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Comment by Gareth321 | Hacker News Reader

The primary reason is political: people don't like the idea of the government living inside our cars 24x7, telling us how fast we're allowed to go. Even though most of us don't speed. Other examples of this phenomenon include:

* A government mandated alcohol, cigarette, and BMI limit to prevent major health issues.

* Government surveillance of our emails, messages, phone calls, bank accounts and internet activity.

* Abolishing cash so all our transactions are electronically monitored to prevent fraud, money laundering, crime, and tax evasion.

* Limits on free speech.

There are many examples of ways in which authoritarian policies could, in theory, make society safer. Some of us are more comfortable with authoritarianism than others.

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> Even though most of us don't speed.

I visited California once and was going from LAX to Kings Canyon National Park. I was driving the speed limit (I wasn't in any hurry) and got passed by literally everyone on the road. The vast majority of people drive faster than the speed limit. The question is "how much" over the speed limit you can comfortably go before you run the risk of being stopped and fined.

Repeat offenders should choose between not having a license to drive and having a mandatory speed limiter installed in their car. The issue is that it is not trivial to do on all vehicles.

I think you're probably right that most drivers are speeding but I will note that a sampling of drivers that pass you necessarily will not include any that are going your speed or slower. It doesn't take many drivers on the road to feel like you are constantly getting overtaken.

That's one thing I found weird driving in the US. Everyone consistently drove about 5 mph above the speed limit, which I ended up doing too as driving at the speed limit felt like being a nuisance, and was probably less safe too. I remember joking that American are so much into tipping that they even tip speed limits.

But why? If people, including law enforcement are comfortable with doing 70mph on 65mph roads, why not make the speed limit 70mph? Why is there an official and an unofficial speed limit? I heard even self driving cars are programmed to go at the "unofficial" speed limit.

For the context, I live in France. We have a lot of automatic speed traps that will systematically fine you for going 5 km/h above the speed limit, which isn't a wide margin. It means that either you are speeding, or you are driving at the posted speed limit, there is no "speed limit + tip".

I think the 5-10 mph above the limit that most people drive originates from the fact that police in most U.S. jurisdictions will almost never ticket someone going less than 10mph over the limit (except perhaps in school zones or construction zones). Due to that, the unofficial limit over time naturally drifts up to just under where you're likely to be ticketed.

This unofficial leeway likely developed due to things like mechanical issues with speedometers and tires causing reasonable doubt about actual speed within a few MPH. If they were to raise the official speed limit by 5-10MPH, then people would just do 5-10MPH above that. If police then started enforcing much more strictly, you're going to jam up the courts with more people contesting a 1mph over ticket as being due to speedometer calibration or whatever. Or just in general being much more resentful of the police for being so draconian.

> That's one thing I found weird driving in the US. Everyone consistently drove about 5 mph above the speed limit

This is the same in Europe as well. At least from my experience(-s) of driving in Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland and Germany.

> If people, including law enforcement are comfortable with doing 70mph on 65mph roads, why not make the speed limit 70mph

The speed limit is set based on what is considered safe upon collision in a particular area. Furthermore, if you increase the speed limit from 65 mph to 70 mph, you'll likely see drivers going at 75 mph.

There is that, but in this case it is not particularly authoritarian.

- There is already a whole lot of regulations on what makes a car street legal, including rules that can be quite unpopular among drivers and yet important on a large scale. In particular those related to the environment.

- Limiting the top speed of cars does not imply surveillance or advanced GPS-based systems. The idea is just to make it so that the car can't exceed speeds well beyond the highest speed limit in the country.

- The gouvernement is already telling you how fast you are allowed to go, and will watch you for it.

A 100mph limitation will only affect you if you are speeding, if you don't speed, nothing will change for you. There are some exceptions and special cases: race cars, imports, etc... but these are just details that can be dealt with, as it done today on other aspects.

I think you're logically correct. It's the feeling such a policy elicits which makes it untenable. I agree with your points conceptually, but the moment I would have to install a government speed limiter on my car is the moment I vote for someone else. It feels invasive, and I don't like feeling like the paternal hand of the government is all the way up my ass, controlling my gas pedal.

I'm sure the "chronic shit driver, bad enough to have a judge mandate a speed limiter" vote is a big block that politicians will be lining up to appease. Just like the "chronic drunk driver, bad enough to have a judge mandate an interlock" bloc.

It's not about being paternalistic. It's about protecting others, not you.

> Even though most of us don't speed

I'm curious where you live. In the major US city I live in, well above 50% of drivers are going above the speed limit at any particular moment on any particular highway.

One of those is not like the others. Speeding drivers kill innocent bystanders. Obesity, cigarettes or what not will just kill you. Speeding in a car is like swinging a machete in a crowd.

Is it so different? Obesity significantly increases societal costs. And given tradeoffs, those costs add up to other people's lives.

If safety were your overriding concern, you'd set the speed limit at 20 mph. Or better yet, 5.

People don't like the government telling you you can't leave the room you're in but if you break the law you go to jail. This is no different. As usual, anti-government people tend to miss the point completely and jump to extreme non-related situations. Having people who repeatedly break the speed limit have their cars adjusted so they can't do that but can still travel freely and drive anywhere they want is the topic here and you're talking about limits on free speech and government surveillance of our emails. This is not an authoritarian policy. If you break the law, you face consequences.

Extreme non-related situations? Not true at all. Cars are just computers on wheels. They can even be hacked. Remotely. They've got embedded cellular network connectivity. They've got microphones. They've got cameras. They've got goddamn privacy policies these days.

Governments setting policies on cars is just the transportation version of global mass surveillance and control. It's not your car anymore, and it's not you who's driving. The computer is controlling everything, and it's not your computer, it's theirs. If they can set speed limits, they can easily do a lot more than that, it's literally one mandatory over the air software update away.

The only question is: are you gonna sacrifice your freedom for security? The so called "anti-government people" made their choice. It seems you have made yours. The consequences will be felt either way.

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