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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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).

> 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.

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 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.

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...

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.

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…

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