Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars | Hacker News Reader

Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

autoweek.com

109 pointsspeckx386 comments

This is one example of legislation that mandates fantasy tech that doesn't exist. You'd think that something as simple as speed limiter should be very easy to implement, and it couldn't be further from the truth - watch any review of a car with this tech and every reviewer will complain that it's not the presence of the system that's the problem, it's the fact that it constantly gets the speed limit wrong. Either reading the wrong signs(from parallel streets or signs which have been vandalized and moved facing the wrong way, or literally just reading the speed incorrectly) or getting the GPS speed wrong, or when on a private road defaulting to 20mph so beeping at you when driving in your own driveway.

Generally personally I actually think this is a potentially good thing - but the implementation is universally flawed, across every brand, every model. Now the selling point is whether the car has a shortcut button on the dash to disable this system.

Agreed that the general case is hard to solve.

I think you could at least make a case for solving a simpler problem. What's the highest legal speed limit in the country in which the car was sold? Set a global speed limit to that.

That will finally stop the Swiss from speeding in Germany

I mean no, because there's (as of July 2024) no speed limit on the Autobahn.

Plenty of parts of the autobahn have speedlimits, only a bit more than half of it does not have a temporarily or permanent speedlimits.

Sorry, my comment was meant to be below another reply. Not sure what happened but now it doesn't make sense.

This could make it impossible or dangerous to pass in many situations where it may be necessary to temporarily exceed the speed limit.

Especially when you get a jackass that speeds up because you are passing them.

So if every car is following the speed limit, that is going as fast as they are allowed, why would any one person be passing someone else?

Perhaps parent isn’t talking about that scenario. But surely you can imagine a different scenario where this applies, right? Maybe Grandma Jones doing 10 under the limit on a two-lane road?

They're either so slow that they're easy to overtake, or they're so fast that it doesn't matter to stay behind for a while.

So just relax, the time lost is minuscule.

In most EU countries(and UK) you have different speed limits based on the class of the vehicle.

So for example in the UK on a single lane road a regular car can go 60mph, a car towing a trailer can only go 50mph, but a heavy goods vehicle(over 7.5 tonnes) can only go 40mph.

So on most roads that aren't dual carriageways you constantly encounter a situation where everyone is driving at their top legal speed limit but there is still a need to overtake vehicles.

Under that scenario, assuming 10-20mph differential is sufficient, overtaking by faster-class vehicles hasn’t been affected. Slower vehicles presumably shouldn’t be overtaking anyways, except when dealing with… even slower vehicles (but the joys of trucks overtaking each other by like 2mph difference and blocking the whole road for 10 minutes)

Well, you see, it's for the cases where not every car is going as fast as they are allowed.

If they're going so much slower than the limit that it's unsafe, wouldn't it be easy to pass at the regulated limit?

If they're going just a _little_ bit slower than the limit, why pass them? Are you telling me that 3kmph, or even 10kmph, slower than the limit is slow enough to make an appreciable difference to your everyday driving?

> wouldn't it be easy to pass at the regulated limit?

No. No, it's not, not on a single land road.

I’m in the US. If you’re on say hwy 395 heading to Mammoth Mountain, the highway is frequently one lane in each direction. If the max speed limit is 70mph, you may come up on a semi truck doing 60mph and you will want to pass using the lane with on coming traffic. This means you need to do 85mph to pass. For this reason our max speed limit laws are woefully inadequate at accounting for real life conditions.

Why will you _want_ to pass? Is that 10mph going to get you there _that_ much faster?

If you were to follow that truck for all 1300 miles of 395 you would get to your destination 3 hours later than if you were going 70mph the whole way.

I would doubt that anyone would want to drive for nearly 19 hours straight, unless you're doing some sort of cannonball run like challenge.

If your destination is a mere 120 miles away, and you followed him the whole way you'd get there only 18 minutes faster. Was it really that important to get there that much faster?

> Was it really that important to get there that much faster?

The answer may be contingent on how many tacos you ate before this hypothetical trip.

This is the only answer that I've seen that's reasonable so far!

> Why will you _want_ to pass? Is that 10mph going to get you there _that_ much faster?

Actually yes. That truck that's going 60 on the flats is going to be doing much less than that on the hills. Best for everyone involved to pass when it's safe. It increases safety and decreases road utilization.

Keep in mind that 3 hours @ 60 mph is 3 hours with another car on the road. To compensate you'd need another lane for 180 miles, not cheap. Also the rush of passing when a truck slows down is avoided. Additionally it's safer to pass when the speed differences are lower.

Seems better for everyone involved to let cars pass. It's much easier and safer to predict conditions for half the time when passing at +20mph then trying to predict twice as long when passing at +10mph.

A lot of hills have passing lanes _specifically_ for this issue.

By that logic, that the time vehicles are on the road are necessarily limiting capacity of the system, then we should be vastly increasing the speed limit! Why not 100mph? 120mph?

I mean, it's only 3 times the kinetic energy (over 70mph), so any crash would be that much more dangerous/deadly. It's also very wasteful with respect to fuel, so you'd need to stop more often which would decrease your average speed.

Regardless, all of you all drive way too fast as is. It's not safe, it's not efficient.

> A lot of hills have passing lanes _specifically_ for this issue

Sure, but not 100%.

I'm not arguing that speed limits are useless. Just that the speed limits have always been for steady state driving. You can drive all day at them and never get a speeding ticket. However in the interest of safety you should be able to exceed them to pass, this gets the pass over more quickly and is safer and less frustrating for everyone involved.

>> then we should be vastly increasing the speed limit! Why not 100mph? 120mph?

I mean, Poland has 90mph speed limit on motorways and yet it's still safer than US which generally has very low speed limits everywhere. The only reasonable conclusion is that safety isn't directly correlated to the speed limits but to the state of infrastructure, driver training and culture.

> A lot of hills have passing lanes _specifically_ for this issue.

You'll often see heavy truck that's not only slow uphill but also slow downhill, in some cases even more so - because it can't afford to build up speed above what its breaks can handle.

And these passing lanes are _never_ in downhill direction.

> Best for everyone involved to pass when it's safe. It increases safety and decreases road utilization.

How does it increase safety? Someone else will just catch up to him on that hill.

> It's much easier and safer to predict conditions for half the time when passing at +20mph then trying to predict twice as long when passing at +10mph.

If safety is your concern, then it's even easier and safer to predict conditions without passing until a passing lane opens up, or a turn out is reached for him.

> How does it increase safety? Someone else will just catch up to him on that hill.

Instead of having an ever growing queue of cars that try to pass on the hill, they pass before hand on the flats. So there's not mass chaos when 100 cars who have been trying at 10 mph under the speed limit for an hour all try to pass on the uphill, while the truck is slowing from 60-40.

> If safety is your concern, then it's even easier and safer to predict conditions without passing until a passing lane opens up, or a turn out is reached for him.

Sure, some do that, it's the drivers choice. Personally if passing is allowed, I like to pass slower vehicles. My car accelerates quickly, so I like to pass quickly and spend the minimum amount of time in the oncoming traffic lane.

Just seems natural to let the cars get ahead whenever they can, after all the cars usually have a different speed limit than the trucks. Thus the carefully engineered lane markers, truck specific speed signs, and often passing lanes on the hills.

The minimum amount of time in the oncoming lane is 0

Sure. But now you have to spend more money on adding lanes for the same traffic capacity because the average speed drops.

Road capacity usually increases as speed goes down.

Cars per mile, yes. Cars per second no. If you follow the recommended 3 second spacing then it's a car per 3 seconds per lane.

So for a fixed distance, the slower you go, the longer you are on the road, the more road capacity you consume.

Traffic flow is more stable at lower speeds, so you get less congestion.

It's not always about getting there "faster". I regularly encounter trucks with unsecured loads, drivers visibly weaving, and other dangerous situations. I'm certainly not going to die on some "well this is the speed limit" hill behind them.

Driving isn't some binary situation, you have to constantly predict erratic behavior and react to your surroundings.

You can always go slower and give yourself sufficient braking distance.

Do you have experience with such roads?

I do - we used to not have real highways 10-20 years ago. And the main issue with not overtaking a car-truck that is going just 60 (in your case) is that sooner or later they will encounter someone going 40-50, and they may not be able to overtake. And because of that uou end up driving 40mph on a 70mph road for hours.

I mean, I have been driving for the last 30 years of my life, I've driven most of the north east of the US. Through highways, timber roads that are little better than muddy paths, country roads that have never been paved, and pretty much everything in between. I've driven 15 hours straight. I've driven up mountains and across (really small) rivers.

Between all the vehicles I've driven in my life I've accrued, got I hate that I know this number off the top of my head, around 350k miles.

So yeah, I do have experience with such roads.

> I've driven most of the north east of the US.

Then you have no idea what the rest of us are talking about. Western roads are huge, and travel times are long. When you're driving the ~1000 miles between Denver and Los Angeles, 10 mph difference in speed can make your trip up to 2 hours longer. That's not insignificant, especially if you're trying to do it in a single day.

I'm sorry, did you want an exhaustive list of the roads I've driven? How many times I have driven out west? Which routes? For how long? That's a ridiculous thing to expect from a random on a forum. Should I list out all of the 10+ hour trips I've driven to satisfy you? What level of experience would cause you to retract your simplistic dismissal of my option?

Also, you did not read my post. I specifically said that over the course of those long miles 10mph will cost you 2-3 hours. I literally said that in my post.

You also missed the part where I suggested that no one should be driving for 21 hours, let alone 18.

Let me be clear, trying to drive 1000miles in one day is unsafe.

> Let me be clear, trying to drive 1000miles in one day is unsafe.

500+500 with two drivers.

Exactly, I have done 1,600 miles straight through. (3 drivers in shifts)

I pass slower drivers not to save a few minutes, but because driving fast is much more fun...

At least you're honest about it, thank you!

But now cars can drive 150 to 200mph. Putting the max speed at 85mph would already increase safety.

I often find myself behind a truck that is kicking up stones or belching fumes or has a poorly secured load that looks like it could fly off. Doesn't matter if it is going the speed limit, I want to get past it.

How close do you find yourself to the truck in front of you?

Safe follow distances are, At 65MPH, I'm assuming you're in the US, is approximately 300 feet. I'd be kind of shocked that you're getting stones hitting you and detectable fumes 300 feet away.

My Adaptive Cruise Control has 4 distance settings and I use the 3rd, further than most people's following distance, and I've had stones kicked up by truck tires that hit my windscreen from that distance.

I do the same in my Subaru, even at the furthest, the safe distance is choose is no where near the 300feet(approximately 20 car lengths). It's closer to 8 car lengths.

Was curious so I just looked up my car's ACC numbers. Setting 3 is 1.8 seconds and setting 4 (the max) is 2.3 seconds, so about 220 feet at 65mph. As another poster said its pointless to be this far back because everyone else just overtakes you to fill the gap, so you're always braking and accelerating and averaging a smaller distance than in setting 3.

Clearly you’ve never driven in the EU. The usual follow distance here is about three meters, the “safe” one is five, any farther and you’re going to get a stream of cars overtaking you just to fill that void :)

Regarding stones and lose cargo, they would hit you even 300m away as they bounce and quickly lose speed while you’re still flying into at them at 130km/h.

To be honest, I have driven in the EU, but really only on a technically. I rented a car when I visited a Spanish island and really only drove a hundred or two km.

That said, I'm not talking about what people do, I'm talking about what is considered safe.

If it can't be practiced it doesn't matter what would theoretically be safe.

Don't generalise the whole EU when you know it's obviously wrong.

If this really was your problem you'd lower your speed for a few seconds, gain a safe 500 meters between you and the truck, and finally arrive at your destination about a minute later than you would if you were just in front of it.

I actually do this often. But in general if I put 500 meters in front of me, I'll have a series of impatient cars overtaking me from behind to fill the gap. So there is still (often dangerous) overtaking happening, thanks to the behavior of other road users in general. And when people overtake, if their speed is restricted to the speed limit they'll be facing oncoming traffic for longer than necessary.

Roads commonly carry traffic at a different speeds than listed speed based on actual conditions, perception of conditions, condition and nature of vehicles and because speeds are often set inefficienctly.

Its not uncommon to see stretches with traffic constantly packed 4+ lanes going 75+ each way.

Trying to put the same burden of vehicles through at 65 with 300 ft between would be a joke. A given lane would carry less than half actual traffic. Bad traffic would become a city wide disaster.

Then consider that you can only impose this on a portion of drivers per year and drivers have to drive with those without governors indefinitely.

You also discount issues with safety by following at an appropriate distance. Trying to fall back 300 ft can only be achieved by driving too slow leading to both passing and people taking this new huge space whist giving you the finger leaving you with even less space.

If we're concerned with traffic throughput then shouldn't we just increase the allowed speed? Why even have a limit in the first place?

I don't understand your point about having to slow down to follow at a safe distance. If I pull onto a highway and find myself _right_ behind someone I can decrease my speed by one or two mph to fall back to a safe following distance. How is that not safe? The car behind me, who should already be either already at a safe distance or adjusting their own distance should have no issues here.

What I think you mean to say is that because you're assuming that everyone else on the road is behaving in an unsafe manner you believe that you, too, have to behave in an unsafe manner. This simply is not the case.

I'm not sure where you are driving (or if you drive anywhere) but you can't actually drop speed substantially with cars right behind you and if you tried to open a space people would just move into that space. Then you don't have that space AND you have cars maneuvering around you. You will have drastically increased your chance of having an accident without acquiring a buffer.

Areas that are already burdened as far as the amount of traffic they can bear, which is basically every major urban area in America, see traffic moving at a high rate of speed with 20-30 feet between cars.

Picture a simple chute in which you are dumping jelly beans one at a time. Even at the same speed of descent you will be able to drop 1/3 of the beans if you wait 3 seconds between drops instead of 1. Everyone trying to keep 300 feet between to be "safe" would create an expanding parking lot behind that would crash the entire traffic systems ability to function at all.

