CA bill to require all new cars to prevent them from going 10mph over speedlimit | Hacker News Reader

CA bill to require all new cars to prevent them from going 10mph over speedlimit

sfchronicle.com

43 pointslando2319154 comments

The title should probably be updated to accurately reflect that this is a proposal. The way it's phrased makes it sound like it's a bill that has already been passed.

There are bills like this that have absolutely 0 chance of ever passing that are proposed all the time. Clickbait at its finest.

The fact he couldn't even get a second senator to co-sponsor the bill tells you that it's DOA.

https://legiscan.com/CA/text/SB961/2023

Conventional wisdom is that a bill that has been passed is a law.

Sure...? But this bill hasn't been passed, it was INTRODUCED less than 24 hours ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgVKvqTItto

I knew what this was before clicking. Beat me to it

A "bill" (proposal) being "passed" is the process by which it becomes a law.

A bill is by definition a proposal. It's no longer a bill once it has been passed.

I drove a moving van once between to major cities. It was governed not to go over 65. On some two lane roads I would run come upon a slower moving vehicle. If I tried to pass the governor would kick in and make it really dangerous to pass safely. I would have to sit behind the car for a long time going 50 in a 65 before there was a huge gap in oncoming traffic to be able to pass.

If you are driving a large vehicle that you are not used to or trained for, you should absolutely not be making high speed passes within narrow gaps in traffic.

Also a 15mph difference in speed should be plenty to make a safe pass.

Finally, going 50mph instead of 65mph for 10 minutes only adds 2 minutes 18 seconds to your trip time.

I’m not sure 15mph is necessarily enough to pass. I rarely pass in those passing zones where it’s one lane each way, but I think I kind of gun it for those few seconds… you want to spend as little time as possible in the opposite lane obviously

How, exactly would the car be expected to know the speed limit? What if the expected value is wrong? What if the database of speed limits is unavailable? What happens when a speed limit for a road changes? What about new roads? What happens when the car leaves California?

What if California moves? (Earthquakes and Landslides are common there) How is the car supposed to cope with moving roads and landmarks?

Is there some provision for over-riding the speed limiter in the event of emergency?

What if Loran-C* is no longer available? Or GPS, or GLONASS. What if the Russians, Canadians, Nevadans or others Jam the signal?

This bill strikes me as about as useful as the time my home state of Indiana tried to legislate the value of Pi.[1]

Edit: *Yes, I know there are no longer any reliable long range ground-based navigation systems, which is a huge problem. While LORAN-C has been discontinued, it has never been properly replaced.

Edit2: What about private property? If a parking lot has a posted speed limit, how does that information get into the database? Should it get into the database?

There are far, far too many corner cases to seriously consider using a technical solution to what is obviously a social problem.

This is such incredible hyperbole, you haven't even realized Loran-C is long gone, not that any cars ever used it.

They are already doing this in the EU now (https://www.drive.com.au/news/new-cars-will-stop-drivers-fro...), albeit not with actual speed restriction as far as I know, but just bongs a warning instead.

It mainly relies on the OCR reading speed signs which most new cars have had for a while now, although as anyone who has it will know, it's not that always that great.

I have just this in my car and on one road where I live regularly that has a 60km/h limit my speed limit warning would always read 5km/h past a certain point and it took me a while to realise it was actually picking up a speed sign for 5km/h in a small car park off some way to the side.

It also has trouble with mixed speed limits that I have in my area where both speeds are on the same sign, for example some roads are 80km/h in normal conditions but 60km/h when wet or 70km/h for cars but 40km/h for trucks and buses, usually it defaults to the lower limit.

Luckily my car is a bit older so it just flashes red when you go over what it thinks is the speed limit, but more modern cars that will bong or even restrict speed would be infuriating.

It mainly relies on the OCR reading speed signs which most new cars have had for a while now

Have they? That must be an EU thing, or very recent, because it's mostly only luxury cars here in the US as best I can tell. Certainly wasn't even an option on our 2017 BMW or 2021 Honda.

Better yet, who is liable if I went 20mph over when car failed to recognise speed correctly?

I’m all in for digital roads, esp if they can shift liability from me. But right now traffic sign recognition is only like 95% working.

The driver is always responsible until full self-driving systems are on the market. A system like this is helping you comply with the law, but it doesn't change the fact that following the law was always your responsibility.

The first thought that comes to mind is that this would be a big problem in situations that arguably warrant speeding, such as accelerating out of a dangerous traffic situation, evading pursuers, or transporting a passenger in a life or death emergency.

True, but it might still be worth the tradeoff. I would need to see some estimates of the numbers here

Those happen in movies, but only very, very rarely in real life. Ambulances have flashing lights, sirens, and trained drivers and they still usually stay below the speed limit; Joe Soccer Dad is going to get t-boned trying the same thing on the way to the ER.

In the vast majority of cases, the delays on those trips are caused by the other vehicles on the road. Driving aggressively will make that worse because it will cause cascades of other people doing unusual moves which increase the unpredictability and danger of the situation.

> Joe Soccer Dad is going to get t-boned trying the same thing on the way to the ER.

Depends on the zone and the speed limit. Going 35 mph in a 20 MPH zone isn’t even noticeable.

It is if you’re the pedestrian the negligent driver ran over.

