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Comment by idopmstuff | Hacker News Reader

The speeding one is an interesting analogy and a good question - why not force cars to cap their top speed at the highest speed possible on the freeway? I imagine the answer is that capping speed like that wasn't possible for the initial cars, and so people just got used to being able to speed and don't want it to go away now.

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Possibly because there are circumstances in which speeding is necessary? I’ve been the driver and the passenger in a vehicle being driven to a distant emergency room. In both cases speed of arrival was of the essence.

> Possibly because there are circumstances in which speeding is necessary? I’ve been the driver and the passenger in a vehicle being driven to a distant emergency room. In both cases speed of arrival was of the essence.

There are ways to make speeding possible while keeping abuse minimal. For example mergency switch that could allow speeding but for example enabled alarm that in normal use would be to annoying and resetting would be neede. There are many ways it could be done in. I believe car nerds could think of something more reliable.

Also do we really know that emergency speeding saves more people than are killed due to speeding? We give such excuses, but are we sure it's really warranted?

> enabled alarm that in normal use would be to annoying and resetting would be need

So you want a driver in an already stressful situation to be nagged periodically with an alarm that "in normal use would be too annoying" (i.e. during stress, it will certainly be much more annoying)?

That doesn't sound like a good solution.

It happens but it’s quite rare that someone is in a situation where going that much faster than normal is actually a good trade (more likely that they’ll crash or get t-boned running a red light).

You could probably work with that by shifting the risk back to the driver: allow the override to work by disabling the entertainment system (few boy racers like driving in silence) and have it blink the lights, play a warning over the external speakers, and text the local emergency number to alert them. If you have a buddy bleeding out in the back seat, you will welcome the attention and the cops are going to escort you to the hospital.

From what I understand, cars in Japan are all capped at 180 km/h, and cars that are capable of more often have a gps check to unlock automatically when on a known race track.

180 is still quite high but at least not completely insane as some of the gangs were before that limit. A number would probably need to be found for any country, state, etc but the tech is probably ready.

Maximum speed in e.g. Germany is unlimited, so yeah technically that is already the case.

Because even such basic feat is technically not possible, only on a minor percentage of roads. Even limits shown by Apple/Gmaps are often incorrect, the ones that are shown on a midrange 1y old car dashboard aided by camera+maps are laughable.

There's a max speed limit in the US. I believe the fastest Ive ever seen is 75 or 80. Set it to that.

Varies by state. I think 85 is the current highest, in Texas. No way to know if max speed limits will go up or down in the future.

These cars have internet connectivity and get software updates. They could be updated if the maximum speed limit in the entire state changes.

And of course every car will be surely connected all the time, downloading the update as soon as any law comes in effect that affects max speed in a given situation. Also the GPS will surely tell with 100% accuracy which state road you are driving. Also road status will be surely up to date both in state digital map and visual signing. Also there is no way someone could exploit this feature maliciously.

Consider that the effort of getting an update is less than your state DOT changing the legal maximum - and that people will be highly motivated. It’s not like they need to do this every day - in most states they’ll never do it in the life of not only the car but the driver!

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