When everyone started arriving 3 hours late for work businesses would fine themselves dysfunctional including critical businesses. People would die because emergency vehicles couldn't move. The mayor would be on TV discussing what they would do about the collective insanity.

Anyway this is an awfully long way to say people do need the ability to control the speed of their car in order for the current flawed highway system to function normally. People do actually have cause to pass. They sometimes do have a reason to drive slower than the limit. Others need to exceed it briefly or in an emergency.

if the car is going slower than the limit but you have a very limited window of time to pass it, the only way is to temporarily go above the speed limit.

Slowing down isn't an option?

It almost always is, it’s just not what the parent post was discussing, check it out.

You sound like a motoring journalist. Honestly, if you’re exceeding the speed limit to pass you’re unlikely to be gaining much anyway. 99% of the time people should just chill out and accept that driving a car already comes with so many unpaid externalities that not killing other people with your tonne of steel is a reasonable compromise. Speed is the major contributor to mortality and injury on the roads (and in developed countries the leading cause of death in some age groups).

Also, can some describe in detail a scenario where accelerating makes things safer than simply slowing down. Or where the knowledge that a speed limiter would kick in would not already have changed behaviour in a safety enhancing way?

>>Also, can some describe in detail a scenario where accelerating makes things safer than simply slowing down

Mostly in a situation where you've already messed up. Like you're in a middle of an overtake and suddenly you realize you're not going to make it before the incoming car, speeding up to close the gap can save your life in a way that slamming the brakes and just getting hit head-on wouldn't.

And yes, you shouldn't have gotten into that position in the first place. But if you did then accelerating can save your life(obviously dependant on the specific situation, it's an extreme edge case of course).

This scenario doesn’t make sense. In every case if you slow down and pull in you will have less chance of hitting a car coming the other way.

If limits were there it sounds like you think this scenario would also become less common?

>>In every case if you slow down and pull in you will have less chance of hitting a car coming the other way.

If you're in a middle of the overtake with nothing but trucks on the side, once the differential in speed is large enough you'd need the skill of an F1 driver to slow down just enough to merge back in(assuming they even let you in) and not get hit by the traffic behind you and not to lose control of the car. Add any kind of adverse weather conditions and I'd argue this is actually much more difficult to pull off.

>>This scenario doesn’t make sense.

I guess if you've never seen that scenario play out in real life it's hard to imagine how it would happen.

>>f limits were there it sounds like you think this scenario would also become less common?

Of course, but OP wanted an example where accelerating helps, so I gave them one.

Even in that situation, hitting the brakes and aborting the overtake maneuver is the safer option. With ABS ubiquitous, even hard braking should leave your car maneuverable.

If you push on the accelerator, you are just increasing the risk, as you'll hit the car at a much higher speed. The crash is going to be 10x worse.

A speed limit would safe a lot of lives, but no-one will implement it because people like to speed.

>>Even in that situation, hitting the brakes and aborting the overtake maneuver is the safer option.

I'm sure you can imagine a scenario where it's impossible to abort - the vehicle incoming is a 40 tonne truck, they won't stop in time to not hit you, you can't merge back into your lane, and there is no room on the other side to escape to - your only option is to accelerate and hope for a tight squeeze.

>>If you push on the accelerator, you are just increasing the risk

Or saving your life, depending on the outcome.

Like I said, it's a situation no one shouldn't be in. But you asked for a clear example where accelerating helps, and that is one, as rare as it is.

This is dumb. I can’t really imagine a situation where the slot I the traffic I just left to overtake isn’t still available. The truck you’ve overtaking would have to be 100m long for slowing down to be a worse option.

>> can’t really imagine a situation where the slot I the traffic I just left to overtake isn’t still available

Well, I can't help with that. Either you can choose to believe me that this can and does happen, or you can choose to believe that it's a fantasy scenario that doesn't exist.

I have attempted a pass before with the car behind me tailgating me also attempting the same pass at the same time. Very dangerous move on their part, but you would be potentially unable to merge back over in this case.

What a ridiculous comment. Have you ever been stuck behind a slow vehicle? It seems like some of the idealists and scolds here have never driven in the real world.

I’ve been a driver for 30 years.

If stuck behind an actually slow vehicle it’s possible to overtake. If stuck behind someone close to the speed limit it’s not. If someone killed my family while speeding and overtaking I would be angry and ask them why their freedom to speed was more important than their freedom from injury and death. Speed is the major contributor to injury on roads. Arguing for more speed during the riskiest maneuvers we make doesn’t sound like a smart move to me.

Have you ever worked as a first responder and seen the stupid things people do?

There's a straight road, almost no traffic, and someone still manages to hit an oncoming car because they feel that they really need to overtake that slow asshole right now but are too stupid to check if there's anyone coming towards them in the other lane.

People are fucking stupid. And I'm also including myself in that, because I've been the stupid idiot in a few situations -- fortunately always had good luck and never caused a serious accident.

Hot take: temporarily exceeding the speed limit to "match flow of traffic" and such are nonsense and should be phased out. Along streetside parking.

Good regulation would only mandate a driver warning. If you exceed the highest speed of any highway in the area, you get some audible/visual warning. In the case of you speeding but not realizing it you just ease up on the accelerator. In the case of needing to pass you just deal with an annoying beep for a few seconds.

Reducing control authority in a vehicle is very dangerous. It's difficult to make it obvious control authority is reduced. It also falls down in every corner case where the prohibited action is in fact necessary.

> Good regulation would only mandate a driver warning

Then you must be in favour of this regulation. From the article:

> The EU regulations permit a system that can use a cascaded acoustic warning, a cascaded vibrating warning, an accelerator pedal with haptic feedback, or a speed control function in which the speed of the vehicle will be gradually reduced [...] the first two options may not quite compel any actual changes in speed on the part of the vehicle, and that's by design. They will also have to be short in duration not to annoy the driver.

> The EU regulations permit

The very thing you quoted has reduced control authority as points three and four! They're dangerous inclusions. It should have stopped with the audible warning, the vibrating feedback has the potential to be dangerous but isn't automatically.

I'm on board with speed warnings in cars. They're helpful in cars where it's easy to speed. My partner's ICE car has a turbocharger and a very smooth ride. It's way too easy to hit 85mph on the freeway and not really notice. Many EVs have the same problem. I'd actually like a speeding dummy light in that car.

What I don't want is reduced control authority because someone not in the car with me and not in my current traffic situation decided I should never be able to go over 75mph ever for any reason.

Options 3 and 4 are options - not requirements (hence the "or" between 3 and 4). Manufacturers choose which of the 4 options to implement. If you don't want them, dont buy the cars from manufacturers that do.

What you suggest would impose manufacturers who want to do 3 and 4 must also do option 1 or 2, which would make them unreasonable.

The EU system clearly takes this into account, beginning with an alarm and only later reducing engine power. Unless you're overtaking a dozen vehicles you're probably OK.

OK, it won't help you escape the bad guys chasing you but they'll probably have the limiter too.

Maybe the cars will come with something similar to "Are you of legal age to watch porn?" dialog boxes on porn websites, but it'll be "Are you in the EU?". Or if it uses GPS, I wonder if the next thing will be a Faraday cage to surround the GPS antenna, and a GPS spoofer that tells the car it's currently located outside of the EU.

Doesn't the autobahn have unrestricted sections with no speed limit?

It does. And people drive between countries all the time in Europe, I personally drive through Germany few times a year and I'd hate it if my car had a speed limit purely because I bought it outside of Germany. But perhaps that's somewhat of an edge case that would work with a simple GPS geofence.

My car instantly recognises that I’m in Germany and knows what speed I used in the unrestricted sections, and automatically switches back to that.

When I’m in Belgium it knows the speed on the highway is 120 km/h. In France or Denmark 130 km/h. In Germany in an unrestricted section? Whatever I last set it to.

Well, yes, but not really. The recommended speed limit is still 130 km/h. However going past the recommended speed limit is not illegal.

If you get into an accident while going faster than 130km/h which could have been prevented by going the advised speed limit, you may be considered more liable by the courts. I’ve heard that there may be cases where your insurance might not cover you, but I’ve never found proof of that online.

Edit: rephrased “decriminalised” as “not illegal” as per comment.

That wording is not correct. Recommended speed is a mechanism that is employed in many countries (in the Netherlands you see it on highway exits). The only rules that apply on a highway without signs is a recommended speed of 130 km/h with all the legal consequences this entails (e.g. if you have an accident you are at least partially at fault because the traffic situation obviously didn't allow you to drive as fast as you did) but speeding is not decriminalized as THC products are decriminalized in the Netherlands. There just is no speed limit. Period.

There were talks for ending this last bit of "madness" to help with the climate (to go at double one's speed one needs to spend 4 times more energy).

Yeah, this. Geofencing countries would work for highway speeds (except for Germany, but that's their problem to fix).

But it won't do much to reduce pedestrian fatalities, unless you allow cities to (roughly) geofence lower limits.

> What's the highest legal speed limit in the country in which the car was sold? Set a global speed limit to that.

Bad move. Particularly because scenarios where lanes end somewhat unexpectedly are not uncommon (think construction). Further, legislation can change the highest legal speed limit at the drop of a hat. It's the "why are timezones so hard" problem times 10.

So the solution to a lane ending unexpectedly is to speed up? One would imagine that slowing down or even stopping would be the correct solution there.

Probably most of the time, but not every time. Which strategy is best in different situations cannot easily be predicted I'd imagine.

Stopping in traffic is almost never the safest option

If you are approaching and have room but someone is closing the gap, it may indeed be safer to speed up so you can take the spot before it closes and you are forced to stop

Granted, drivers should not be taking away the room you need to merge, but if everyone on the road were good drivers then we might not be seeking such nannying tech built into our cars to force them to drive better

If all vehicles are limited in the same way I am uncertain how this could even happen.

If the computer enforced max speed is 120km, and I'm going 120km, and the vehicle coming up is also going 120km, they can't overtake you, they can't close the gap.

Maybe, if the vehicle ahead of both of you is going much slower than either of you then yeah, they could close the gap. But even in that situation you could speed up to the max speed, matching that of the approaching vehicle, and merge. You'd still need to slow down to match the vehicle ahead, but so too would the one behind you, regardless of what you were going to do.

> If all vehicles are limited in the same way I am uncertain how this could even happen

This won't happen unless it becomes illegal to drive un-limited vehicles entirely though

People will drive older un-limited vehicles, or import un-limited cars from elsewhere, or buy limited cars and jailbreak them...

You're starting with a flawed premise and then concluding what you prefer

You're adding on a whole lot of edge cases onto an edge and coming to a conclusion that you think is best.

Some guy is shutting you out of the lane next to you, slow down and merge behind them.

Speeding up to merge with traffic that is moving faster than you is not an edge case :/

Okay, but that's not the scenario that was being discussed.

People drive between countries.

In the U. S. state of Washington, it is legal to exceed the speed limit when passing (might be restricted to two-lane roads, but the point stands).

If we can’t even reliably know what the speed limit is, how can we even be close to self driving cars?

Not only is it a way simpler problem, but it’s actually a requirement for self driving also.

That. I am thus convinced we are decades away from self driving cars capable of taking you home via a dirt road. And unfortunately, the entire value proposition of self driving cars only unfolds if you really can go anywhere, like a cab driver could.

“Sorry m’am, I can go any any further on this road, please get out and carry your luggage over the remaining mile”. And then of course it’d be raining under the scorching sun, I guarantee you that.

I actually quite like it. There’s obviously a few quirks, and it works heaps and bounds better when you’re driving in the country where the system was designed (Germany vs Denmark in my case).

My main issue is when speed limits are reduced but for some reason the car is not getting the update. Copenhagen reduced a huge number of big arteries from 60 km/h to 50 km/h, but over two years later, my car still applies the old value.

I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t even be able to contest this in court.

In mere existence terms... It exists, my cars almost detect correctly all speed limits it see around, almost because sometimes it detect wrong one or for a wrong road tract (like a temporary limit due to some road works, kept after that just because there is a missing end sign), but in mandatory (present and on by default) means that we will get wrong actions, as per phantom breaks (I got three in three last days, for instance, in one case exaggerated and too hard, the other two for not valid reasons though not hard).

That's aside the mere fact we should been able to ignore speed limits under specific circumstances that's are typically emergencies so we do not have time to dig in the vehicle tablet menu to deactivate some ADAS...

I did a drive test about two weeks or so ago with two new cars, 2023 models. They beeped every time the speed was about, I think, more than 10kph more than the TSR system read. At first I had no idea why the car was beeping for no reason.

So I had to find a place to stop, go into car settings - which annoyingly enough are disabled while the car is not in Park, and disable features until I found the TSR option, disabled it, car stopped beeping.

I have a couple of issues with this: - my current car has TSR and I use it to remember what the speed limit was on a road segment. Quite handy if you miss the speed limit change sign. As a workaround I could use Waze/Google Maps with CarPlay to tell me what the speed limit is, but it is an extra hoop I have to jump through - beeping is annoying, but it only beeps for a second or two, so I guess with time you just tune it out - reducing the speed to match the posted speed limit is beyond madness. Most roads haven't had signs changed in decades when cars would brake in a longer distance, no ABS or any other electronic assistance systems were available. Any car from the past 20 years or so can drive safely at greater speeds and stop in a very short distance. - not all signs are properly recognized, like no overtake zones and so on. Not to mention cases where the overtake zone finishes there are no signs indicating that. Same goes for lane keeping assist where temporary markings make the car wobble because it confuses the system and thinks you're driving between the lanes.

> This is one example of legislation that mandates fantasy tech that doesn't exist.

If the goal is to increase the minimal cost of any vehicle which drives on a road then the worse the legislation is, the better it serves the purpose. Incumbents gain a lot by obstructing any newcomer from capturing market share.