Yes, but the objection is that an average driver cannot go beyond 10 MPH “in practice” without losing control. Which is nonsense.

A driver who can control their car in 20 MPH can control it in 35 MPH; it happens all the time.

As to your point: I suppose all is well if a pedestrian is hit at 40 mph in a 40 MPH local zone?

The objection isn’t that people can’t drive 35mph but that there are exceedingly few real life situations where people need to go massively over the limit and can do so safely. Those scenarios which most drivers will never be in are being used to justify not having safety precautions which would save thousands of lives annually.

“Joe Soccer Dad is going to get t-boned trying the same thing on the way to the ER.”

That is what I’m responding to. That implies pretty clearly that people can’t handle more than +10 mph, which certainly isn’t true.

I know, I wrote that. Getting t-boned does not mean that you can’t handle driving faster but rather that road conditions aren’t safe for it: in most places you aren’t averaging that kind of speed for a non-trivial time without running red lights or being in situations where you really don’t have visibility to do so safely – and you end up getting t-boned by someone who _thought_ they could proceed safely because they weren’t expecting cross traffic going that much faster than normal. The point is simply that it’s extreme rare to be in a situation where going that much over the limit is the right choice.

> Getting t-boned does not mean that you can’t handle driving faster but rather that road conditions aren’t safe for it

When you get t-boned—your words and scenario—it’s the other driver that lost control. And I will point out that there’s a large leeway in low speeds; the type of vehicle, weight, and tires all contribute and I stand by my original point.

The other point you made is unsafe speeds for the given condition. Conditions—like icy or wet roads—is situational and subject to change.

Do you govern for all and introduce a very complex system? Only for ideal conditions?

Then there’s the question of changing speed limits (over the years) and the software's ability to keep up: Do you require open source software and hardware? Enforce an end-of-life after 10 years?

Studies and data.

I have driven 250K accident-free miles. I’d wager that more than half of those were more than 10 mph over the posted limit. Highways in New England are often posted at 55 or 65 and moving at 75-80.

Is that “massively over”? No, but a bill to limit to 10 over is kinda impractical.

I’ve done a bit closer to 300k but I can’t say any of the times I went over the speed limit were necessities like the person I responded to was claiming. There was a single time where I sped up to avoid hitting something - pickup truck right in front of me on the 405 had a mattress fly up after a strap broke and I gunned it to go under before it came down, but I didn’t go anywhere near the freeway speed limit because the only reason I was that close was because we were all stuck in the slowdown approaching the 55 interchange.

So that’s almost once in my life where the movie plot scenario came close to happening. Over the same time period I have known 3 people who were killed and half a dozen people who had life-altering injuries due to being hit, and speed was a factor in all of those cases. It’s not as fun as pretending you are shaking the terrorists gunning for the president but that’s the threat I worry about because it happens orders of magnitude more frequently.

I wasn't arguing that the speeding was necessary for safety or accident avoidance, but rather that if you put 20% of new cars onto New England highways that are posted at 55 mph and they're governed to 65 mph, that you're going to create an utter shitshow of unsafe speed differentials as the 80% of traffic that's moving at a prevailing 75-85 mph encounters these new rolling roadblocks with the accelerator matted and governed to 65 mph.

in other words, what driving in the South already feels like!

The speed range from 20mph to 35mph (give or take) has been pretty well researched and documented as a range where pedestrian fatalities ramps up dramatically.

Additionally, stopping distance (very rough average) will double for most drivers from 20mph to 35mph.

So, yeah, for this range of speeds, that 10-15mph difference is absolutely critical to maintain pedestrian safety.

Remember, 20mph is slower than the default residential speed of 25mph (in the US). It's almost exclusively used in tight neighborhood streets, where pedestrians (children in particular) should be expected.

70mph vs 80mph, I don't so much care about. In theory, those speeds are only ever seen on a limited-access highway.

The California bill is stupid, but probably DOA as well. But, that doesn't mean the problem it's trying to solve doesn't exist.

How many situations are there where there’s a life and death situation hinging on you going 35mph in that 20mph zone, but not the 30mph this law would allow?

Now, do the reverse: getting hit at 35mph is far more likely to be fatal, and 99.9999% of the time the driver going it has no reason to do so better than “I like vroom vroom”. We have over 40k dead Americans annually and millions with serious injuries, and speeding is a factor in a large percentage of those.

Where it’s life or death will be an edgecase but it shouldn’t be ignored.

There are other consequences like snarled traffic; if everyone goes near the limit, then the way to merge is to slow down.

I’d like to see more studies and actual data. Not simply rely on “common sense”.

Yes, I too would like to see some data. For example, we have decades of studies showing that excessive speed is a significant factor to the point where even very pro-driver groups treat it as a given - here’s the first hit I got just now, for example:

https://highways.dot.gov/public-roads/winter-2022/05

On the other hand, we’re being told that measures which will probably save many lives can’t be allowed because of things people saw in a movie? This thread is has people talking like it’s common to have trees falling across roads too quickly to brake or needing to evade pursuit, but it’s really conspicuous how nobody uses first-person language to describe it actually happening to them.

Nobody is disputing that faster speeds on impact are more deadly.

But what thought has been given to automatically restricting the speed of a car?

