Hyundai’s 2015 Genesis will automatically brake for speed cameras

Fatal accident lawsuits in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

Reasoning: people are going to rely on this to save them from speeding tickets. So they're going to drive too fast. Meanwhile, other idiots who don't have it will also drive too fast. It's only a matter of time before someone in a Genesis enters a camera zone and auto-brakes while another speeding idiot on a cellphone is tail-gating them. Result: a high-speed pile-up.

Something not-dissimilar happened with the first roll-out of ABS on cars; drivers who knew their brakes were super-strong drove too fast and actually ended up with a higher accident rate, at least at first. But ABS was a pure safety feature (to prevent your brakes locking up on a slippery surface or if engaged too hard). This ... I lack words to describe how inadvisable I think it is to seek to avoid a small fine in return for an elevated risk of high-speed vehicle-to-vehicle collisions.

(The risk can be reduced if the Genesis has rear facing radar to prevent shunts, or begins to brake gently some distance ahead of the camera zone. It's also mitigated if tail-gating idiots drive cars with adaptive cruise control -- that maintains constant separation from the vehicle ahead regardless of speed. But as not all cars have the latest features it'll take an automobile generation for this stuff to spread out and become ubiquitous. Meanwhile, sooner or later, people will die.)

Every GPS unit sold in South Korea already come with a database of every speed camera in the country, and the database can be easily updated every few weeks. Connecting this to the speed controller is only the logical next step. I'm actually surprised that it took Hyundai so long to connect the dots.

I don't know about the US and UK, but whenever the Korean police installs a speed camera, they put up a clear warning sign 500-1000m before the camera. There is absolutely no secret or surprise about the location of a speed trap, and the police apparently doesn't care to catch drivers by surprise, either. Someone probably figured out that drivers tend to slow down when they see the warning sign, and do so gradually instead of suddenly since the actual camera is still a quarter mile away. In other words, transparency about the location of speed traps actually increases road safety, even though it probably reduces police revenue.

This is going to confuse the hell out of people who buy it second hand in 10 years time, especially if the maps go out of date.

I wonder how they did their market research to arrive at a position where it avoids being detected breaching a limit but doesn't avoid breaching the limit when there is no camera around. It seems a fairly cynical position to adopt to appeal to a specific segment of the market. Seem very similar to a DUI insurance policy that was briefly offered in Australia (you pay premiums, caught out DUI, no problem, insurance pays).

I'd much prefer to have three options:

1 Turned off - I'll take responsibility for the vehicle myself and bear the consequences myself

2 Their proposal - I'll let the machine avoid the tickets and when nobody is looking do what I please

3 No speeding - The vehicle will never speed, I'll never get a speeding ticket under any circumstances, camera there or not, in fact Hyundai will pay the fine as it will be simply impossible to incur one and they'll put their money on the line to make sure the damn thing works.

Surely if the intention of the car manufacturer was honest it would simply prevent the car from ever exceeding the speed limit anywhere, not just when you're passing a speed camera. Just autobraking for cameras is a ridiculous case of overfitting for the wrong fitness metric.

You could imagine drones of various kinds being pretty good at taking auto speed readings while still being way cheaper than officers with radar guns. My money's on that as the next strategy once fixed camera placements become completely ineffective.

Of all the possible reasons to introduce intelligent breaking, this is the worst. Risking accidents to save money equivalent to 3 large coffees?

So what happens when it detects a speed zone in the middle of winter when I'm on a patch of black ice? The result is often a spinout resulting in totaling the car on a guard rail or a tree or a snowbank. I'll pass. Braking and acceleration are too important for maintaining road traction. Why would I compromise that to avoid a speeding ticket?

First, get past the obvious benefit of a seemingly unfair advantage for avoiding traffic tickets, such as reduced costs due to traffic fines or insurance premiums.

Then get past the obvious harm of a seemingly unfair advantage for avoiding traffic tickets, such as reduced freedom to drive "too fast" and reduced revenues for law enforcement budgets [1].

The end result of tech like this (including the ultimate step of speed governors preventing speeding) really seems to be all of us sharing safer roads, and fewer of us getting hurt or dying in traffic accidents.

This seems pretty good at first sight, but unfortunately, it leaves open one problematic question; if everyone drove at the speed limit (and fully stopped at stop signs/lights --feasible to enforce with tech), would there be fewer accidents?

Also, I wonder if there would be more or less traffic congestion?

[1] http://www.networkworld.com/article/2226966/opensource-subne...

On the one hand this is fucking terrifying on the other I'm off to tag everything with stupid speed limits. Five mph on the motorway and 70 outside schools.

So if I was a local council member, I'd be starting up a cyber warfare division to deliberately insert false camera locations and remove legitimate ones, along with a program of moving the actual cameras around on a random rotation.

Well, that and ensuring that there are more marked police cars patrolling the roads.

Stupid.

Speed cameras exist to stop idiots killing innocent people.

Yeah police profit. Who cares. They need all the help they can get with crystal meth literally turning a fair slice of the world into psycho zombies.