Also, if cars are moving towards the direction of driving themselves, it goes without saying that an accurate speed limit will be one of the first functionalities to implement.

Given that cars 95% of the time are not moving anywhere, then self driving cars could reduce the car consumption by 10 times, an order of magnitude less. Car ownership is one of the biggest financial bubbles out there. By limiting access to newcomers, which will implement self-driving, they keep the bubble going.

See also, tariffs to BYD, from USA and Europe. Imagine people using BYD (or another car) and installing custom software, open source, auditable and extensible. As soon as a good combination of sensors and software is implemented which drives itself, then anyone can download and install it to his own car. Then the bubble will pop, and politicians will have failed to their mission.

> Given that cars 95% of the time are not moving anywhere, then self driving cars could reduce the car consumption by 10 times, an order of magnitude less.

I question this assertion.

Granted, I'm coming at this from a semi-rural American perspective, but I don't think true full self-driving would cause a reduction in emissions. If anything, I think it might increase them.

Urban areas are where emissions are most immediately an issue. Those areas also have limited parking. If vehicles were capable of autonomous operation, I would expect more people to drive, exit the vehicle at their destination, then allow the vehicle to park itself. This would incentivize companies to add additional offsite parking, which in turn would mean that vehicles would drive themselves to and from those parking areas - a net increase in distance driven, and therefore emissions.

That's not even considering things like vacations. My family and I drive 10+ hours about once each month. About half of those trips are for pleasure, and the only reason we take one vehicle is because it doesn't make sense for both my wife and I to drive separately. Otherwise, if I'm spending a week at the beach, I'd prefer to be able to drive my Jeep around while we're there. My Jeep doesn't fit my family and our luggage comfortably, so we don't take it right now. If it could drive itself, the only reason not to have it come along would be the cost of fuel and wear.

> I don't think true full self-driving would cause a reduction in emissions.

I was referring to the total cars owned by people and produced by factories as "car consumption". Cars bought by consumers.

By owning less cars individually and one car serving many people, emissions from driving might increase, but assembling and constructing the cars has emissions too.

There is a difference in cities and rural areas of how important car ownership is, but there is also another technology coming which decreases the need to transport humans, and that's blazing fast drones.

If you want to buy let's say an ethernet cable of 5 meters or a coffee, instead of transporting the human, it is much easier and faster for small items to be transported by drone. Drones alone, might decrease the need for car ownership by 5 or 10 times.

Smart(er) roads. A lot of this stuff becomes simpler if there is complementary tech on infrastructure. Instead of relying on reading 20th century tech (signs).

Sure, which is another fantasy tech - my country doesn't have money to do basic road maintanance, but it will find money to change millions of street signs into "smart" ones? Very very doubtful.

Too expensive. We don’t even have enough money to fix potholes…

It was exactly the same when incandescent light bulbs were banned. The alternatives weren't as good and almost no improvements were made. After the ban it took like 5-10 years, but suddenly there was progress. By now even halogen lamps are gone, because LED became so much better.

And in the end it's not the fault of the legislation. If it wouldn't be so common to go above the limit there wouldn't have been any need to a beeping device. Just look at those idiots still arguing about their tachometer being 10% off, always, and therefore thinking it's fine to always go 5-10 km/h above the limit, never below.

And now we're coming full circle on consumption given most people just install a truck load of those and most are extremely oversized in wattage.

I have a few 9W/1500lm bulbs from 6/7 years ago but nowadays every light appliance is 20/30/40 even 60W. I've got and RGBCCW light strip rated at 15W/m! 3 meters of it outputs less light than a single one of said 9W bulbs.

This is terrifying. I routinely cross a bridge with a 30ton weight limit, which my car mistakes for a 30km/h speed limit sign. I would cause an average of 2 accidents per month if I suddenly slowed from 70 to 30 and the people behind me weren't paying attention.

The technology is _not_ there and this won't save lives, potentially it will cause deaths.

(Yes I read the article, this is initially only "for the driver's information" and not (yet) a hard limit.... but it's the first step in a very wrong direction)

This uses GPS data, not optical recognition

You can also turn it off every time you start your vehicle.

Until the law changes and the next firmware update happens :p

From TFA:

> Cars have been able to figure out when they're speeding for a while, thanks to GPS as well as traffic sign recognition

This is going to lead to some backpedaling.

On one stretch of ring road (120km/h limit) my car consistently catches 80km/h signs set up for the exit roads.

Which, IMO, is one of the reasons why I think speed-limit based speed limiters are a poor idea now. (I didn't mention much in my other post at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40919908)

Personally, I think this (speed-limit aware speed limiters) are going to trigger Congress to either fast-track legislation to disable them. Specifically, once the general public is aware of what's going on, they will stop buying new cars and car manufacturers will push on Congress.

I also think the legislation was written by someone who is very naive about engineering. What I remember is they tolerate a 10% error rate. If 10% of the cars are going too slow during rush hour, it's just going to create a major traffic jam.

It uses both, AFAIK.

Presumably GPS data and a database of speed limits. The bridge to my neighborhood was closed for two years. It took Lyft over three months to notice it reopened. Why should we trust the speed limit databases?

If that's similar to what Google Maps uses, it's wildly inaccurate. There are three places I drive regularly that it's way, way off on.

Awesome, so in addition to confusing aircraft and sending them in the wrong directions, Putin can also stop everyone from driving in Europe whenever he feels like it.

The article said it uses optical recognition.

And in any case GPS is not accurate enough for this. If you drive an access road right near a freeway GPS can not tell which one your are on.

GPS also doesn't work in many downtowns because of the tall buildings.

GPS plus mapping/routing software with some idea of how roads connect would get you a long way though. Even Strava and similar apps do this for trails which are close but not connected.

The real test is whether is able to understand that you are driving on the highway under a bridge and not on the bridge with much slower traffic.

It happened to me once while driving an ID4 on a 110km/h highway and it slowed down to 50km/h under the bridge.

Yea, yea, people are going to get into accidents and maybe die, but think about all the shareholder value that will be created by companies as they try to make these systems barely work and sell them to car manufacturers who are mandated to buy them! Won't someone please think of the shareholder value for a change?

EDIT: Jeez, nobody gets sarcasm unless you end your post with /s

Here, it looks like you dropped this:

https://cloudflare-cdn.ncmedical.com/images/dynamic/768x768/...

Literally everything causes death.

The question is: will this prevent more deaths from speeding than it causes from mistaken slowdowns?

I wonder how long we can ignore the natural human tendancy to need blame / attribution.

The way I think about it is: If, in the limiting case, we replace all driver mistakes with software mistakes, and there's 1/2 as many deaths from these mistakes, but they are uniformly distributed, I am honestly not sure how acceptable this would be to the public. It's like sacrificing people randomly to disallow dangerous drivers from causing accidents, even when those accidents would probably have disproportionately affected those very same dangerous drivers (and anyone nearby).

As a safe driver, I am comfortable with this tradeoff. I estimate the chance of me getting killed/maimed by some other speeding/dangerous driver is much greater than getting killed/maimed by a software error.

OK, makes sense if you believe the chances are much different. I'm wondering at what point do we breakeven? 1/2 the chance? 1/4 the chance? 90% the chance?

In fact, as a (ostensibly) safe driver, your odds of dying from software-related random choice might even be higher than from dangerous driving today. How many lives would you be willing to save to take on that extra risk to yourself?

I used the ACC with automatic speed recognition for about two months but it did too many stupid brakings. I think using GPS to limit to the highest possible speed for highway/roads/city would be fine. But as long as the car can decide that on this highway it really thinks the 40 sign is for the main lane and not the off ramp, I would rather not have it

There are many places where roads are too close together for GPS to be reliable (for instance, frontage roads or spaghetti bowl interchanges).

If you're driving adjacent to or above/below a slower road, the technology needs to know that you're entitled to drive at the faster speed.

I guess you are right it is the same problem really. Where I live you could at least limit it to 80km/h in the city limits since there is no higher limit anywhere. But more granular limits might be hard

Is the category of "deaths from speeding" large enough to justify any action whatsoever? Are "deaths from speeding" typically single vehicle or multiple vehicle accidents? Why does the Autobahn still not have speed limits on large parts of the road and why does this not cause massive problems?

> Why does the Autobahn still not have speed limits on large parts of the road and why does this not cause massive problems?

That's a bit like asking "Why are guns freely available in the US and why does this not cause massive problems?"

Not having speed limits on the Autobahn does cause problems. Accident numbers are fine because of good road design and good driver education, but every study says that introducing a speed limit would make the situation even better. But people like their freedoms, and powerful lobbies are against the limit.

> Is the category of "deaths from speeding" large enough to justify any action whatsoever?

Cars kill 40k+ people in the US each year, and speed (really momentum) is a large factor in the lethality of crashes.

> Why does the Autobahn still not have speed limits on large parts of the road and why does this not cause massive problems?

It's designed for these speeds. Most speeding issues do not occur on highways, but on local roads.

> Cars kill 40k+ people in the US each year, and speed (really momentum) is a large factor in the lethality of crashes.

But what actually causes crashes?

Speed alone does not cause crashes It's reckless driving, distracted driving, poor driver training, drunk or otherwise inebriated driving, poor road design, drivers suffering medical emergencies behind the wheel, etc

Why so much focus on fixing speeding and so little on training people to be better and more responsible drivers? Or removing terrible drivers from the road?

At least in the US - between 30-40% of all auto deaths are caused by speeding: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/speeding-deaths/

> Cars kill 40k+ people in the US each year

Not quite. 8k of those are motorcycles. 8k are pedestrians. Half of those are drivers who had drugs or alcohol in their system. One quarter are male drivers under 25. Most fatalities happen at night.

> and speed (really momentum) is a large factor in the lethality of crashes.

Not quite. It's mostly lack of seatbelt usage.

> Most speeding issues do not occur on highways, but on local roads.

Not quite. It's about 50/50.

To add to all of this, more people die on Texas roads than California roads. Not per capita, but TOTAL. California has 10m more people in it than Texas. This alone should give pause.

I love this extra detail. I would still think a car going slower is going to improve outcomes of drunk, distract, high, and un-belted drivers.

> Not quite. 8k of those are motorcycles. 8k are pedestrians.

I don't know if you know this, but if a car kills someone else not in a car, they still die.

https://twitter.com/VisionZeroYVR/status/1650630980062052353

> Not quite. It's mostly lack of seatbelt usage.

I said "speed (really momentum) is a large factor in the lethality of crashes."

"For every 10 mph of increased speed, the risk of dying in a crash doubles." https://www.emcinsurance.com/losscontrol/insights-d/2020/08/...

> but if a car kills someone else not in a car, they still die.

I don't know if you know this, but sometimes pedestrians die due to bad road design or walking on unlit highways at night. Just because a car was involved does not mean the car was the primary reason the death occurred or that speed had any hand in the fatality.

> "speed (really momentum) is a large factor in the lethality of crashes."

Except we have safety systems which are designed to ameliorate this. If you don't use them, that's when the _fatalities_ occur, as opposed to just _injuries_.

> "For every 10 mph of increased speed, the risk of dying in a crash doubles."

"Risk of dying in a crash" is a nonsense statistical statement. Crashes are not identical. "For every 10mph of increased _sudden deceleration_" you might be able to make the case for, and it highlights the exact issue with single minded focus on speed.

You could increase the safety factor by much wider margins if you just focused on the _other problems_ first.

> Except we have safety systems which are designed to ameliorate this. If you don't use them, that's when the _fatalities_ occur, as opposed to just _injuries_.

The people you hit with the cars like pedestrians doesn't have this, they get saved by reduced speeds.

> Is the category of "deaths from speeding" large enough to justify any action whatsoever?

Speeding causes as many deaths in the U.S. as drunk driving does. But people like to speed, so there isn't the political will to deal with it.

> The question is: will this prevent more deaths [than the alternative]

I hate that question. It's pure utilitarianism and is used all the time to rationalize removing/limiting freedoms in exchange for safety and security. Deaths prevented should not be the ultimate metric unless a totalitarian police state that keeps everyone perfectly safe at all times is the desired end goal.

In this case I would rather have the freedom to intentionally speed (because I need to get my wife to the hospital more quickly, because I'm in the middle of nowhere and want to, or any other reason I deem rational) than be marginally more "safe" thanks to my vehicle nannying me.

Driving above the limit isn't a "freedom".

Driving is a privilege. Hence why it needs training and a certificate.

I completely agree let’s just frame this as my freedom not to be mown down by speeding distracted drivers and be done with it. If you want to speed, pay for a track day.

The limit of freedom is generally agreed to be "one person's freedom ends when it begins to infringe the freedom of others". Speeding definitely crosses that line.

> In this case I would rather have the freedom to intentionally speed (because I need to get my wife to the hospital more quickly, because I'm in the middle of nowhere and want to, or any other reason I deem rational) than be marginally more "safe" thanks to my vehicle nannying me.

It's not you that your vehicle is keeping safe. It's the other people you put at risk with your decision to speed. Your actions affect other people.

"Because you need to get your wife to the hospital more quickly" is not a good reason to speed. I'm a first responder, and one of the things they teach you in the cert class is to not make more patients. There are numerous examples of people making bad situations worse by taking risks that don't meaningful improve their patient's chances.

And the reality is, people who try to justify speeding, mostly just speed because they're impatient. The "taking wife to hospital" hypothetical is rare and even in the rare cases where it happens, speeding isn't helpful.

> The limit of freedom is generally agreed to be "one person's freedom ends when it begins to infringe the freedom of others". Speeding definitely crosses that line.

The reason I'm not free to assault others is because I'm directly causing them to lose their right to life and/or well-being. Whereas speeding merely creates a risk of harm, not harm itself.

Almost anything could be argued to create a risk of harm to others, including driving itself. If we outlawed driving, we would certainly be saving a lot of lives. But we don't, so clearly there is more at play here than the mere fact of creating risk for another human being.

