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Comment by foxyv | Hacker News Reader

There is one safety feature that would universally make cars safer and not require radar or computers. Just simple speed governors based on geo-fencing and radio speed limit signs. It would be trivially easy to install on existing vehicles and much less expensive on new vehicles. In addition it would increase pedestrian safety by leaps and bounds.

We do it for electric bicycles and scooters. Why not cars?

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Judging by how my car shows a speed limit change from 55 to 25 as I go under bridges that could get real dangerous real fast if there's a poor implementation.

Aren't all the scooters just a flat 20/25 mph cap with no dynamic changing? I think drones are the things you're looking for where they avoid flying near airfields.

Most rental scooters are geo-fenced so people don't zip around walking paths at 20+mph.

Edit: Here is a quick link https://www.li.me/blog/lime-introduces-new-geofencing-techno...

Realistically, because politicians drive cars, and like to speed.

If you read any articles on the subject, you can almost feel the author resisting the urge to say that outright.

The first thing I hear people argue against is their "freedom" to drive their car without the government telling them what they can and cannot do.

But you already don't have the freedom to drive as fast as you want, and the current enforcement system is to come face-to-face with a cop.

I, personally, would prefer a system where my car physically will not allow me to drive over the speed limit. The problem though is that it has to apply to everyone. If 90% of the cars on the road don't have governors, and your car does, when you merge onto a highway where everyone is driving 20mph over the limit, you'll be in real danger since your car won't let you drive with traffic.

Freedom is not an on off switch. You can argue against freedom under any context with that kind of argument. Seeing it as a min max problem is better. Maximize freedom while minimizing problems or something.

>You can argue against freedom under any context with that kind of argument.

The context I am talking about is a logistical issue that kills between 35,000-40,000 Americans every year. Nearly twice as many annual deaths as all forms of murder combined. It's the leading cause of accidental death.

There aren't that many "freedoms" that have such a staggering human cost. There are already laws that exist that prohibit you from driving at unsafe speeds, so it isn't even a freedom to begin with. You don't have the freedom to break the law. I see no issue with enforcing those laws proactively rather than reactively when that many lives are on the line.

I agree. My freedom to not be killed far outweighs the freedom of idiots to drive too fast.

Requiring speed governors on all vehicles is the only thing that makes sense. You would probably require installation by a certain date with a phasing in of activation for geofences and radio speed limits.

More speed can also be safer in some scenarios

I literally covered the "driving with traffic" issue in the comment you are responding to. Driving at higher speeds isn't inherently safer, it is conditionally safer.

If the speed limit is 60MPH, and everyone is driving 80MPH, it is safer to drive 80MPH than to drive the speed limit and get hit from behind by someone going 20MPH faster than you.

Of course, every single person driving 80MPH in this scenario is breaking the law (in most states this is reckless driving), and making the road less safe for everyone, especially motorist obeying the law. The status quo isn't great if we just accept that everyone has to drive recklessly because the people around them are. That's a problem in need of a solution - a solution that can include mandatory speed governors and geo-fencing.

If you require governors and geo-fencing, the condition of "everyone is driving 20MPH over the limit" doesn't exist, because everyone's cars will be capped at the legal speed limit. Driving with traffic will only entail speeds up to the speed limit, not up to the fastest speed that drivers around you feel like driving.

Thus why I said that regulators would have to go all-in on this technology, rather than allowing slow roll-out, because a transition period would make the roads more dangerous allowing older vehicles to drive recklessly fast while not allowing newer vehicles to safely drive according to road conditions (created by reckless drivers).

No, it is not.

https://www.iihs.org/topics/speed#:~:text=Dangers%20of%20spe....

Like when

Like when everyone else is speeding.

If everyone is going 80 mph, then being the one driver actually obeying the 65 mph speed limit puts you and everyone around you in MORE danger.

Would it be safer for everyone to be going 65 mph? Absolutely. I'm definitely not disputing that.

But speed differential is more dangerous than speed itself.

EDIT: To be more accurate, speed differential makes crashes more likely, but speed overall obviously makes the crashes more likely to be fatal. Whether it's safer to go 80 when everyone is going 80 to reduce the likelyhood of a crash, or if it's safer to go 65 mph to reduce the severity of a crash if it happens is very debatable, and I'm not sure there are good enough statistics to back up either claim.

One thing to keep in mind is when is the breaking point? If one person drives 100mph, should every single driver match that speed? What about 90? 80? What is the cutoff?

There is a reason there are speed limits. They are the cutoff.