If I cross from a 55 to 25 MPH, is it up to the automaker on whether it gradually slows? Brake checks?

Should that mean speed limit zones should also be a gradual change?

What happens when the system mistakes a highway for local? Should it be local only? How often is it error prone?

Where’s your data for any of that?

Poorly thought-out legislation will be worse than what we have now.

Yes, competent implementation is important as everywhere else but none of that is the topic of this thread, which started when someone imaginatively claimed that this would be “a big problem in situations that arguably warrant speeding” but could provide no data or even personal experience to support the idea that people are regularly evading pursuit or racing to the ER with a critically ill patient.

Competent requirements and implementation aren’t just as important.

They’re the difference between life-and-death.

May I also suggest you not take the worst interpretation from what was a minor and pedantic quip?

Sorry it really depends on the situation, road conditions, etc. Ambulances responding to a call is different than transport to a hospital. And many times the paramedics are treating a patient in the back so it doesn't make sense to drive fast if the injuries are treatable or non-life threatening. Firefighters and cops are typically first responders in accidents and incidents and many times they do need to travel faster than speed limit.

I think it's silly to assume that emergency vehicles would be included.

Literally called out in the article that they'd be exempt.

To be fair, at least I was paywalled from reading the article, so it's highly likely many are stuck working on the headline alone.

https://archive.is/NYi7U

https://archive.ph/NYi7U

https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clea...

https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean...

I doubt this law won’t have an exception for emergency response, but my point was that even people with the legal right to speed, solid need, and safety equipment usually don’t end up going that fast because it’s unsafe or impossible due to traffic. Every so often there’s someone racing down a desert highway but even then they aren't going to want to lose it on a curve.

Occupancy firefighters and cops won't have the speed limiters.

do you not drive much? or not have much life experience? i've driven people in emergency situations many times both during day and night. it seems extremely naive to just paper over ALL the situations that happen on roadways with some ivory tower response. dang tree just fell on my car..couldn't accelerate any faster to make it

How many times have you seen trees falling on the road at all, much less too close to brake?

I don’t know who taught you how to drive but in California in the 90s they tended to emphasize that if you couldn’t stop without hitting something, you were going too fast. I’d give long odds on that being better advice far, far more frequently in scenarios like what you describe.

If a tree literally fell on your car, there was no way you were going to accelerate out from under it. Humans simply don't have the reaction time to do so.

Now, if that tree fell in front of you, the slower you're going, the more likely you are able to stop before running into it.

Human reaction time to apply brakes is ~half a second. Stopping distance is roughly linear as speed increases. So, 20mph you start braking in ~15 feet. 40mph, 30 feet. 60mph 45 feet. Etc. That's just to react - you still need the time/space to bring the vehicle to a stop or slow enough to swerve around the tree.

i guess I'll chalk that up as no to my first two questions

I made a conscious decision to reduce my driving from ~15k/year to ~3k/year.

I'm 47, so plenty of life experience, though life so far has not included regular emergency trips across the county nor speeding out from under falling trees. :shrug:

I'm 52 years old and have driven since I got my license when I was 16.

I've never once driven in any emergency situation where I felt I needed to floor it.

In any kind of accident situation it is almost always better to brake early and bleed off speed so any accident will have less kinetic energy and not more (a common driver mistake on r/IdiotsInCars is to honk and swerve and not brake). And I've [safely and without accident] driven many vehicles which couldn't accelerate very fast at freeway speeds so trying to speed away from something wasn't much of an option. The situations where I miss more power is when you get stuck behind some idiot truck doing 40 in the next to left lane and have to get around them into much faster moving traffic and need to punch it, which being governed to 80 mph won't impact your ability to do that at all.

Inside of cities with good 911 response times it is better to have the ambulance drive to you rather than you attempt to drive to the hospital. They have the training and the flashing lights to let everyone know why they're breaking the law along with being more emotionally detached from the situation.

And in some cases people think that the hit and run they were just in constitutes and 'emergency' and they start to chase down the fleeing vehicle like they're the police and they should just not do that and stop putting the rest of the public at risk.

Even if you're involved in a road rage incident with someone chasing you, then you still should just fairly calmly drive to the nearest police station or similar place where you can get help, and speeding at 100 mph isn't going to help you at all and just place everyone else at risk.

The need to exceed the speed limits is pretty narrow, and likely just rural situations where it makes sense to drive to meet the ambulance. I'll agree that these kinds of laws should apply to cities and towns with good 911 coverage and they need exceptions for rural areas (which also means no speed governors on those long straight roads in texas and wyoming everyone gets concerned about as well).

It happens every day. Happened to me several times yesterday. Often the google maps / internet version of the speed limit is wildly different than the actual speed limits. I drove for an hour on a highway that google thjngs is 40mph but is actually 65. Have fun being that one car whose computer doesnt understand how to read signs. Also, speed variable highways are common in my area.

The "it" that you're talking about is different from the "it" discussed in the parent comment.

I transported my friend to the hospital when they had stroke symptoms. They got checked by a local medic (it was in a small national monument) who told me to drive to the nearest hospital, about 50 miles away, "fast, but not dangerously, unless the symptoms get worse, then drive REALLY fast."

We definitely were more than 10 over, relatively safely. Luckily the symptoms did not get worse.