So I think your wholesale dismissal of the argument for personal freedom and judgment, on the basis of infringement of other's rights, does not really hold up to practical scrutiny.

> The reason I'm not free to assault others is because I'm directly causing them to lose their right to life and/or well-being. Whereas speeding merely creates a risk of harm, not harm itself.

And speeding is illegal. So it seems we as a society have agreed this is not a violation of personal freedoms.

Your argument here is really "speeding is okay and speeding creates risk to others, therefore I should be able to create risk to others"? Do you see how maybe that doesn't work here? Let's start with: "speeding is okay" isn't in evidence. That's the thing you're trying to prove, so you can't just start by saying it's true.

> Almost anything could be argued to create a risk of harm to others, including driving itself. If we outlawed driving, we would certainly be saving a lot of lives.

This isn't an honest argument. Obviously there's some tradeoffs involved, which you know.

> And speeding is illegal. So it seems we as a society have agreed this is not a violation of personal freedoms.

Correct. And nobody in this thread is arguing that speeding should not be illegal.

> Your argument here is really "speeding is okay and speeding creates risk to others, therefore I should be able to create risk to others"?

Nope. Never said anything of the sort. You're again straying from the actual topic at hand, which is, specifically, my car automatically forcing me to drive a certain speed.

> This isn't an honest argument. Obviously there's some tradeoffs involved, which you know.

It wasn't an argument at all. It was a statement, taken out of context. The context being that you can't dismiss the argument of personal freedom purely on the basis that someone is creating risk for others.

The concept that a driver would sometimes be given the freedom to surpass the speed limit, when they judge it necessary, is not even particularly controversial. Police use broad discretion to not enforce speed limits to the letter of the law. In fact many states have laws that crack down on police departments staging "speed traps" to generate speeding ticket revenue. Which is society's way of saying that, yes, speeding is illegal, but that illegality isn't meant to be a lever for government oppression.

> The context being that you can't dismiss the argument of personal freedom purely on the basis that someone is creating risk for others.

You can, in fact, dismiss the argument of personal freedom purely on the basis that someone is creating a life and death risk for others, though. You've presented no cogent argument otherwise.

> The concept that a driver would sometimes be given the freedom to surpass the speed limit, when they judge it necessary, is not even particularly controversial.

We're in the middle of a controversy on this topic, therefore it is in fact controversial. QED.

> Police use broad discretion to not enforce speed limits to the letter of the law.

Yes, and that is clearly an abuse of power--one of many police abuses of power that our society is struggling to curb. Is that really the argument you want to be making?

> In fact many states have laws that crack down on police departments staging "speed traps" to generate speeding ticket revenue.

Yes: and why is that? Is it because they think police should have discretion to not enforce the letter of the law? How on earth does that follow?

> Which is society's way of saying that, yes, speeding is illegal, but that illegality isn't meant to be a lever for government oppression.

Alternative explanation: this is society's way of saying that, yes, speeding is illegal, but road infrastructure should be designed to make the law useful and possible to follow.

The "no speed traps" laws I'm aware of are focused on a) giving drivers signage that adequately indicates a change in speed limit in advance to give drivers a chance to adjust their speed, and b) removing police perverse incentives to enforce the law in ways that don't achieve its purpose. These laws address very specific problems that have nothing to do with your vague "lever for government oppression" idea.

Be honest with yourself: you've experienced having the ability to speed "at your discretion" if you've driven a car, because cars currently don't have speed limiters. Have you ever, even once used that discretion to speed for a good reason? Or are you just grasping at straws to justify why you should be allowed to put other people's lives in danger because you're impatient?

You're again straying from the topic, to instead go ad hominem and score rhetorical points against a strawman who simply enjoys speeding and doesn't want the government to stop him.

As a reminder, I'm not arguing speeding should be legal. I'm arguing that mandating speed limiters in cars is not a good solution. And the onus would be on the one arguing for the institution of such a regulation to justify it, which you have not done.

> You can, in fact, dismiss the argument of personal freedom purely on the basis that someone is creating a life and death risk for others, though.

You're contradicting yourself now. Whatever happened to "obviously there's some tradeoffs involved" in the case of banning driving? Either creating risk for others alone is sufficient justification for the removal of a freedom, or it isn't. Obviously the degree of risk created is not the criteria either, since, as we've already covered, banning driving would save 100x more lives than speed limiters would. So obviously there are more factors involved in the decision than just the creation of risk, nor the amount or degree of risk.

Therefore, no, "creating a life and death risk for others" alone is not a sufficient argument. While I do agree that it is one factor involved, it is not the sole factor. You have to also consider the cost of the solution, the real-world measurable benefits of the solution, inefficiencies and inaccuracies of the solution (e.g. missing or defaced signage, signage read incorrectly), the risk that the solution itself creates (e.g. a car is being followed closely. Now when the speed limit changes, slowing down automatically, rather than at the driver's own discretion, creates risk for this driver) and many other factors.

(This EU law, specifically, is merely a "soft" approach, since many of the mandated options aren't actually speed limiters, they are simply warnings to the driver. I'm specifically arguing against a "hard" approach where cars limit their own speed.)

The rest of your post is focused on a point I made about how society (in general, at least where I live - I don't know where you live and I obviously can't speak for you personally) already does not view speeding as something that could reasonably be enforced by mechanical limiter (since there are many situations where drivers facing unusual or extenuating circumstances are given leniency by cops and judges, and society tends to view this favorably, and tends to view harsh enforcement very unfavorably. This stands in contrast to the treatment and attitude toward most other crimes, where no excuse or extenuating circumstance tends to warrant leniency, unless the person literally had no other choice.) If you disagree with society on that point, then that's something you should take up with society. Regardless, it was a tangential point. (It was only worth mentioning because, society are the ones who elect the lawmakers at the end of the day. So they are ultimately the benchmark of whether a given legal doctrine is considered controversial or not.)

> As a reminder, I'm not arguing speeding should be legal. I'm arguing that mandating speed limiters in cars is not a good solution. And the onus would be on the one arguing for the institution of such a regulation to justify it, which you have not done.

I would think that the reason for having speed limiters is fairly obvious: people don't follow speed limits, law enforcement is ineffective and unequally applied, and the result is that car accidents are the number 1 killer of people under 40 in the US. If mass death isn't enough justification for you, I don't know what will be.

And to be specific: this is the only solution on the table which has a real chance of changing the above.

> Whatever happened to "obviously there's some tradeoffs involved" in the case of banning driving?

This is absurd. Banning driving clearly has massive negative effects which far outstrip the risks to others which driving causes. You know this.

> Either creating risk for others alone is sufficient justification for the removal of a freedom, or it isn't.

Alone, it is.

But in the case of banning driving completely, it's not alone, there are other factors. Which you know.

There aren't other issues present with speeding. There literally is no reason to speed.

Stop trying to present this as a black and white issue: the world is full of shades of grey and nuance.

> You have to also consider the cost of the solution, the real-world measurable benefits of the solution, inefficiencies and inaccuracies of the solution (e.g. missing or defaced signage, signage read incorrectly), the risk that the solution itself creates (e.g. a car is being followed closely. Now when the speed limit changes, slowing down automatically, rather than at the driver's own discretion, creates risk for this driver) and many other factors.

Cost of the solution: cheaper than the medical cost of treating millions of car accident injuries, the cost of road cleanup, etc., probably. And that's just in terms of dollars: surely we can agree that human life has some non-monetary value.

Real world measurable benefits: fewer speeding deaths, less inequitable police enforcement of speeding laws, less cost.

Inefficiencies and inaccuracies: you seem to be dismissing speed limiters outright without actually picking a solution so that you can wave your hands about inefficiencies and inaccuracies of a solution which isn't actually specific enough for anyone to tell you what the inefficiencies and inaccuracies of the solution is. It seems you're aware that the issues you bring up such as missing and defaced signage, are already addressed in the proposed legislation, so what solution are you actually objecting to?

Consider the following speed limiter solution: in the US, the highest speed limits I'm aware of are 80mph, and most states max out at 70mph. Would you be opposed to a governor which simply prevents cars from driving faster than 80mph? What are the inefficiencies and inaccuracies of not being able to drag race with factory cars on public highways?

> The rest of your post is focused on a point I made about how society (in general, at least where I live - I don't know where you live and I obviously can't speak for you personally) already does not view speeding as something that could reasonably be enforced by mechanical limiter (since there are many situations where drivers facing unusual or extenuating circumstances are given leniency by cops and judges, and society tends to view this favorably, and tends to view harsh enforcement very unfavorably. This stands in contrast to the treatment and attitude toward most other crimes, where no excuse or extenuating circumstance tends to warrant leniency, unless the person literally had no other choice.) If you disagree with society on that point, then that's something you should take up with society. Regardless, it was a tangential point. (It was only worth mentioning because, society are the ones who elect the lawmakers at the end of the day. So they are ultimately the benchmark of whether a given legal doctrine is considered controversial or not.)

Yeah, that's because societal opinion on whether this could be enforced by a mechanical limiter is not in evidence. You're claiming society backs you up on this, which is simply not proven. Your examples of anti-speed-trap legislation are practically unrelated non sequiturs which assume a nonsensical motivation for those laws.

Apparently you didn't. The most proactive method is "a speed control function in which the speed of the vehicle will be gradually reduced", and "the system can be smoothly overridden by the driver by pressing the accelerator pedal a little bit deeper", so your hyperbolic reaction is overwrought.

Is it though? When has government regulation ever decreased?

Give them an inch...

Government regulations today, at least in the U.S. and the UK, are a fraction of what they used to be in the post WW 20th century.

Government regulations have been getting weaker pretty much my entire living memory.

Except for the things that most affect common Americans. Like how most housing has onerous zoning and code requirements, banking has kyc/AML and reporting, OSHA controls our work conditions, kids families can be investigated for practicing age appropriate child independence, and family law now often essentially makes the higher earner a slave on a short leash to jail if their spouse divorces them.

I would take post WW by a long shot.

Government regulation is constantly decreased. Weed is now legal in most US states for recreational use (I think; at any rate, many of them). The recent US Supreme Court Chevron decision will, for better or worse, probably lead to significant deregulation.

Weed is illegal everywhere in the US by federal law and defacto illegal by state law in most 'legal' states if you are anything other than a homeless bum, as driving a car with metabolites or owning a gun (or just living in same house) as a user are both crimes.

Regulations are removed all the time in the US (see the repeal of Glass-Steagall act as a recent, prominent example)

There are pretty easy examples of decreasing regulations, both in the US and in Europe. The US is particularly easy to come up with examples: the supreme court has banished many regulations, reverting to more laissez faire states, whether related to gun control, campaign finances, TV broadcast rules, rules on marriage, the scope of CDC's or EPA's power, etc. The tax system gets simplified every few decades, after it accumulates cruft.

Gun control has gotten looser on state level. Federal seems to get worse every couple decades. It started with the NFA, then the GCA, then the hughes amendment. Finally everything became a felony so they just disarmed undesirable people and races that way.

Let me fix that for you:

Gun control has gotten worse on a state level

Federal seems to get better every couple decades

Happy to help!

Yes, it’s overwrought.

The vast majority of these restrictions are not slippery slopes. In fact, slippery slope arguments are themselves a category of logical fallacy.

I understand that many people are driven by fear and emotions, but you should get ahold of yourself and stop supporting irrational hysteria.

You clearly identify the important pieces and then chose to ignore them to arrive at the weirdest of conclusions. I am confused.

This is the fallacy of the slippery slope. The regulation is not necessarily a first step. It can and might very well stop at the driver alert stage. To become an automatic speed limiter would be a new set of regulations, with a new debate and regulatory process behind it.

Sure, but it's that much easier now. The limiter is already there, all they need to do is make it mandatory.

At some point along the way any use of a slippery slope became a fallacy on HN, and I'm at a loss to explain how.

Would it be more helpful to talk about it in terms of set points? You can change things a very small amount from the status quo without making people upset. Accepting a change in one direction makes it easier for them to later swallow what would have been more drastic changes in that direction.

Obviously this is a fallacy if change A isn't actually a step towards change B, but surely you can see that having accepted already installed speed limiters in all cars makes it dramatically more likely that they'll later be required to actually limit the speed of the car?

>There will be four ways in which ISA systems will work to slow the vehicle down, and it will be up to the manufacturers to pick which one they want to use. The EU regulations permit a system that can use a cascaded acoustic warning, a cascaded vibrating warning, an accelerator pedal with haptic feedback, or a speed control function in which the speed of the vehicle will be gradually reduced.

Haptic feedback isn't gonna kill anyone anytime soon.

How many people lift their foot from the brake pedal the first time they experience the antilock system activating?

The first time you experience that should be around the third or fourth driving lesson.

We never did skid recovery practice or emergency stops in drivers ed, but that was decades ago for me.

> Yes I read the article

Then you'd read that automatic slowing was one of many options, and it's gradual.

> but it's the first step in a very wrong direction

Please explain how, because your current complaint is not based in reality.

If cars are required by law to have speed limiting, that means they can know when and where a car is speeding. Cars are closely tied to their owners in many ways (registration, insurance, etc.). One way this could be seen as being a step in the wrong direction is that it not only sets a precedent for collecting that information, but is forcing car manufacturers to start building up that ability.

I personally think it's pretty obvious why people might not want an entity (public governments, or private companies) to have access to that kind of information. You might say well that's all easily mitigated by encrypting the data or making tracking individuals illegal, to which I would ask: what gives you any confidence that the EU (or any government) would enforce/protect that, when there's evidence they are actively anti-encryption and pro-snooping in other domains?

If you need to be walked through the reasoning behind why it might be a bad idea to ~allow~ require these systems to be built, idk what to tell you lol

> that means they can know when and where a car is speeding

These systems don't require reporting data back, and there is no technical reason for them to do so. In fact, nothing in the legislation suggests this.

> it not only sets a precedent for collecting that information, but is forcing car manufacturers to start building up that ability.