> If one person drives 100mph, should every single driver match that speed? What about 90? 80? What is the cutoff?

Completely irrelevant to my scenario. Let me try to be more clear.

If everyone is driving 65 mph, then the person driving 80 mph is in the wrong.

If everyone is driving 80 mph, then the person driving 65 mph is in the wrong.

So who determines what speed everyone should drive? Maybe we should put up signs! Oh wait...

Without data, this reads like self justification for poor behavior.

I've found that many drivers feel uncomfortable being passed by other drivers. They translate that discomfort to being "Less Safe." Despite the fact that they are objectively much safer traveling at slower speeds. Not many people appreciate the difference in fatality rates between 65 and 85 mph. Fatality rates go from 20% to 70%. In addition, your ability to control your car in a minor collision at high speeds is heavily compromised.

https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/speedmgt/ref_mats/fhwasa1304/Res...

Edit: It appears the source above is for pedestrian collisions in kph. However speeding is a factor in 1/3 of traffic fatalities.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/speed-campaign-speeding...

I've read both of your links, and both fail to address one scenario and a question regarding it:

If EVERYONE is driving 80 mph, is it more dangerous to be the one person deciding to drive 65 mph?

Most studies and statistics either focus on speed alone OR being the ONE person driving 80 while everyone else is driving 65.

Speed differential increases the frequency of crashes, and overall speed makes crashes worse. I posit that the best crash is the one that doesn't happen, so reducing the frequency of a crash by going with the flow of traffic is the safer option.

So you are arguing FOR speed governors which would keep everyone at the same speed?

Because it would make roads less safe.

It's very common to need to *accelerate* in emergency situations.

Something like smart cruise control which drives the speed limit would be appreciated. A hard cap would not.

> Because It would make roads less safe.

Speeding makes roads less safe too. Wouldn’t you agree that there would be a net reduction in serious injury and death from enforcing the speed limit?

> It’s very common to need to accelerate in emergency situations

Very common to accelerate past the speed limit when you’re already at/above it? Acceleration is usually useful as a safety tool when you’re at a stop and want to cross before oncoming traffic reaches the intersection. Your acceleration from a stop would not be limited beyond what your drivetrain can do.

I think there are soft mechanisms which could enforce speed limits which would need both needs.

Even an obnoxious beeper like for seatbelts.

I prefer the seatbelt beeper to having seatbelts which won't unfasten until the car has come to a complete stop, or cars which don't start without seatbelts. Not everything needs to be enforced with force.

Evidence indicates that speed limits need to be enforced by some other method. Nearly 1/3 of all fatal accidents are a result of speeding. Speeding is so commonplace that people barely even pay attention to it.

Seatbelt laws are important, however they have much less impact on the people around the vehicle. Speeding kills pedestrians and other drivers.

Fatality rates drop dramatically with lowered speed. I have yet to see an emergency situation where acceleration makes any difference. Brakes are often an order of magnitude more powerful than the car's engine.

Never been in the path of a speeding police car or ambulance rushing to an emergency from behind you and wanted to get out of the way at the next intersection, just 100m ahead?

Statistics didn't support you. Look at deaths per mile for vehicles. The worst ones are lumbering hulks which can't do avoidance maneuvers.

If you are in the path of a police car or ambulance, you are required to slow down and pull over to the right. Death rates per mile have a loose correlation to vehicle size. However, engine size has a high correlation to deaths per mile. Sports cars love to kill their drivers.

https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-...

I would encourage you to look more closely. Safest mainstream car is Chevy Bolt which (1) isn't bought by douchebags to show off (2) does 0-60 on 6.6 seconds, on par with muscle cars, exactly as I described.

So would you say that Chevy Bolt drivers tend to drive slower? And are thus safer? Why should douchebags be able to buy cars that drive 100+mph on public roads?

Like when

You're passing a broken-down vehicle, a deer that hoped into the road, a toddler, or otherwise go into the opposite lane. There is an incoming car, and you need to merge back before a head-on collision, without hitting whatever you're passing.

Floor it and merge.

I can name many other scenarios, but generally, emergency maneuvers are helped by good control over the car, including braking, turning, and acceleration.

There are nice charts showing accidents per million miles driven by car, and the best ones I've seen are anyone, but not testosterone-promoting agile. Crash ratings are misleading since many of the safest cars in a crash also crash a lot more often and have higher fatalities overall since bigger cars are less likely to be able to avoid an accident.

In all of the instances you mention, it is recommended that you use your brakes. NOT go faster. Who sees a toddler in the road and floors it? Are you avoiding rocket children?