But if my speed had been governed, I'd have made it my mission to destroy the careers of the politicians who passed that horseshit.

Sometimes the best, safest thing to do is to speed. We need that capability.

Normally I drive the speed limit, much to the dismay of those around me.

Yes, indeed. Not very likely but still...

I would like to have an annoying warning sound that prevents me from getting speeding tickets, but I would not like to have technology limit me artificially without the possibility of a "human override", for the reasons you cite.

I’ve often wondered how effective it’d be if speeding simply turned off the entertainment system and played an excessive speed warning message instead. You’d accept that in any actual emergency but it’d really put a damper on LARPimg GTA on the way home from work.

Can the car punch the driver in the kidney when they run a red light too? That would be great - I feel like ignoring stop lights is happening more and more and a bigger risk that simple speeding.

There’s a pretty high overlap between those groups, and I wish they’d be more aggressive at taking away licenses from people who refuse to drive safely. Running a red light twice in a year should suspend your driving privileges for the next year.

The first thought that comes to my mind is binding your state's whole traffic grid to a single stupid point of failure. If bound by GPS + some database of speed limits, a single update to the speed limit database could cause traffic to grind to a halt. If bound by road signs with onboard AI, lots of false positive incidents can occur. Would be trivial to paper over road signs as a prank, for example, changing a speed limit sign from 65 to 15 and then slowing interstate traffic to a crawl.

Yes, and clearly if an asteroid hits the world, we will not have to worry about speed limits at all! We should skip doing the work.

As usual, don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough. We have scooters that limit their speed in pedestrian zones and drones weighing 35g that will refuse to fly anywhere near airports. Yet cars that know perfectly well where they are can go 100mph in cities. It's not reasonable.

> transporting a passenger in a life or death emergency

For a medical emergency, you are better off calling 911. First responders such as EMTs, fire fighters have significant training as well as immediately life saving medications and equipment such as Narcan (to reverse opiate overdoses), Epinephrine (for anaphylactic shock - a life threatening allergic reaction), and defibrillators (for cardiac arrhythmias). Even police officers may have some of these things in their cars now (especially Narcan), and may be trained in such things as first aid and assisting with child birth.

In addition, the modern ambulance with paramedics provides much of the same life saving support that you would find in an ER. In addition, the ambulance will know which hospital in the area provides the type of care you need and they can call ahead to have things ready to go - for example, a patient having a stroke needs to go to a stroke center or a patient with a heart attack needs to go to a hospital than potentially has interventional cardiology on staff.

> For a medical emergency, you are better off calling 911

Not always, no. Sometimes you would lose precious time by doing so. Sometimes they are 45 minutes away. Sometimes the city's resources are overwhelmed. Particularly in mass disasters.

In California, for example, what if you are in the path of a wildfire? Nobody is gonna save you before you burn up.

I expect HN people to be able to do basic statistics. For that one-in-a-million situation that (allegedly) warrants speeding to safe a life, there are at least a million times that speeding causes death.

So purely fantasy situations then? Meanwhile, children, pedestrians, and cyclists are dying enmasse. Sounds like a perfectly reasonable trade.

This would hit the signature count for a ballot measure to reverse it within hours of being signed into law.

Seems like this bill was written to generate headlines more than anything else. There’s been a huge uptick in pedestrian/biker fatalities in my area (South Bay) over the past 5 years. Even in my neighborhood, a group of students got plowed through at a cross walk while they had right of way (my son bikes w/ them each morning, but was home sick that day; all lived, but bones broken and PT for some). Excessive speed was not a factor. In any event, very few of the pedestrian incidents were directly tied to speed. Lack of attention, not fit to drive (age), and DUI are almost always what’s listed in the police report. Either way, if the goal is simply to throw some regulations for a technical solution at a complex problem, then maybe focusing on inattention/distraction would be more useful. For instance, I’d be okay with being nagged by a chime (like w/ unbuckled belt) whenever my attention was not sufficiently on the road.

Here’s my (biased) list of more productive suggestions to tackle:

- make it legal for LE to pull over and cite cars for front window tint dark enough that pedestrians/bikers cannot see the drivers eyes (it’s now common for soccer moms at pickup to be rolling with 15-20% on fronts). And FFS just go ahead and impound anyone with a dark tint on their windshield. If repeat offender, impound vehicle.

- Lifted trucks should require DOT-approved pedestrian-friendly bumpers or brush guards when driven on public roads. Additionally, inspect stamp during Smog testing to ensure they are DOT approved. If a lifted truck, or one w/o DOT-approved (off road) brush guard, is involved in accident that results in injury directly attributed to the modifications, charge owner with criminal negligence.

- Require DMV road test every 10 years for license renewal; every 5 after age 60, and every 2 after 80.

- Require cars to pass a basic headlight alignment test during smog testing. Aftermarket LEDs in halogen housings would be automatic fail. Registration cannot be renewed until corrected.

- daytime sobriety checkpoints in neighborhoods. It doesn’t even need to be a test / checkpoint. It’s insane how often I see/smell cars driving by my house w/ drivers vaping cannabis to “take the edge off” after work (or whatever I’ve been told).

Many of these are currently applied in Europe.