Not only have states and cities started doing this, via ALPR, but cars are increasingly being provisioned with cell modems, and have truly awful privacy policies. Manufacturers view this information as a revenue stream.

So, not only does the "possible" situation you describe already exist, but the worst of it is non-state incentivized data collection from car makers. Both of those are (serious, imo) problems, but already exist, and are independent of speed alerting.

So idk what to tell you lol

I said that they can know this data, not that they will... Not requiring data reporting doesn't mean that the data won't be reported, as you seem to be already aware of.

I am also in no way in support of the things you're referencing, just because they already exist doesn't mean it's just OK to accept further erosion of privacy. ALPR, cars with cell modems - these things are part of the same "slippery slope" of privacy wrt cars. As far as I can tell, you're saying "what you're worried about is already happening, so why bother being concerned about it getting worse?". How exactly is that helpful?

So maybe you're right, this isn't a "bad first step" - because it's actually the continuation of steps along a path that was no good form the start.

The point still stands that having the government get involved, making it a legal requirement for new cars to develop these bad systems, is a bad thing for individual privacy. It's not independent of requiring speed alerting, because the government is effectively saying "not only do we not care that this is happening, we're now requiring it".

> As far as I can tell, you're saying "what you're worried about is already happening, so why bother being concerned about it getting worse?".

I called them "serious problems". I don't know how you extrapolated "why bother being concerned" from "serious problems".

And my point still stands that the situation you described, is, incredibly, not only not based in reality, but also simultaneously exists through other means.

There are, of course, reasons to oppose something like this - but, the reasons you're choosing to oppose this are moot, in every feasible way.

The concern I'm raising is that this legislation opens the door for further reductions in the privacy of location. In what way is that concern not based in reality?

>or a speed control function in which the speed of the vehicle will be gradually reduced.

Not suddenly, gradually.

It still turns you into a road hazard and puts you in a dangerous situation

How about we don't take control away from the people in the driver seat

If we can't trust them to operate the vehicle then we should not be letting them operate the vehicle

We cannot solve the problem of terrible driver training with tech

>It still turns you into a road hazard and puts you in a dangerous situation

How do you know? You make assumptions about a system, that doesn't even is put in place. No car manufacture will use the forth way and risks getting sued if it doesn't work good enough.

> How do you know? You make assumptions about a system, that doesn't even is put in place

It seems obvious that any situation that unexpectedly decreases a driver's control over their vehicle creates a hazard and becomes dangerous

This is true with any situation regardless of if the loss of control is caused by hydroplaning, slipping on black ice, an unexpected flat tire, or a speed limiting system misreading a road sign and reducing your maximum speed lower than the traffic around you

Depends on the degree of speed change. It is unlikely that it would be an emergency stop. The systems can also be deactivated, at least until the next time the vehicle is started.

There's a tunnel in my town where my Tesla hard breaks 3 separate places if I'm on cruise control / auto pilot. If this legislation will force this to happen even outside of auto pilot it will be "great" for sure...

"[...] cause an average of 2 accidents per month if [...] people [...] weren't paying attention"

Leaving aside the myriad political & economic implications of this, my VW's navigation quite frequently thinks I'm on a different road, or it misses a speed limit sign, etc. It's bad enough when it jerks the wheel a little because it got confused by an off-ramp, or slams on the brakes in the parking lot because someone is walking a mere 30 yards behind me, but boy if my car started dropping speed to 35 because it confused the freeway with the frontage road I'd be pretty mad.

My car has this stuff in it too (BYD Dolphin) and it's a mixed bag. I find the "watch out, car/object moving into your path" stuff really useful – here in Australia, driving in the bush, it's picked up roos I'd likely have missed otherwise.

It whinges if it thinks I'm speeding, but it's often totally wrong on the speed limit: reading the wrong signs, holding a lower limit when I've turned onto a road with a higher limit. I find the alerts extremely distracting, and unfortunately they use the same sound as alerts I might want to know about. It also makes that same sound every time it reads a new sign. And then it feels the need to claim I'm speeding all over again, even if the limit hasn't changed.

I turn it off most times I get in the car, although there's no shortcut for it, so it's just a constant annoyance: the car won't remember the setting.

This is more like a "speed warner" than a "speed limiter".

A cascading vibration warning sounds like it would make going fast feel more exciting.

Like a Rumble Pak[1] for your car!

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumble_Pak

Leaving aside the concerns about the tech not working well, I'm really not a fan of this pre-crime stuff. This feels very Big Brother, where someone (or some system) is watching over you so you don't break any laws.

Things like this lead to cultural ossification and are a nightmare scenario for me.

One possible future includes one or more of:

- AI guns that won't shoot at other people, only authorized in-season animals.

- AI keyboards that won't let you type "hate speech"

- AI browsers that only let you visit approved, legal sites.

- AI smartphones that contact the police if you are breaking curfew, trespassing, recording unauthorized (copyrighted) public or audio, etc.

You don't need AI for the browser thing, stuff is already blocked at the DNS level.

> - AI guns that won't shoot at other people, only authorized in-season animals.

That sounds like a legitimately good idea, why would you need a gun that shoots people

> why would you need a gun that shoots people

Resisting the urge to be snarky, self defense is a legitimate answer. You may not live somewhere where it's common (or you may not frequently feel unsafe) but wanting the ability to have a weapon to defend yourself (or more commonly to show that you have the ability to defend yourself) from any assailant is a very real thing for people both in the US and around the world.

There are plenty of women with restraining orders against men who would do them harm who would very much suffer consequences, and be made much more afraid for their safety, if it weren't for "guns that shoot people".

I believe there should be stricter gun control, but that people should be allowed to carry other forms of self defense such as pepper spray or tasers (I understand these are illegal in some countries). If we invented a gun which allowed hunters to hunt but somehow didn't let people should other people, I can only see that as a positive

This is all assuming that the control mechanism is impossible to disable, which you know full well is impossible to implement.

If the control mechanism can be disabled then we're back to "if you outlaw guns then only outlaws will have guns".

Because bad people exist and there are imminent dangers? There are legitimately good uses of people shooting people all the time. Hostage situations being the painfully obvious example.

What even is this question?

Well obviously the police would have access to other kinds of guns, but if civilian guns were only capable of shooting deer then that would be a definite plus

But on the highway they are watching over you so you don't break any laws. They have police officers who patrol the highways and traffic cameras. If this had any implications on people's basic human rights, I might agree but driving is a privilege, not a right.

It's very different to watch 1% of drivers, 1% of the time, and to watch 100% of drivers, 100% of the time.

There's no room for change if law enforcement is absolute. Imagine if gay people could never sex, because a microchip zapped their brain whenever they got a sexual thought about a member of the same sex. Homosexuality would still be illegal.

Putting a microchip in people's brains is a completely different thing than putting a microchip in people's cars. People have a right to bodily autonomy; they don't have a right to drive a car. The first would violate human rights on principle alone, the second has no implication on human rights

I think that very much depends on what the chip in the car does. If it effectively broadcasts your movements to the government, I very much think that does have human rights implications (on the right to privacy).

However, if the chip just limits your car's speed, I have trouble imagining what rights that would violate. Your right to speed? C'mon.

Is it "pre-crime" if it activates once you are speeding? Surely we can agree that is a crime

Not if it makes it so you can't speed.

Is it a crime where "100% enforcement" is worth surrendering (even more) individual privacy?

Sorry, what individual privacy is being surrendered here? Note that observing the driver is in no way necessary to implement a speed limiter.

Yea I've noted that there doesn't have to be a camera pointed at the driver... there does, however, have to be either a GPS and/or camera pointing outwards (that could be used to ID location) in order to know what the current speed limit is for the drivers given location.

So the individual privacy at risk is the privacy of not having your location at any given time being knowable to a car manufacturer/ government agency.

> [T]here does, however, have to be either a GPS and/or camera pointing outwards (that could be used to ID location) in order to know what the current speed limit is for the drivers given location.

Used by whom? The mechanic who services my car?

I see the problem if the location data is being broadcast to some central server... so don't do that. But that's not necessary for implementation. The ideal implementation in my mind would be to have speed limit signs broadcast speeds on some short-distance frequency and have cars read that passively: much more reliable than cameras, no violation of privacy.

Incidentally, cars broadcasting location to a central server is already a problem--they don't need speed limiting to do that. OnStar has been doing this for decades.

It seems like a lot of HN users who likely happily broadcast their location to Google Maps are suddenly worried about location privacy when it's used to prevent them from speeding. Minor convenience? Sure! Take my privacy! Can't put other people's lives at risk to get to my destination a few seconds faster? How dare you! Privacy is a human right!

> Used by whom?

That's where the concern is. If the government is mandating it, it seems reasonable to think that more likely than not, they will want access to it. Even if for no other reason than to hand out tickets. The potential for that data to leak out is there.

> so don't do that

It's nice that you have a solution that would respect privacy concerns, but where should we be getting confidence from that a government will protect/enforce a system that is privacy-first? Look at how the EU has been handling encryption in messaging apps, they don't really seem to be in favor of protecting privacy as a "right".

> cars broadcasting location to a central server is already a problem

Correct, it's a problem that exists, and it's a problem that is made worse by this legislation. There are currently options that exist that don't use OnStar, or that don't phone home to their manufacturer. This legislation opens the door for further reduction in privacy, and that's the concern. Just because something is already going down a concerning path, it doesn't mean people shouldn't be concerned when things seem to be getting worse.

FWIW I don't use google maps, primarily because I don't want them tracking where I am

> Correct, it's a problem that exists, and it's a problem that is made worse by this legislation.

Sorry, how? You keep claiming this is a privacy concern, but so far, I see no evidence whatsoever that implementation of this anti-speeding regulation requires violations of privacy rights, or is planned to include violations of privacy rights.

It's beginning to sound like you just want to speed and are trying to justify that position by claiming that it's a violation of privacy when it simply isn't. If some form of enforcement violates people's rights to privacy, I'll oppose that, but I'm not going to oppose speeding regulation that saves lives on the basis that hypothetical enforcement options violate privacy rights. There are plenty of ways to implement anti-speeding enforcement that don't violate privacy rights.

Your argument right now is tantamount to claiming we can't have laws that might be enforced by violating people's privacy, but that logic applies to a whole lot of laws which you obviously don't support reversing. Should child pornography be legal? Should blowing up planes? Laws against those things have been implemented in ways that violate people's rights to privacy far more often than speeding. And I do agree that we should enforce those laws without violating people's privacy, but obviously we agree we can't just legalize those things because they might be enforced using methods that violate the right to privacy.

Brother, I don't even currently own a car. I couldn't care less about speeding.

I re-wrote this to the top to try and find common ground between us, rather than just bickering:

I think that what would immediately dissolve any difference in opinion that you and I have would be this: legislation is also passed that expressly defines privacy-preserving requirements that car manufacturers (and the government) need to obey. That would mean a blind (no PII), no-backdoor, encrypted, non-tracked system for implementing a speed-limiter (bonus points if it applies to any/all phoning home that cars do). If something like that was clearly defined, the privacy concerns I (and others) have are actually accounted for.

And then to clarify what I've been trying to say/ respond to what you've written:

We have laws against speeding, those are laws regardless of if speed limiters exist. You're painting my argument out to be "I don't like the enforcement of this law, so it shouldn't be a law at all" and that is just simply not what I am saying.

It's the method of enforcement that causes the privacy concern, not the law itself. We can (and always will/should) have laws against speeding. We do not have to mandate every new car have a new privacy risk added to effectively enforce speeding laws.

Constantly adding ever more invasive mandates to enforce laws just takes us further and further down the path of privacy violations. You say that there's no evidence that this regulation requires violating privacy rights, but when the legislation doesn't expressly account for preserving privacy, than it's a safe bet that privacy will not be protected, and will (eventually) be abused.

> Brother, I don't even currently own a car. I couldn't care less about speeding.

And that's a problem: car accidents are the #1 killer of people under 40 in the US and speeding is one of the top 3 reasons for that (the other two being drunk driving and distracted driving).

> Constantly adding ever more invasive mandates to enforce laws just takes us further and further down the path of privacy violations. You say that there's no evidence that this regulation requires violating privacy rights, but when the legislation doesn't expressly account for preserving privacy, than it's a safe bet that privacy will not be protected, and will (eventually) be abused.

Wouldn't it be easier to simply have blanket laws regulating what data can be collected by companies and law enforcement, and what data can be sent to law enforcement, not specific to speed limiters?

To be clear, I'm a personal privacy absolutist: I share your concerns with privacy, but I don't think the approach you're suggesting, of having privacy baked into every individual law, is particularly effective for a few reasons:

1. It dissipates the fight for privacy across a million different small laws, spreading resources being used to fight for privacy rights too thin.

2. It pits privacy against a bunch of other legitimate causes: if you hold up this law because of privacy concerns, you're making privacy the enemy of car safety advocacy. That's obviously not your intent, but car safety advocates are going to view it that way. If you hold up a law forcing insurance companies to pay for gene therapy because there are genetic privacy concerns, you're now making enemies of families of people with genetic diseases. If you hold up a law forcing employers to give sick leave because there are medical privacy concerns, you make an enemy of workers rights advocates. Spread across a bunch of different political issues, this create a ton of political enemies for privacy, and adds real grassroots support to the anti-privacy movement.

3. It's ineffective in actually enforcing privacy, because it isn't at a high enough level. Invaders of privacy need only find a loophole in one law and then collect all the data they want in that context, or even collect that data in a context where it's illegal and then pretend it was collected in a context where it's legal (i.e. parallel construction[1]).

Privacy doesn't need to, and shouldn't, permeate every law that is made. Instead what we need is comprehensive privacy legislation that blanket prevents companies and law enforcement from collecting data on people and storing it in central repositories, and provides real penalties for violating that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

No we don't agree.

Also once this is in place what is "legal" today will be "illegal" tomorrow.