In the situation described, I already charged lanes to avoid the toddler / deer / stopped car.

The question is what I do about the incoming car I didn't notice.

A) change back and hit the toddler

B) do nothing, and have a fatal head-on collision

C) hit the brakes, and have a non-fatal head-on collision

D) speed up a little bit, so I can get back into my lane before the other car gets here

If swerving into another lane to avoid a toddler rather than stopping is a “common” scenario, you already sound like a psychopathically reckless driver. In none of those situations should you be swerving into the wrong side of traffic. You should be stopping. And then, if necessary, carefully going into the other lane.

Your examples are comically dangerous

Edit: in fact, specifically you remind me of Richard Horne in twin peaks season 3:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V62BJFn-BTQ

So, you are driving in such a manner that you cannot stop in time for toddlers, deer, or broken down cars. Perhaps if you were driving slower you would not need to swerve into oncoming traffic to avoid road hazards?

Edge cases like medical emergencies, natural disasters, terrorist attacks etc., where speeding can actually save lives. You can’t account for all of those in an automated system.

Those are movie plots. We know what happens in things like natural disasters: epic traffic jams because the roads have limited capacity and once people start thinking they can violate the laws they crash and make it even worse.

Medical emergencies are more plausible but it’s a collection of edge cases: you have to be somewhere a long way from the hospital, without an ambulance, no traffic, and safe road conditions for much higher speeds. If all of those aren’t true, you’re either making a bad situation much worse with a crash or running off the road (the most realistic places for this situation are rural areas where it’s often not safe to go even the posted limit around every curve) or you’re not really saving enough time to be meaningful. Even the ambulances rarely drive like that in those regions despite being much better trained, equipped, and experienced with the area.

Now, contrast those extremely low probability events with the tens of thousands of people killed by drivers every year and the hundreds of thousands who have life-altering injuries. How many people are we willing to write off so a bunch of people can fantasize about having the chance to play ambulance driver some day?

True, but on the other hand, it would only take one headline about people losing their lives while trying to drive off a bridge about to collapse at 20 kph to spark public outrage. We tend to be less sensitive to tragedies that occur due to an individual’s own bad decisions.

What about the tragedies that occur every day when speeders kill strangers, friends, and family? Currently about 33 deaths per day are caused by speeding. I have yet to find a person who died because they couldn't exceed the speed limit.

There is a reason that, during an emergency, people are urged to walk and not run. People panicking and running like a herd of gazelle results in accidents. Accidents clog exits and roads preventing escape.

I'd be happy with a top speed cap of 85 mph to start.

This alone would be a great start. Lately I've had at least three instances of people doing over 100mph barely avoid hitting me in the far right lane as they zig zag across the freeway. It's gotten to the point that driving after 1 AM is like being on the runway of an international airport.

Probably because public backlash would be insane. There is very little political or economic incentive to push something like that.

It's kind of like banning alcohol. Yeah, it's bad for us (individually and collectively) but most of the population does it anyways and we're used to it. Taking that away would cause massive outrage.

I think the far more politically dangerous proposition is fighting with the automotive lobby.

https://www.treehugger.com/big-surprise-car-industry-doesnt-...

> not require radar or computers

> speed governors based on geo-fencing and radio speed limit signs

sounds like that requires computers

> We do it for electric bicycles and scooters

I've never seen a scooter nor e-bike for sale that includes such a feature. Unless you're talking about rental scooters, which doesn't make sense to compare an owned car against.

My Class 3 ebike is governed at 28mph when pedaling or 20mph on motor alone. Above those speeds the motor just turns off. I can pedal/coast above that speed but the motor does nothing. This is a legal requirement to meet the class specification.

Speed governors have worked for much longer than the history of computers. For geo-fencing you don't need GPS and can use proximity. However, I'm pretty sure you would use a very inexpensive microcontroller with GPS in addition to an antenna for an aftermarket addition.

Almost every e-bike and scooter is sold with a speed governor. This is so they meet the regulatory requirements for Class-C electric bicycles.

https://www.heybike.com/blogs/heybike-blog/ebike-classes-1-2...

>scooter nor e-bike for sale

You're forgetting that the majority of electric scooters and bikes out there are rentals. Every single one of them has geofencing and speed governors.

Currently, if you buy your own (aka, one that is "for sale"), you can do with it what you want. I wouldn't us the same argument for a car that you own, because there is significantly greater public risk associated with misuse of an automobile.

The technology does exist though, and it is trivial to implement.

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