Increasing penalties for speeding without this device has issues. It's basically impossible to prove that you intended to break the law, and that you didn't just misjudge your speed. Worse there's become a culture of mildly breaking the law, and it's even harder to prove you intentionally went beyond what's acceptable in that culture. There's a reasonable doubt that it was a honest mistake. This makes it politically, legally, and morally problematic to have significant penalties attached to speeding.
But if you're caught speeding because you disabled the device that a court ordered installed to prevent you from speeding, all worries about intent go out the window. It is, beyond a reasonable doubt, a deliberate violation of the law. Not the actions of a well intentioned person who was in a hurry and bad at judging their speed. This means that, relative to speeding, penalties can be significant increased resulting in better deterrence.
Specifically it looks like Virginia's new law makes it a "class 1 misdemeanor", which is the harshest class of misdemeanor in Virginia law, and the same as a DWI or simple assault. Sentencing maximums are a bit deceptive because they typically aren't what are assigned, but theoretically punishable by up to a year of confinement.
In fact, most cars lie to you about the speed - reporting a speed slightly faster than reality. It's a cover-your-ass measure for the car manufacturers because it's illegal to sell a car (in the US, at least) where the speedometer is inaccurate in the other direction, that is, reading slower than actual speed.
1. Some older vehicles, including pre-1996 GM trucks (and probably others from the same era) had the speedometer calibration controlled by a resistor array on a circuit board under the dash, those can be changed with a lot of effort and a soldering iron, or by swapping out the whole circuit board with a different one that matches your tire size + rear end gear ratio.
Haven't seen that in a long time. Everything I've driven in recent years has a speedometer speed that matches roadside speed sign speed within 1 MPH.
If the reasonable speed for a road is 70, the legal hard limit could be at 75 to be considerate of this effect. But make 75 the actual hard limit with $200 fines for hitting 75, $1000 fines for hitting 80, and jail time for hitting 85. Make it almost certain to be caught if you hit these hard limits.
I guarantee you fewer people would die on the roads if this is the way things worked.
[0] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:42...
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/16mquqv/sp...
If you're caught once, then a fine and a slap on the wrist should be enough to make you pay more attention. Twice - bigger fine & harder slap. If you're caught N times, then lose your license.
Something like "ignorance is not an excuse in the eyes of the law".
Aside from that cars phone bome anyways as ot is, so another way to crossreference data.
This can be as nontrivial as you want it. The problem is rather that a state shouldn't treat its citizens like that. That is probably why they start with repeat offenders.
The fourth amendment means that there should never be a situation where you are arbitrarily required to provide the government access to, or information about, the ways that you use or modify private property like a vehicle.
Break the law enough and you can be provided two options - revocation of license or installation of limiter.
Of course there is a legal layer to this as well. But given how the US legal system treats other constitutional rights that ought to be valid for everybody on American soil at the moment, I thought I'd skip that for now, because apparently something being a constitutional right doesn't make it so.
https://www.ncsl.org/transportation/state-ignition-interlock...