We have much better cars than 50 years ago and speed limits remained the same. Now they are lowering them bit by bit. Think of the children, think of the environment etc

Won't matter anyway when all there is are robotaxis.

> This feels very Big Brother, where someone (or some system) is watching over you so you don't break any laws

Is having a speed-limit in the first place 'pre-crime prevention'? Regulating technology that can have public health implications is standard for governments, so to me it seems normal that they might site this regulation in the vehicle itself, rather than at usage-time. Is requiring cars to have like an ABS system preventing users from committing the crime of vehicular manslaughter? Or is it protecting the pedestrian from being killed by a negligent driver?

There's no downside to ABS. There's plenty of downside to a system that blanket bans speeding, even when the operator knows better than the system and is taking a calculated risk.

That's a subtle change of framing; I'm talking about this idea of the thing as a 'pre-crime' tool. I agree that the implementation you describe (ex. a hard cap on speed based on ex. GPS speed limit data) is a 'bad idea', but I don't agree that it's like a 'big brother bad idea', just that it's a bad implementation of an otherwise normal idea. There's plenty of ways one can imagine a gentle system of pushback against speed limits (ex. a warning bell, haptic feedback, mechanical governor impeding the engine from exceeding a certain RPM) that would not have the risks you're using to differentiate this from ABS.

I agree, if it's just a reminder, it's not as bad, it's just a step in the wrong direction. If they then change it to prevent you from breaking the limit, that will really be a nightmare scenario.

> If they then change it to prevent you from breaking the limit

But your ability to break the limit is fully predicted on the capabilities of the car? It's not like it's some kind of natural right you have to go 80 in a 65, you need someone to make and sell you a vehicle which will do that for you, and regulatory bodies limit the capabilities of consumer goods all the time (ex. radio transmitter devices).

Again say they required a mechanical governor in the car which capped the limit at say 60mph for all vehicles sold, it's going to prevent you from accelerating faster than that always (so no 'braking' at any point, but at 60mph your engine will no longer by able to apply acceleration). Is this also a nightmare scenario? Or is it specifically the telemetry required to localize that to the roadway speed limit?

That's not so much a nightmare scenario as it is a car that's not fit for purpose. Making the car always obey the speed limit assumes that a) speed limits are always correct (they are definitely not) and b) there is never a valid reason to exceed the speed limit (also obviously wrong).

That's why this is a nightmare scenario. You have an unthinking, unfeeling machine enforcing laws, without regard for nuance or extenuating circumstances. Laws shouldn't work that way.

I dunno I take issue with (b), I think you're leaning too hard on "obviously". IMO it's reasonable to say that like 70MPH is the fastest a car is allowed to possibly go on public roads and cap it there. Possibly I lack imagination, but what's the actual harm that results from that? I can see cases where it would be inconvenient, but actually harmful in a way that warrants an exemption? On its face that seems pretty unlikely (to me).

Moreover, you continue to frame this as a 'subtractive' restriction, taking away something that a person has access to by default. But technology regulation like this is capping the 'additive' function of a tool. Cars add to your capabilities, and this regulation limits the extent to which they do that. Circling back to my previous point, it's tough for me to think of a case where limitations applied to your technological augmentation qualify as a 'harm', especially given the nature of the specific tech.

Someone has a heart attack and I have to rush them to the hospital.

That's specifically not a valid (or legal) reason to speed (in the US at least) because driving recklessly in an emergency is a great way to create two emergencies. Emergency vehicles exist because of this fact; they get sirens, visible markings, right of way, and professional drivers, all to help ensure that cases where the speed limit is overridden are done so as safely as possible for all parties. None of this is true about your consumer car; people don't know to get out of your way, and may not be aware how fast you're actually approaching. Moreover, you are not a professional driver (and if you happen to be then pretend you're someone else). Driving at like 80MPH under a highly novel and stressful situation is TBH probably beyond your capabilities to do safely unless you're operating on like a straight road with no other drivers. An overwhelming majority of the time you're going to be better served calling an ambulance in this case, and I think pretty much any emergency professional will agree with me. At the very least the people who make money by reducing car accidents do: https://www.progressive.com/lifelanes/on-the-road/speeding-i....

Well if so many folks didn't speed all the damn time, and if speeding wasn't one of the top cause of vehicular accidents (in the US), then we wouldn't need this

"One of the top" is a nice weasel phrase. Lightning strike is one of the top causes of death in the US too, for a large enough number of causes. Not wearing a seat belt caused more deaths than speeding, yet cars don't refuse to start without a seat belt.

Not a weasel phrase. 10-20k deaths/year are caused by speeding. #2 cause of passenger accidents in the US according to The Zebra. https://www.thezebra.com/resources/driving/causes-of-fatal-c...

The problem with automated enforcement of laws like this, is that the laws were not written for 100% automatic enforcement.

Everyone who has ever followed a car driving 5 mph below the speed limit on a two-lane road knows that it is basically impossible to ever pass them while staying under the speed limit. Legally, that's what you're supposed to do, but everyone - the police, the legislators, the courts, and drivers - understands that in practice it's acceptable to exceed the speed limit a bit when making a pass.

This is just one of countless areas in which the law is not actually written with the expectation of being enforced 100% of the time.

> everyone - the police, the legislators, the courts, and drivers - understands that in practice it's acceptable to exceed the speed limit a bit when making a pass

Not in France. When passing a car, you MUST stay below the speed limit. The only exception would be an immediate danger, like for example if you follow someone visibly drunk. Wanting to pass someone because they drive 5kmh below the speed limit is not an immediate danger, just be patient, you’ll be late by 5 minutes at most.

Speed limits are laws, not suggestions.

> Speed limits are laws, not suggestions.

This depends a lot on where you live. In much of the US the speed limit only gets enforced at 10mph above the speed limit, which means that 5 under without good reason is actually hazardous—you're actively impeding traffic that wants to be going ~13mph faster than you are.

> 5 under without good reason is actually hazardous

No it's not. It's annoying, not hazardous.

> you're actively impeding traffic that wants to be going ~13mph faster than you are.

You DON'T break speed limits because the guy behind you wants to break speed limits. That's a terrible reason to break a speed limit.

And if you're the guy breaking speed limit and pressuring the drivers in front of you to do the same, you're actually the hazardous one.

It's not "the guy behind you" in most states I've driven in, it's literally half the people on the road. If you aren't driving the same speed as the people around you out of some misguided sense of self-righteousness you are actively impeding traffic.

I've literally been pulled over and told off (using much the same words I'm using now) for going too slowly on a freeway. I was religiously driving the speed limit and the rest of the traffic wanted to go faster. I corrected my behavior at that point and started going with the flow.

A cop told you to drive above the speed limit? I seriously doubt that. If that’s true, it’s a trap.

Doubt away, but I got a thorough telling off and started going 5-10 over like the rest of the freeway and haven't been pulled over since. Maybe your state is different?

I am going to hold on to my 2013 car for as long as possible. Fuck this future where everything “““needs””” to spy on me and everywhere I go.

Even my 2013 has OnStar. I gotta figure out how to kill that as well

AFAIK - pre-2015 OnStar used 2G cellular radios which no longer work since we shutdown that cellular network a few years ago. You can check your VIN here to verify but I don't think you have anything to worry about: https://activate.onstar.com/en-US

Expect that soon enough they will ask people to put some colored sticker in their car, depending on the age of the car, the technology of the engine, and then you won't be allowed to drive "here" or "there" or you will need a super expensive "pollution-pass".

Rooted cars will be a thing soon enough. If that doesn't work for you, consult your local Amish community for transportation options.

Seems misleading for the headline to call this a "speed limiter", since depending on the implementation it either doesn't affect the car's speed at all, or slows it down in an immediately overrideable way. So there is no actual limit on the car's speed.

From TFA: “The EU regulations permit a system that can use [...], or a speed control function in which the speed of the vehicle will be gradually reduced.”

Sounds a hell lot like an actual limiter.

> "Even in the case of speed control function, where the car speed will be automatically gently reduced, the system can be smoothly overridden by the driver by pressing the accelerator pedal a little bit deeper," the European Commission adds.

Hacker News: This is absurd! The tech doesn't exist!

Reality: It's existed for years, and has already been successfully tested in pilots https://www.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/027-23/mayor-ad...

Sometimes you should try looking at the real world instead of trying to assume from first principles.

Bit funny how the article states that the systems are unobtrusive as to be essentially useless, which ignores the fact that these systems are defanged to appease entitled speeders.

Governments around the world impose various requirements on vehicle speeds, most notably ebikes being capped at 20mph for "safety reasons". Meanwhile private cars can travel at over 100mph for no apparent reason other than to not upset drivers at the expense of everyone else on the road.

Ebikes go where bikes go, that's why. They can mingle with pedestrians. They don't require a licence to operate.

Class B and C mopeds in NYC are speed limited and require a license and registration

Can you explain your point?

Mopeds can only operate on streets, they cant go in bikelanes or sidewalks. They are subject to the same restrictions as cars (licensure, registration) except that they uniquely have a speed limit

Not having a speed limit is unique only to private car ownership

No, you've got it backwards. NYC categorises mopeds by top speed, where class A don't have a speed limit.

As a secondary issue, you're claiming an NYC rule (that you've misconstrued) is evidence of pro-car rules worldwide, and also you're omitting motorbikes (and class A mopeds) even in NYC.

The NYC classification allow relaxations of rules for class B and C mopeds. No helmet required for class C. No inspections required for B or C. These are pro-moped rules. It seem really unobjective to see them as evidence of pro-car thinking.

Cars mingle with pedestrians and cyclists every day.

I don't see the point in arguing in bad faith. Bikes are allowed on cycle paths or even the same path as pedestrians for long stretches. It's not the same. Obviously.

I don't think many people want to limit cars to 20mph. It's obviously not the same.

Right, hence the license.

The limit in Germany is 25kmh, which translates to around 15.5 mph. And yet we have quite some unlimited Autobahns. The 10% fastest cars on the Autobahn section near my home go 200kmh/125mph on average. You can guess what the top 5% or 1% drive.

That's the contrast we live with.

Hopefully the EU's right to repair allows consumers to fix their cars by removing this malware.

If you have relatives who got killed by a speeder you may think differently.

Given that the tech doesn't actually work reliably I'd remove it even without any intention to speed.

It's the same reason why I keep lane keeping assistance off in my car - not because I disagree with the idea, but because the implementation is so bad it's actively dangerous.

The slight speed increase that ordinary people do does not kill people.

We aren't talking about people going freeway speed in a residential area.

Increasing speed increases the chance that someone will die in a crash if it happens, and also increases the chance that a crash will happen. Check out these graphs:

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

The "normal" speeding in residential areas absolutely does increase the chance of death and injury in a collision with a pedestrian or cyclist.

  K = m v²

That energy increases with the square of the speed, and has to go somewhere (person's body) in a collision.

It reduces the amount of time you are in the residential area meaning there is less opportunity to even contact a pedestrian or cyclist. At the extreme in some areas if you could go the speed of light you could essentially pick a time when no pedestrian could even possibly enter the road while you are on it.

Crashing into another person is the problem-- not that they were speeding. Unless they were driving recklessly in a congested area in which case this would do nothing to help.

That's like saying, it's not the fall that kills you but the landing.

If you crash with higher speed you inflect more damage.

A number of years back I had a rental car (in Arizona possibly) that had a speed limiter that was at the speed limit--or just above--as I recall and it was incredibly annoying.

What was annoying about it?

Nobody drives exactly the speed limit - except apparently Europeans now.

EU.

Not OP, but I can hazard some guesses:

* Very few people drive the speed limit, so you're now stuck at being the slowest car on the road. (This will still be a problem under this law because new vehicles are the only ones affected.)

* Inaccurate/out of date speed limits.

* Impossible to pass anyone on a two lane road.

* Having the car take over control is very disorienting for a skilled driver who expects the machine to function as an extension of their body. See the number of people who prefer manual transmission and who eschew cruise control.

The first doesn't really win any sympathy from me lol. People should drive the speed limit, and I have no sympathy for people who tell me about getting pulled over by cops

No, OTHER people, not the driver. He's saying OTHER PEOPLE drive over the limit, and OTHER PEOPLE are NOT in your control, so "haveing no sympathy" is irrelevant here. You have no sympathy for me when i find myself driving amongst others who drive above the limit? Their speeds are not in my control. Only mine is. And if the limiter prevents me from going the same speeds as everyone around me, I will be constantly passed and in greater danger of wrecking.

Do you even have a drivers' license? You evince very little familiarity with practical every day driving. If you are a driver, how many years experience in which countries? It would help us gauge the relevance of your comments -- different countries have different driving cultures.

> You have no sympathy for me when i find myself driving amongst others who drive above the limit?

I also often find myself driving among other people who speed. I stay to the right with the OTHER drivers who are following the law. I always drive the speed limit and it's never a problem for me. Many states' laws require this, anyway (faster traffic to the left, slower traffic to the right).

Yes, I stay to the right too unless passing or exiting to the left, etc, for the reasons you said and others too (the right lane has a shoulder next to it, increasing options in an emergency) Still gets you passed a lot if you're unnecessarily slow though. If the prevailing speed is a speed I feel unsafe going, then sure, I'll accept the passing.

But if the prevailing speed feels safe -- it might just be 5 MPH over the limit, or the limit might be unnecessarily low -- of course I will just go the prevailing speed, to maximize safety. What kind of a fool would do otherwise, just to satisfy an imaginary policeman in his head?

Well 5mph isn't really speeding; as far I know they set the speed limits 5mph lower than they really are (e.g: 55mph means 60mph).