> make it legal for LE to pull over and cite cars for front window tint dark enough that pedestrians/bikers cannot see the drivers eyes

Isn't that already the case, but unenforced? I knew multiple guys in high school who were pulled over for failing to maintain their vehicle in safe working order for that exact reason.

Cars are already ridiculously expensive thanks to all the mandates and many cars are not sold in the U.S due to prohibitive regulations (I wish I could buy a new Land Cruiser 76), this will only make things worse. What is the new cars endgame? Only the elites will be able to afford them?

Interesting idea. I think most people will hate it and there are many technological reasons for it to be problematic.

Can it be abused too? Say I have an old car without that limit, harass or attack someone then speed up by only going 15 over the limit? What about emergencies? What about motorbikes in that law?

A ton of unintended consequences to consider.

However, I don’t think any car needs to be able to go over certain speeds, and that could be a place to start. Would the limit be 90, 100mph?

Maybe get a way to unlock on a race track, but beyond that, some advertised top speeds are absurd.

I don't think we should be regulating things from a place of "I can't imagine ever needing X; we should mandate technological controls to prevent it." We should regulate things as a need arises, based on data

It's not about not being able to imagine the need or not. It's from seeing people driving their cars at highly dangerous speeds all the time (easily 20mph faster than most people who are already driving 10-15mph over the limit). If it were only dangerous to the driver, it'd be one thing but they put others in danger. There are countless stories of speeding drivers killing bystanders.

No one has ever a need to drive at 120+mph.

The “need arises” part are the thousands of people killed and orders of magnitude more with serious injuries who will never have the same quality of life as they had before the collision. In the case of cars an absolute cap at, say, 85mph would cover the maximum speed legal speed for the entire United States and still be at least 40mph lower than the top speed of almost all vehicles sold here.

The original title was better:

> California could require car ‘governors’ that limit speeding to 10 mph over posted limits

I’m not sure why op changed it to the more ambiguous

> CA bill to require all new cars to prevent them from going over the speed limit

The latter title could imply the bill had already been passed, whereas the original title makes clear that this is simply introduced legislation which may or may not pass

A bill is by definition a proposal.

Is this determined by GPS data? Will it continuously update speed restriction data by road? Does it undo the governor if you're outside the state?

This is just unfeasible. Especially for the 2027 model year.

I've joked before that states will one day install devices for "microfines" -- eg, going over the speed limit for short sustained period results in $5 fine.

This won't pass. It's legal to go any speed you want on private property you own; a challenge at the CA Supreme Court would likely eviscerate any bill like this that were to pass. Enforcing speed limits isn't a trivial problem. It only seems like one if you understand it from the very limited perspective of merely knowing the limit (kinda) at any time; once you start enforcing that limit, you create liability and danger where previously there was none.

What about speeding to the emergency room? What about an open road on your own property within California's borders? What about a racetrack? There's just no amount of current infrastructure which can model this properly and without enormous holes, some of which would immediately conflict with rights most Americans consider sacrosanct.

Not to rant, but it also feels like a proposal that would only make sense within the limits of a large city. California is an enormous state. Lassen County cohabitates this state with San Francisco. It is ludicrous to think that your vehicle is just going to "know" the speed limit and be able to properly enforce it everywhere unless your perspective starts and ends with narrow and busy city streets. It's embarrassing; Scott Weiner may represent San Francisco, but he's a member of a State legislative body. It feels like this bill could never pass anyway so what's the point beyond political theater.

Speeding is one of the factors, but there are also other factors, bad drivers, roads conditions, alcohol/drugs, phones, sleep, car condition, eyesight, mood …

With exceptions for the special people, ya' know.

Well, that seems like a horrible idea. I can imagine cars getting confused by where they are and forcing people to drive 30mph on a highway.

I don’t think I’ve seen anyone in California willingly driving anything less than 15 over the speed limit - including the cops and CHP.

I like to drive 5 under the speed limit, in the right lane of course. I don't have to worry about swerving through traffic, slamming on my brakes, and generally jockying for position just to shave 30 seconds off of my 20 minute drive.

I always wondered who y’all were and why you did this.

HN in a nutshell.

Same, well, I’ll do the speed limit. But the end result is the same. I get to where I’m going without stressing over navigating around aggressive drivers. They tend to avoid the right lane anyway.

If my travels are so time sensitive that a couple minutes will make or break it the. I’m planning things wrong well before I leave the house.

I live in a rural area with a lot of straight/open roads with visibility and little traffic. Driving 98 mph (since 100 is a felony here lol) shaves nontrivial time off my trips vs. the speed limits which are far too low anyway.

If it’s okay for you to drive 10mph over the speed limit then it’s also okay for me to drive 28mph over. Laws are just words written by people who are irrelevant to me. Reality is about risk vs. reward.

> If it’s okay for you to drive 10mph over the speed limit

That's not what they said.

I find right lane driving dangerous. Every week I see drivers slow down or come to a complete stop on the acceleration lane, others are risking it all to make their exit.

If you drive 60mph for 20 minutes, you will go 20 miles. If you drove 65mph, then you would travel the same distance 1 minute 32 seconds sooner. At lower speeds, the effect is bigger, e.g. going 45 instead of 40 saves 2:13, and 35 instead of 30 saves 2:51. If my math is right, to only lose 30 seconds by going 5 under for 20 minutes, you would have to be going 195 in a 200.

