nothing and let the accidents continue

Sure, reasonable. But not a this-or-that kind of thing.

Hit a button - override! Be your own boss. There was a fire, everybody will understand.

But you just press that button because you're a type-A dick, well pay the ticket then.

Liberty!

Sounds nice, but eventually, the button is always taken away.

No, the button stays but the price increases so much so only rich assholes can use it.

So... a speed camera?

Curiously, different in a particular way. See, your car is reporting your speed. Self-reported speeding is a different niche.

You are driving on publicly funded roads in a licensed machine where the police have the legal authority to demand you submit to inspection at any time, and you legally must purchase insurance from a private company to operate it.

I would say local speed governors would be less authoritarian than many interventions that already exist for driving, which is an act that is already a leading cause of death in North America.

Just make it an IR blaster on the street lamps over the road that the municipality can remote command to send out the "low speed limit next N meters" signal. Let it be legal for drivers to override the governor, but doing so is effectively an admission of guilt that you're speeding.

Eh your right to drive like an aggressive maniac is not enshrined in the constitution.

People have consistently shown that they’re incapable of driving responsibly. If we’re not going to fix the actual problems, I’d prefer some limits on car speeds when inside cities and more populated areas.

> "People" have consistently shown that they’re incapable of driving responsibly. Therefore "You" should have less freedom and if it results in You and Your family dying because a device You paid for refused to do what You told it to, that's an acceptable loss to Me

That may not be the best line of reasoning. There's probably a lot of things you enjoy doing that aren't "enshrined in the constitution" that I might want to take from you in order to make me feel more comfortable, and the same can likely be said for a lot of other people as well. If we all played your game there's no telling how much you could end up being prevented from doing.

I like speed limits too, I'm glad that we already have them. Draconian enforcement of rules by machines is supposed to be a cautionary tale, not something to aim for.

I am not actually in favor of speed governors, but it makes for a bit of an interesting thought experiment: I wonder if it might actually increase throughput in a widespread emergency–many of the worst gridlock situations I see in the NYC area are caused by aggressive drivers who crash and wind up blocking the road, so I could imagine it being the case that, at least in dense areas, restricting speeds could mitigate the stampede effect and keep traffic flowing.

> rushing to flee a rapidly advancing forest fire, tidal wave, active shooter

You design for the normal, not the "so unlikely that 99% of drivers will never be in this situation in a lifetime of driving."

So much of what engineers design for is the abnormal. 100 year flood, hurricane strength wind, web traffic surge, etc etc.

If you can't anticipate contingency in your design, it's not a very good design.

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