But trust me, the imaginary police are very much not imaginary. I got a couple speeding tickets before I decided I wasn't going to deal with the courts ever again. Now, I do the speed limit. I see cops everywhere on the highways in my state and they definitely will pull you over going 10-ish over. Until recently, anything over 80mph (even if the highway was posted 70mph) was reckless driving (now It's 85 I think)

> Well 5mph isn't really speeding

Hold on now, that's just an opinion. And while it happens to kind of match mine, everyone's opinion on how much speeding is "really speeding" is kind of different, up to a point. Kind of proves my point-- I don't want something stopping me from doing 5MPH or 10MPH or even 15MPH over the limit if circumstances outside of my control indicate I should (NYC is a good example of an area where EVERYONE going 15mph over the limit is not unusual)

My personal rule of thumb is to make sure at any given time, considering yourself and the drivers near you in view on the highway, that you are either under the speed limit or at or below the average speed everyone else is going.

If everyone else is going 10 MPH above, go 8 MPH above. As long as most drivers near you are faster, a cop will pull one of them over first. Never go above the speed limit without a "Speeding Buddy" (a driver who is going even faster who is a few car lengths in front of you). If you have no Speeding Buddy, you don't need to speed, you can just go the speed limit.

If the entire country had speed limiters and they increased the speed limits by 5mph to make 55 match 60, I'd be happy. I just have no sympathy for people who think it's their god given right to go as fast as they think they need to go.

That would require speed limiters to work a lot better than they do.

Also, the speed limit isn't 55 in the US. It varies between 50 and 80 depending on your state and region.

> Well 5mph isn't really speeding; as far I know they set the speed limits 5mph lower than they really are

See, and I was taught 10 mph lower, and that has been my experience driving in many states—8 mph over and you're fine, but much higher than that and you'll get pulled over.

Because k = .5mv^2. Even 5mph makes a big difference. Most people don’t have a good intuition for this, but it’s especially relevant when on streets with pedestrians.

In a fantasy world where everyone does, I agree. In our reality if you’re the only one going the speed limit in what’s often not the right most lane then you’re a road hazard.

> Very few people drive the speed limit, so you're now stuck at being the slowest car on the road. (This will still be a problem under this law because new vehicles are the only ones affected.)

This is by far the most dangerous part. When you're on a freeway where everyone is driving 80-85MPH and you are driving the speed limit of 65MPH, you are the danger to the road. Speed may make accidents deadlier, but the speed differential (whether positive or negative) is what causes accidents. I would not be willing to drive on any of the major Bay Area interstate highways with a car limited to the speed limit. It would absolutely cause an accident eventually.

Do you have any evidence this is the case? All the research I’ve ever read has said that speed is the major contributing factor to injury and death. Also, if this gets mandated then you would very soon not be the only car limited.

These kinds of arguments are annoying because they don’t address the detail of what is proposed here (mostly warnings in car) or the likely dynamics of future changes.

Nobody follows the speed limit that closely, in the US at least. If my car was hard-capped at the posted limit I'd have a mile-long line of honking tailgaters behind me in no time

Only until speed-limited cars reach a critical mass.

If you hog the left lane, sure. I follow the posted speed limit and it's never a problem for me

You never drive on two-lane rural roads? Getting stuck behind a slow vehicle is torture.

they usually allow passing at specified points

Which are often few, far between, and quite short. If there's any kind of traffic coming the opposite way you can miss your chance over and over again.

I would have to guess you can't speed up to pass another vehicle (think bus or truck, or maybe a dangerous situation) and then you will piss off anyone in the fast lane who does not have these limiters.

Cant speak to europe, but in the US you're not supposed to speed up past the speed limit to pass someone, that's illegal. We also don't have "fast lanes" (ie like how the autobahn has sections with no speed limit), we only have passing lanes, but the speed limit still applies in the passing lane. You're not supposed to stay in the left lane for very long

Fast lane probably meant left/passing lane, not unrestricted roads. That you're not supposed to stay in them long is part of why people speed up to pass, otherwise it takes a minute seconds to gain 60 feet on that semi going just under.

Speaking to the US as a whole on traffic law is hard to do. E.g. in Washington it is absolutely legal to exceed the speed limit to pass someone on the highway, in California it isn't. In California it's illegal to sit in the fast lane, in Minnesota it's not. In Minnesota you can turn right on certain reds, in DC you can't.

In my state, it's illegal to go over the speed limit at any point, for any reason. If you want to pass someone, you do so in the left lane, at the speed limit, and then move back over to the middle/right lane. And you best believe you'll get pulled over

And what state is that? I do know that some states are over zealous about this but two vehicles driving next to each other slowing gaining on another to overtake is also creating a dangerous road situation. This is taught when you take your written test in CA. Trucks don’t really have a choice which is why it’s normal for them to do so even on a two lane highway.

Virginia

> two vehicles driving next to each other slowing gaining on another to overtake is also creating a dangerous road situation

Then perhaps you shouldn't pass if it's not safe to do so. My problem with everyone in this thread and who is against speed limiters is: the subtext is that they want to go faster than the speed limit so they can arrive faster. It's simply the fact that people are willing to engage is an extremely dangerous activity multiple times a day so that they can save a few minutes a day. The idea that people should have the right to go dangerously fast because it's simply more convenient for them is a psychotic proposition to me

I think it's more the idea that the speed limit should be reasonably close to what'd be unsafe for long periods, not pressed to the absolute border between what a safe speed and a psychotic speed would be. From that perspective it makes sense that, while you'd ideally like to just go 65 the whole way without obstruction, if you have to pass it's still reasonably to go 67 and do it in a third of the time than clamp to specifically 65 out of ideological principles. If going 67 is just unfathomable from a safety perspective then the problem is probably the speed limit being 65 not what people do to pass at a reasonable rate.

FWIW, Virginia is infamous for strict enforcement of traffic laws—I've never even driven there but have been warned to pay extra close attention when crossing its borders.

Most US states aren't anything like Virginia. I just did a road trip across ~20 states and in none of them did people in cars (as opposed to semis) actually follow the speed limit on the highway. Most states had ~8 over as the normal speed, none were less than 5 over.

> The idea that people should have the right to go dangerously fast because it's simply more convenient

No one is saying anything about dangerously fast driving. In most US states speed limits are set with the understanding that a significant portion of drivers will drive 5 to 10 mph faster than the speed limit and not get pulled over even if a cop sees them. In those states driving at or below the speed limit is actually more dangerous because you're creating an obstruction that other drivers who are following the expected driving patterns have to adapt to.

(Again, from what I understand that doesn't apply to Virginia, which would be why your experience differs from most here.)

In my particular state things tend to be a lot more nuanced. E.g. at the surrounding highway of a major city the typical traffic speed will be 10-15 over the posted and it's 20-25 that gets people pulled over. Go about an hour out from that city and you may be on a stretch of highway where going 5 over is a ticket. Very rarely is anywhere going e.g. 2 mph going to get you pulled over but it does happen some places. We do have turn on red though!

Regardless of where I've travelled in the US I've yet to see someone get pulled over for travelling in the passing lane (though I know it to obviously be a thing just not lucky enough to witness it). I thought for sure I was finally going to see it in Texas with this person doing 10 under in the left lane but the trooper just passed on by to their right.

In my state, 20-25 over can get you arrested. Do it multiple times and you can go to jail

Well that's the funny part: it does in my state too... depending on the part you do it!

In most places in the US I doubt that's true re speeding. Speeding us usually defined as exceeding the posted limit for at least some set time and/or distance, to enable overtaking or other temporary need to go a bit faster without it being an offense.

Not true in the state of WA: https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=46.61.425

Only applies to two-lane roads.

My experience of learning to drive in Europe is that there are roads where the speed limit is 90kph but any non-local sane person will drive 60kph (most mountain roads) and there are roads where the limit is 130kph but regular traffic flows at 140kph and many people cruise (safely) at 150kph. The people actually doing 130kph on the left lane (trucks go 90 on the right) can be a safety hazard.

And like others have said, the laws actually say "speed limit unless passing". Because passing is dangerous and should be done as quickly as possible.

> the laws actually say "speed limit unless passing".

None that I'm aware of in Europe say this. Which country are you describing?

It's what I was told in driver's ed. Maybe assuming that they're only teaching me how to drive by-the-book was wrong.

Basically it kept cutting out right around the speed limit (may have been 5mph over) on the highway. It wasn't "smart" just an absolute limit. (I think wherever I was had a relatively high speed limit for the time--maybe 70--so it was probably some standard governor setting which was sort of unreasonable for where I was, but a long time ago.)

Well this is going to be interesting if they rely on GPS. Possibly due to gps jamming by our neighbour country i have had to disable the feature where the car tries to predict the road ahead and suddenly brakes on the motorway because it thinks it is on a side road 10s of kilometers away.

This law makes an intelligent speed limiter mandatory to be present in a car, but it does not currently require it to be activated. The software for road sign recognition is currently of poor quality, making a mandatory system impractical.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=PI_...

Or, just add speed bumps, curves, narrowings in the road, etc, to naturally bring the speed down. Then it works on everyone, whether they have the nanny tech or not, and you avoid the difficult problem of determining the speed limit accurately 100% of the time across every segment of road everywhere.

This is kind of like the (apocryphal) "NASA spent millions on a pen that would work without gravity; russians just used pencil" parable.

Not sure why you are getting downvoted.

Urban design is a much more effective approach to saving lives (a large fraction of speeding deaths are pedestrians) with the bonus of giving large areas of the city back to pedestrians.

"Traffic calming" is a well established evidence based field. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_calming

Especially considering the top 5 threads on this article are all complaining about how speed limiting and speed limit recognition technology sucks. That's why I thought this was the most logical response.

It seems understood that people typically go about 5-10 MPH over the limit. I assume that speed limits are set with the knowledge that this is common. If technology like this becomes widespread and results in the actual speeds more closely matching the posted limits, will the speed limits eventually be increased, since it was always understood that people could safely drive a bit faster than the old posted speeds?

Secondly, I remember hearing that some car companies calibrate their speedometers to be a bit conservative (reporting a higher speed than is actually being driven), in part so they aren't sued by customers who get tickets. If different cars show different speeds, what will this do to the flow of traffic? Will everyone end up going as slow as the most heavily down-calibrated vehicles?

This system is already in use for lorries, which are hard limited (like the last option described in TFA — engine loses power if driver attepts to accelerate beyond the limit). It's an absolute hell for other users of the road, because they're hard limited to 100 km/h, even on roads where the legal limit is higher. Now the problem is, no two vehicles have exactly the same limit, it varies a noticeable amount, so inevitably one lorry driver will attempt to overtake another one — with speed difference below 1 km/h, at about 100 km/h where legal limit is 140 km/h. It takes about 2 min and usually causes 2-3 km "jams" on motorways.

Is there actual data that these make driving safe?

Hardly because they didn't exist widespread before.

Speed limits on the other hand are proven to reduce accidents.

> Speed limits on the other hand are proven to reduce accidents.

There have been speed limits on every road in the US for over half a century; how did they conduct a controlled study?

Because speed limits change and it's easy to measure the before/after impact in terms of the number and the severity of accidents as the average speed in an area changes.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4989038/

Two major confounders for this argument are the raising of national speed limits from the 1970s to the 1990s, during which time traffic accident and fatality rates went down significantly, and the post-COVID bump in traffic accident and fatality rates, during which time, for the most part, no speed limits went up.

Without a control, there can be no confidence in the claimed causal link. Moreover, "speed limit" vs "no speed limit" is not the same question as "lower speed limit" vs "higher speed limit". People often behave in non-intuitive ways, which is part of why studies are conducted in the first place.

That’s a pretty silly line of thought.. there’s absolutely no need for a “no speed limit” control when speed limits already are just chopping off the higher end of the bell curve of speed distributions.

And clearly there are other causes of accidents and other ways to reduce fatalities (antilock brakes and seatbelts for the period you mentioned) but it’s actually pretty straightforward to assess speed’s influence on accident rates and injuries as shown by the dozens of studies that have found a direct causal relationship. It’s not as if there’s some possibility of a discontinuity where no speed limits means everyone drives slower… especially if you know how speed limits are set in the first place.

The Autobahn has lower accident and fatality rates than U.S. interstates with similar levels of traffic and yet portions of it have no set speed limit at all.

The question is not of speed but speed-related policies and their effect in practice, not in deductively reasoned theory.

Apples and oranges, Germany also have stricter requirements for a driving license and your car needs regularly check-ups at the TÜV.

The A24 is a better example:

1st too many accidents so they needed a speed limit by law

2nd less accidents

3rd because of the less accidents the speed limited wasn't needed by law anymore and was dropped

4th more accidents

Because there are other states in the world without those limits.

Good example is the highway A24 in Brandenburg Germany. The accident numbers were too high so the local government was forced by law to impose a speed limit.

The accident numbers dropped. So what did the local government? They repealed the speed limit because after all, the limit is only necessary for high accident rates.

Guess what happened next? More accidents.

I’d hate for this to become mandatory but at the same time you’ll pry my Ford’s slightly intelligent speed limiter from my cold dead hands. If this change in law means that somehow cars become better at reading speed limit signs (radio signals on roads or sth? maintained by the people who put up the signs? no idea but this gives it a mandate), then I’m only going to love it more.

Though if they make it obligatory to turn on and/or annoying, i’m going to be angry. That shit is going to only make Audi drivers more frustrated than they already are.

Please make speed limit signs broadcast speeds by radio!

That would be incredible. If the road noise outside my house gets too loud, I can transmit a lower speed limit instead of turning up my TV.

This might be effective if all existing cars on the road were somehow retrofitted with speed limiters. But what we'll see instead is an even more dangerous combination of people in older cars (the majority of cars) speeding while people in newer cars are causing a dangerous speed differential in the flow of traffic. Not to mention the economic impact this could have on on new car sales when people decide en masse that they'll just hold onto their old cars without limits for longer.

Next step: frustrated by variances between acutal and reckoned speed limits, consumers demand the limit is returned by an authoritative government API. Of course, authentication will be required to prevent abuse

Next next step: speed API uses social credit score as an input and imposes lower limit for those disfavored by credit system

"The objective is to protect Europeans against traffic accidents, poor air quality and climate change, empower them with new mobility solutions that match their changing needs, and defend the competitiveness of European industry,"

Do speed limiters, as proposed, meaningfully contribute to achieving those objectives?