In theory, yes. In reality, you're ignoring the traffic lights at both ends of your trip.

I grew up around the LA area and found that was common under a short interval but not for a long one. I had a diesel & sometimes tried to see how high I could keep the mileage on a tank (record was 52mpg), and one thing I noticed was that the guys blowing by at 90 were just burning cash: they’d fly by but then stomp on the brakes due to traffic over and over again, while I was having a much less stressful time going the average speed and rarely even touching the brakes.

Posted limit detection seems reliable in existing cars, both self-driving and not; is there some reason to believe this will be any less reliable than other safety technologies?

I live in Boston and my car’s HUD displays this information (speed limit and such). Sometimes it gets it wrong despite living in a major city center. Once my car even alerted me when I was going the wrong way on a one-way — except that I wasn’t. I can only imagine in deep suburbs / rural it is even less reliable.

Boston can really confuse a GPS. While driving in the underground freeway, the GPS was giving me turn-by-turn instructions for the city streets above.

It sounds like you're describing a system based on GPS and map data, not one of the systems that read the actual signs posted as you drive by them. The only problems I've had with the speed limit sign reader in my car are conditional speed limits (e.g. school zones during certain hours, truck-specific limits). Otherwise, they're just limited by the prevalence of the physical signs.

Even reading the signs is non-trivial, I drive several stretches of road where an access road runs parallel to a highway, and the 20mph lower speed limit signs for the access road are clearly visible from the highway and only slightly farther off the shoulder than the correct signs.

This seems like a useful service for cities to provide: street maps and traffic rules for each segment in a standard format.

Its wrong all the time on my Tesla. Its always fun when the autopilot brakes to drop to 55 mph on the freeway when the speed limit is 65.

Given that GPS gets confused and thinks you're on surface roads when you're on the highway and vice versa, I don't see how this will always work. In dense urban areas there are often multiple layers of roadways going the same direction with very different speed limits. Also basic issues like GPS errors because of tall buildings or foliage cover can easily confuse systems such that you look like you're 100's of feet away from your actual position.

There's a sign indicating the default speed limit in my town, 25mph, with some extra text that anyone who can read will realize it's indicating the default speed and is not a speed limit sign. But otherwise it looks exactly like a speed limit sign, and it sits in the middle of a 50mph zone. Apple and Google Maps both tell me the speed limit is 25mph for about 1/4mile until the next sign indicating 50mph shows up. I have been told it trips up Teslas (but don't have one and haven't driven one here so cannot personally confirm).

It'll be fun to have everyone's car slow down suddenly to match this non-existent speed limit, going from 50-60mph down to 25-35mph.

My understanding is that these systems use a combination of posted sign identification and GPS data.

Right. Here the databases are wrong so the GPS data will indicate 25mph and the sign looks like a speed limit sign so posted sign identification will likely be tripped up (again, based on reports from Tesla owner friends and colleagues). So for 1/4 of a mile on a 50mph road cars that automatically enforce the speed limit will be screwing up.

And I doubt this is a unique situation.

That sounds pretty unique to me; I've done a few 1000+ mile road trips across the US and have never run into a sign that looks like a speed limit but isn't actually one. The closest thing would be a yellow advisory sign, but those don't look like speed limits.

(This sounds like the kind of thing you should report to either your state or county -- AFAIK every state maintains a DB of posted limits with geofences, and correcting them is generally a high priority for ticketing reasons.)

Loads of towns around Boston have the exact setup described above.

Do you have an example? Not that I don't believe you; it just seems nuts to me that any state would have a sign that looks almost exactly like a speed limit but that isn't one.

For the record: I've gone through the length of MA a couple of times (NY to Boston), and have never noticed these. But maybe that's because I thought they were all speed limits.

For a road that I commuted on a lot: At the town line entering Lexington, MA, they have posted the default Lexington-wide speed limit: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4098312,-71.2076201,3a,75y,3...

That road, Concord Ave, is posted as a 35 or 40 mph road for its length. (The MassDOT GIS database lists that first segment in Lexington as having a 40 mph speed limit, object_id = 395024.)

At 94 (about 1500' ahead), Concord Ave is posted as 35 mph: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4131439,-71.2130807,3a,75y,3...

At 190, posted as 35: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4156383,-71.2191302,3a,75y,3...

At 72 (in the other direction) posted as 40: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4126782,-71.2123193,3a,75y,1...

Mass Ave, entering Lexington: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.425451,-71.1924309,3a,75y,28...

Mass Ave shortly ahead, posted at 30: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4277977,-71.2025678,3a,75y,2...

Rt 30, entering Newton: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3398206,-71.1676001,3a,75y,2...

500-ish feet ahead: 30 mph: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3394727,-71.1686319,3a,75y,2...

I believe a casual sign-reader could easily see the default sign and mistakenly conclude the speed limit on the pavement they are on is 25 mph. If I was stopped for 30 in the vicinity of any of the default limit signs I posted, I really, really like my chances to have it dismissed.

With clear conditions and no obstructions, yes, but my model Y frequently doesn't pick up the right speed limit, because: fog/rain/snow, glare, obstructed by another vehicle, defaced sign, no sign, non standard sign(eg variable speed limit sign in school zone).

