> The beauty of a democratic republic is our elected leaders can change laws and pass new ones! So, just like this case where the people have a choice in what cops can do with surveillance tech, the people also have a choice in what our highways are limited to.
That isn't actually how it works.
There are in practice multiple constituencies. Some people want higher speed limits, because they prefer to waste less of their time in a car. Other people want lower speed limits, because they believe them to be safer. Politicians have learned how to lie to people in the most adaptive way: You lower the speed limit but don't vigorously enforce it. Then you can tell the people who like lower speed limits that they've won, while the people who want higher speed limits don't actually slow down.
This deceitful compromise is also supported by the police, because when everybody is constantly violating the law they always have a pretext to pull over anybody they want. So the status quo is sticky. But it's also unreasonable. It's just not something that democracy is well-suited to fixing.