When the issue is supported by random claims that no one cares to check, why can’t the solution?

Well, all that mandatory tech does make the cars more expensive...

At about 1.4 million annually, and roughly half are people not in cars, it's only surprising cars and speeds are not more closely regulated. Instead, vehicle makers are allowed to raise the hood line on trucks because it's macho. Which causes more death and worse injury.

> There will be four ways in which ISA systems will work to slow the vehicle down, and it will be up to the manufacturers to pick which one they want to use. The EU regulations permit a system that can use a cascaded acoustic warning, a cascaded vibrating warning, an accelerator pedal with haptic feedback, or a speed control function in which the speed of the vehicle will be gradually reduced.

So not speed limiters, but speed warners. Still, given that ebikes and escooters have been limited by legislation to 20-25mph, it only made sense to do the same for the much more obviously dangerous vehicles on the road. I hope we can do the same in the US, or at least make your car annoy you when you speed the way it annoys you when you don't have your seatbelt on.

You pin the "disable speed warner" to your infotainment favorites and click it once when starting the car.

With wireless-phone-as-key, keyless ignition and automatic transmissions, drivers of modern cars who disable the speed warner this way still do less than people driving older cars.

The current effect on race drivers is small. It's about the cultural shift towards respecting speed limits and forcing car manufacturers to implement reliable speed recognition tech. Once that in place, the time will be ready to switch to speed limiters.

2024 must be the year of the speed limits (cue: Year of the <animal> in Chinese calendar), or something is in the waters. Right now, in the UK, there's an enthusiastic drive to convert roads to 20mph. And now this, from the EU.

Please oh please add them to German cars sold to USA too. I would really enjoy watching all the BMWs and Mercedes going the speed limit all the time instead of flying past me with plate obscuring devices and never seeing any consequences

This isn't a problem if you just stay in the right lane.

Yeah, if only a pedestrian or a cyclist or a regular person who isn't out of their mind would "stay in the right lane" and let me go vrooom vrooom, then we would be satisfied! /s

No, it's a problem if you're in the right lane. I spent years trying to do this (Houston, TX). You'll get tailgated, and you'll _also_ deal with the drivers that cross four lanes of traffic to hit that exit.

Our accursed state senator Wiener is trying to bring the same thing to California.

Love it and love Wiener. One of the most effective legislators in California.

Speed limiters/governors are way past due and will save lives and help make streets more liveable

Glad I left California. You guys can keep your limiters.

Not something or someone I'm a fan of, to put it mildly.

Normally I am a big fan of the EU but this is crap legislation. If you want to stop speeding, just do what France is doing: Frequent speed cameras and high fines. It is very rare to encounter somebody speeding there.

I'm curious what the Venn diagram of folks who think this is a hard problem and folks who thing self driving is doable looks like.

It might be more prudent to mandate self-driving

Rules like this m, mandated by unelected officials are one of the reasons millions of people in the UK voted for Brexit.

I swear i remember my old TomTom device having something like this built in but maybe im remembering wrong.

Eww it is not the car's job to enforce speed limits. More nanny state nonsense.

Honestly, I think it makes more sense to start with limiting cars somewhere around 90-110MPH; IE, the fastest that anyone would ever drive on a public road.

Where I live, speed limits are routinely set artificially low due to a cultural belief that rules are meant to be broken. IE, if the safest speed is 75MPH, then the speed limit is set to 55MPH because everyone will break the rule. If the limit was really 75MPH, then everyone would drive faster.

I do think we need frank discussions about what is a safe speed to drive, and the general public's tolerance for risk, before "speed limit aware" limiters are commonplace. Otherwise, these just smell like a scheme from an "enthusiastic rule follower" to try force unneeded rules when these rules don't need to exist.

> Otherwise, these just smell like a scheme from an "enthusiastic rule follower" to try force unneeded rules when these rules don't need to exist.

Also, a lot of these "enthusiastic rule follower" lawmakers who push for these things are really only interested in making other people follow the rules. They will find a way to exempt themselves.

> then the speed limit is set to 55MPH

The speed limit is set to 55MPH because the road services vehicles that weigh 600lbs all the way up to 80,000lbs. "Safe speed" is not a single universal number for a given stretch of road.

The laws even acknowledge this, as if the weather is extremely unfavorable, you can be pulled over for driving _at_ the speed limit as it will be declared "unsafe speed under given conditions."

This doesn't even approach things like construction zones, traffic accidents and other roadway hazards that can't be flagged in a way for the automated system to recognize correctly.

> because the road services vehicles that weigh 600lbs all the way up to 80,000lbs

The laws recognize that those vehicles are different. Where I live those vehicles are only allowed to drive in the right two lanes.

There's already a federal push to have speed limiters in vehicles like that and it is getting a lot of pushback: https://www.freightwaves.com/news/fmcsa-delays-speed-limiter...

Again, That's why I said it's important to have a frank discussion about the general public's tolerance for risk. Otherwise, whatever authority is pushing for speed limiters under the claim of "safety" is just unintentionally taking an authoritarian approach.

> Where I live those vehicles are only allowed to drive in the right two lanes.

Motorcycles can't use the left lane?

> There's already a federal push to have speed limiters in vehicles like that and it is getting a lot of pushback

A 26,000lb vehicle, going down a 5% grade, with brake failure, goes whatever speed it pleases.

> discussion about the general public's tolerance for risk

The general public, famously, does not have the skill set needed to make correct measurements here. The discussion can only be on that is manipulated.

> Motorcycles can't use the left lane?

Trucks. It is very conspicuously posted 2-4 times a mile. See https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXIV/Ch... (I live in MA) and https://www.findlaw.com/injury/car-accidents/no-trucks-in-th... (To see how these laws change by state.)

> A 26,000lb vehicle, going down a 5% grade, with brake failure, goes whatever speed it pleases.

Don't get bogged down by corner cases. This is why there are runaway truck ramps when this is a risk.

> The general public, famously, does not have the skill set needed to make correct measurements here

That is how authoritarian leadership justifies itself. You clearly do not have the maturity to be part of this discussion if you have to resort to authoritarianism and "ends justify the means."

We're driving a Tesla Model 3 refresh 2024, and it has the speed nag at every start up. It also has a lot of wrong speeds for portions of roads around our place.

Sometimes it's temporary speed limits that were set during road construction and then never went away, sometimes it doesn't understand that you left a type of road and went onto another one with a different default speed limit, it's pretty infuriating.

And that's a car that has cameras all around, onboard image analysis software and permanent internet connection. I can't imagine how that'd even work in cars with less capabilities.

About time. Why have rules for cars if they can’t be enforced

Seems like a net positive change to me, assuming the tech doesn't succumb to some of the FUD takes here (and/or can be improved over time...).

I've had family killed by speeders. I've had friends and family permanently maimed and disabled by speeders. For people who think speed limits are just a suggestion or don't always apply, I can see how this would be "annoying". But the point of speed limits are for driving safety -- something humans are notably absolutely terrible at as a species. Anything that enforces them a bit better than the limited (and tbh flawed) resource of just traffic stops is an improvement in my book.

[dupe]

More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40880764

> Starting in 2022 all newly introduced car models in the EU have had Intelligent Speed Assist (ISA) installed, but now all new vehicles must feature them.

Huh? What’s the difference between “installed” and “featured“ here?

I think the difference is between "only new models" and "all new vehicles". So previously you could buy a new car, just model from a year or two ago without this tech. Now these cars can't be sold any more.

Obligatory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvV3nn_de2k

Just another data point for the eventual "EU social credit score"

And another nail in the coffin of the EU. Annoying your voters, great way to salvage your sinking popularity.

I don't understand the downvotes. The surveillance potential of this is _massive_ and dystopian.

People life authoritarianism when it’s “their side” doing it.

While it can be overridden, hopefully this saves many lives. We limit speeds on scooters and e bikes so cars are only fair

I'm almost certain that the Autobahn is inside the EU and it's famous for the very thing this law supposedly limits.

And on the derestricted section of the autobahn it will do nothing, given that there is no speed limit.

Until gps fails and it starts repeatedly braking because it thinks it is somewhere else

It doesn't brake for you, not even in the most hardcore version of this law proposed by the EU.

For now.

We don't limit the speed of ebikes - we limit the point at which the electric motor cuts off, but there's nothing stopping you from just pedalling faster.

Isn't stopping the powered propulsion the same mechanism? I suppose you are free to put pedals on your car as well if you like.

A bicycle(ebike) can be reasonably and with not too much effort accelerated manually past the speed limit(at least here in Uk/EU with the 15.5mph limiter) and in fact I'd say it's a very common occurance. The same cannot be said about any car, even if technically it's true that if you had some other source of prepulsion the car could go above its own speed limiter.

It won't stop reckless driving on roads where the legal limit is way above the practical limit.

Although I have absolutely zero stats to backup my argument, I'd say deaths on twisty country roads where the vehicle was under the legal speed limit far exceeds those on straight motorways breaking the limit.

My hope is that it lowers the number of people who do 50km/h on 30km/h residential streets and prevents pedestrian deaths.

> roads where the legal limit is way above the practical limit

Can you give an example of such a road? At least in the US, I've never seen one.

Here in rural Ireland there are plenty of roads with 80km/h speed limit where even the rally stages (on closed roads) can't reach it - hence the racing!

Unfortunately rural Ireland is also a pretty dangerous place to walk due to some pretty high speeds on some pretty small roads :-/ . Too often the council "upgrades" a road and in the process takes it away from people walking or biking.

I made a video about some of these roads at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ba7xHUdeew if you're curious.

As a cyclist I've never been more terrified of riding on Irish roads which is a shame as the scenery can be spectacular

Same. I had a beautiful home on a few acres of land with an old bog road from the 19th century near me (it's in the video I linked a lot) and cycling on that was a dream, but as soon as I tried to use the cycle lane to Tullamore it was a disaster of lorries and tractors trying to use said lane to pass each other.

Was driving a rental with speed limit indicators and warning beeps this weekend in Germany. Over the course of a couple days, it was maybe 95% correct, but had major issues with what were probably former construction zones on the Autobhan and some limits near towns. There were a few times where it was giving technically correct "national speed limit" answers for .. not fast roads.

On the Autobahn, it wanted me to slow to 80 in a no speed limit zone a few times, when the general flow of traffic was ~ 130 or so. It was increasingly annoying beeping, but had it actually slowed down, it would have been a severe issue.

This is the first time I've been driving a car with lane assist or active speed control, and I'd say that it increased the congnitive load, especially in trickier situations where there were narrow shifting lanes (due to construction). It may have helped in the easy case, but that's the easy case, and I can handle it.

Alerts were definitely distracting, to the point of taking my attention from the road at potentially bad times. I'll also point out that there was a medium screen tilted toward the driver, that had a freaking youtube app on it, and the instrument cluster is basically a video game now. So a couple of alerts are just the tip of the iceberg.

I may be old enough to yell at clouds now, but I really prefered the full analog, numbers only view of the car's instruments. Text is slow.

I agree with you. My partner's car has lane-keeping and active cruise control. I also find lane-keeping to be more exhausting than helpful. On the other hand, active cruise control is wonderful. It keeps me from getting bored because I'm watching traffic and trying to anticipate when the cruise control changes the speed up or down.

I use cruise control whenever possible, even around town. We have some communities where speeding fines are considered city revenue, so I set my cruise control to what the sign says, and I don't worry about losing track and accidentally speeding. Since I have a plug-in hybrid, I can brake faster because I can grab the regenerative braking paddle on the steering wheel faster than I can move my foot to the brake pedal.

> hopefully this saves many lives.

That's very unlikely. More than half of roadway fatalities in the USA involve drugs or alcohol. You'd have much better luck putting a brethalyzer ignition interlock on all vehicles.

One minute of thinking should make it obvious how easily that would be defeated as well.

This is not in the USA.

Also, I'm particularly interested in the effects on pedestrian and cyclist deaths, and it should be large. The relationship between speed and severe injury is nonlinear.

https://aaafoundation.org/impact-speed-pedestrians-risk-seve...

Results show that the average risk of severe injury for a pedestrian struck by a vehicle reaches 10% at an impact speed of 16 mph, 25% at 23 mph, 50% at 31 mph, 75% at 39 mph, and 90% at 46 mph

Yes but "vehicle was speeding" is often _not_ the mode in which pedestrians are killed. Pedestrians walk on the shoulders of poorly lit roadways where the speed limits are greater than 35. This is a recipe for disaster and it is a very common mode for pedestrian deaths, up to 30% on some years, the drivers did nothing wrong in these cases.

The other is bad roadway design. I searched FARS once for all accidents where the pedestrian was killed _after_ a vehicle had become airborne in one way or another (e.g. Left The Roadway).

There were more than 100 when I ran the search, one memorable one was, a vehicle was driving on a roadway in winter which had a descending hill next to it, the vehicle hit the brakes to avoid an accident, lost control, went down the hill, rolling several times, and in the process killed a pedestrian and his poor dog, before finally tumbling into the lower road and landing upside down on another vehicle.

So. Pedestrians have zero safety margin out there. Even maximum enforcement of speed limits will have almost no impact on this. Unless you also want to make 10mph the maximum speed limit inside a city.

I just shared a source illustrating how lower speeds dramatically affect outcomes for pedestrians (never mind that braking distance is way shorter for lower speeds) and you respond with a straw man about rural road shoulders?

Incidentally I tend to favor 30kph for urban cores, which is 18mph, so you’re not far off. Amsterdam recently made this change and it’s nice, but enforcement is so-so. I’m glad to see this come online in addition to enforcement. My six year old who bikes to school is too.

Or we might see many cities raising speed limits

This is wonderful. Even if it's just a warning, I'd expect this to significantly reduce traffic injury & death.

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