Regardless of whether this is good or bad, I'd be amazed if it were even feasible with many 9's. How would it even work?

The holy grail of vehicle road taxation, and state surveillance: GPS.

My GPS thinks I'm on the wrong street every time I miss an exit or start navigating under an overpass. There's no way GPS does this reliably.

I cynically assume they'll still use it as another reason to get that GPS into your car, which they've wanted to do for years now [1].

1. https://stateline.org/2021/09/28/california-expands-road-mil...

Yes GPS is behind times here. Galileo can do 1cm accuracy tho.

The legislation aims to curb the epidemic of traffic deaths?

When? In 20 years time when all the current cars have been replaced?

American drivers' entitlement around speeding and other forms of unsafe driving is easily one of our least commendable qualities as a country. I'm not aware of any other developed country with a comparable culture of neglect; it's good to see a large state take steps towards addressing that culture.

There's a valid point to be made about automation being a blunt tool, versus stronger enforcement of existing laws. My only response to that point is that vehicle unsafety is, at least in my state, remarkably resistant to human enforcement: the people tasked with enforcing these laws are often the ones who feel most entitled to violate them[1].

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/16/nyregion/mathew-bianchi-n...

> I'm not aware of any other developed country with a comparable culture of neglect

In terms of road fatalities per vehicle-mile traveled[0],the US is on par with other developed nations like Belgium and New Zealand, fares substantially better than Korea or the Czech Republic, and is substantially worse than Norway or Switzerland.

But you have to remember that driving is a much more fundamentally required part of life in much of the US than it is in many of those other countries. The culture of neglect comes from (among other things) the fact that if you make getting a driver's license too hard, or losing one too easy, you effectively cut off someone's livelihood.

[0]: https://www.itf-oecd.org/sites/default/files/docs/irtad-road...

Fatalities per vehicle-mile is the only favorable metric here, which makes intuitive sense: the US is a big empty country with a lot of rural highways.

If you look at fatalities per capita or by net car ownership, the numbers are much less rosy[1]. By those metrics, the US mostly peers with SE Asia and the Middle East.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

> If you look at fatalities per capita or by net car ownership

Curiously, by that metric, the US lies between Singapore and Hong Kong. Which is strange, since car ownership is rare in both those countries and neither are really known to be hotbeds of reckless driving.

I think Hong Kong does have a reputation for unsafe roads, it just doesn't make it to us[1]. But Singapore is a surprise to me.

(That's for net car ownership. For per capita, the US's immediate peers are Bangladesh, Uruguay, Egypt, and Moldova.)

[1]: https://hongkongfp.com/2022/08/25/hong-kong-pedestrians-are-...

Have you been to other countries? American speeding seemed pretty sedate. I recall driving a bit too fast around some country roads in CA and people would pull over and let me past. That would never happen here, and I'd also be the slowest on the road going just a bit over the limit.

Not that this is a good thing, I'm not a fan of the dangerous driving I see a lot where I live. I lived in CA for awhile and I drove across the US. Drivers there are, on average, more courteous than drivers here (new zealand).

That difference doesn't seem to translate to a difference in crashes and fatalities though. I know from the stats here that 25% of people who die in car crashes were not wearing a seatbelt. I think that is interesting because it reveals that a significant number of accidents are being caused by people who are either impaired or taking risks in other ways than the average driver. So, while speeding is a factor, I'm not convinced that more cracking down on speeding is the thing that would make the most difference.

Edit: I grew up and learnt to drive in the UK which has fewer than half the number of accidents per mile driven. Speeding in the UK was far more common. Police enforcement of speeding on motorways was much lower. I'm not saying speeding is good, but driving culture, population density and road engineering all play their part in these numbers too.

I have been to a lot of countries, yes. I'd say the only countries where I've consistently seen more unsafe driving have been in SE Asia. Specifically, Indonesia and the Philippines. But I haven't been to NZ, so I can't speak to your driving culture.

From a quick look, NZ generally posts limits of 50km/h in cities. It's not uncommon to see 45mph (72km/h) limits in similar cities in the US. Factor the "10 over" rule in, and there are a lot of Americans who are used to going ~89km/h on urban roads.

P.S. to your edit: I agree! I think American road culture is more than just speeding, and that the things you've identified play a substantial role. That's why I said "neglect" rather than focusing on just speeding.

Our speed limits are actually similar for similar designed roads in urban areas, 50km, 70km, 80km and 100km. A lot of the road network is 100km national speed limit, and you wouldn't typically drive that fast on US roads of a similar design (single lane each way and quite often just a single lane for both directions!). But this is because NZ has a low population and pop density. While the US has some places with a low density, it can still afford to road up those areas "better" than NZ can.

You must not have traveled much. Go drive in France or Italy and you'll realize how courteous American drivers actually are.

I have been to both France and Italy.

Good for you, then your message makes no sense because drivers in the US are much more respectful than in these 2 example countries.

Finally. There really hasn’t been enough developer interest around unlocking car PCMs and open-sourcing engine management software. A bill like this would take car tuning from a niche closet industry to a ubiquitous hacking community.

Most cars come tuned from the factory for use with 87 octane gas. Pumping premium (91+ octane) gas doesn’t typically confer any performance advantage due to the factory-locked PCM software. By unlocking and tweaking this software you can tune the hardware to benefit from higher-grade fuels, enabling better performance _and_ fuel efficiency/emissions. Disabling the speed limiter would become table stakes.

Passing this bill would backfire majorly and open a Pandoras Box of hacking advancement. What is niche now would become common practice for everyone who drives.

No, it won't. Modified cars won't pass periodic inspection (I don't know how is it called in your country, but you most certainly have a periodic inspection).

Are you serious? They don’t do checksums on your PCM firmware for any vehicle inspections I’ve ever heard of. I am talking about a software modification, not cutting catalytic converters off for 2 extra horsepower.

California's road fatality rates are entirely unremarkable among the 50 states[0]. In 2021, a little over 4k people in California died from a traffic-related accident, compared to over 10k in the same year from drug overdoses[1]. I think Sen. Wiener probably could have other priorities on his plate.

[0]: https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/States/StatesFatalitiesFatali...

[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/drug_poisoning_mor...

Now do per capita and per mile driven.

I was referring to the "fatality rate per 100 million vehicle-miles traveled" in my source, which puts California squarely in the middle. Entirely unremarkable. I'm sure per capita reveals a similar story.

I think it is reasonable to tackle an issue that kills 4,000 people a year in your state. Especially when you can do both. I spent 10 seconds looking up Scott Weiner's proposals and looks like he has introduced at least two bills I can find that deal with drug overdoses

https://sd11.senate.ca.gov/news/20220112-senator-wiener%E2%8...

https://sd11.senate.ca.gov/news/20220630-senator-wiener%E2%8...

That being said I do not believe these speed governance or harm reduction policies are the best bang for your policy buck. I think in both cases they are complicated policies that would not be as necessary if "enforcement of current laws" was allowed in progressive policy debate.

Granted I am not a believer that harm reduction has panned out as people would like, but looks like Scott Weiner has introduced multiple

Ten bucks says that these cars are going to get rear-ended like crazy. And then the owners will get slapped with higher insurance premiums.

It won’t be their premiums going up: if you rear-end someone, you’re at fault.

That is logically correct, but it’s not how insurance companies think.

That would be a better bill: insurance cannot consider incidents one isn't at fault for when determining a rate. Absolute scumbags.

Scumbaggery of insurance companies aside, if someone gets into ten accidents a year where they're deemed not at fault, I would still be very skeptical of that person as a driver. I would not find it immoral to apply higher rates in that situation.

If they are so reckless there would surely be a better signal alongside that one?

On some weird level actually insurances of the more expensive to repair or more often to repaired cars should go up. Even if their insurance is not paying for damage. This would be due to those cars affecting the outgoing costs.

So if your car is expensive to repair, it should have higher liability part. As on population level it has higher cost for other insurances.

If CA is concerned about safety, how about cell phone jammers or screen blankers in all cars then.

(No I don't support either this or speed governors)

I stood on the corner at a major intersection during evening commute time, and counted drivers who were obviously looking at cellphones while they were going through the busy intersection. It was half of them.

I'd start to address this with a two-pronged campaign:

1. Some kind of competent communications of how dangerous this is, and what the harm really means.

2. Technological measures like device behavior defaults for people who believe they're operating in good faith, to help them follow through in good faith, without being too onerous or authoritarian (nor pretext for more surveillance and control abused for other purposes).

After that's settled in, and we've hopefully broken the widespread default bad behavior, so that people still doing it generally will have knowingly opted-in to reckless, I'm open to introducing criminal penalties commensurate with harm caused.

I used to assume it's mostly "those darn kids" but damn if it's not also the older people staring into their laps on even the freeway.

My neighbor was killed when a guy plowed into him on the sidewalk looking at his phone, so I'm extra pissed when I see this.

What was wrong with original title? Slightly edited to fit

CA could require car ‘governors’ that limit speeding to 10 mph over limits

Setting a maximum speed of 85(?) Would be a good start. Impound/destroy any car exceeding that.

In 20 years, no-one watching an action film will understand or believe a car race anymore...

A huge number of people will go to great lengths to disable the governor.

I wish they’d make dash cams mandatory in new cars

I'm surprised that insurance providers haven't jumped on this, with significant savings if you have one installed, with the assumption that handing over the data is voluntary (maybe if not, a retroactive fee).

I had someone reverse into me unexpectedly while I waited at a roundabout. I was sure it was a scammer, but instead they just took off, hit and run.

But if they had been a scammer, I'd likely have been screwed. I bought a 4k dash cam after that.

As a side effect, I drive more carefully. If someone hits me, I want the record to show me blameless.

When autos are electric, it's just an OTA software update. (that you can't block)

Just wait a few years.

And "better yet" a speeding car can be remotely driven to the local CHP office, saving officers a stop or chase, and the driver can be booked, the in-car breathalyzer and drug detector read out (if not already done remotely.)

Welcome to your 1984 auto.

The title is misspelled. Speed limit is two words.

The title is exactly 80 characters long, the HN title submission limit.

The saudis are not going to like this.

The germans have the autobahn, it’s a better example

Unless it's added to the FMVSS, they often just temporarily import their own car: https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/documents/tempin...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com