[eCa]

When I travelled through Spain back in '99 these were pretty common. They usually turned green when cars had slowed down to the speed limit. I travelled by bike so I didn't trigger them very often..

> Robocars of course would know where all these are and never trigger one, even if the occupants have commanded the vehicle to exceed the limit.

I will be very surprised if occupants of self driving vehicles have that option.

[bradtemp]

Be surprised, then. Google's cars have it. In fact, it would be unsafe not to have it, and the history of attempting to force people with technology in their cars to limit their speed is a history of that never happening.

[davnicwil]

> Google's cars have it.

I had to look this up, not because I didn't believe you but just to verify and read about the reasoning behind it.

The main point I got is that breaking the speed limit intentionally is done to match other speeding traffic and thus not cause a hazard by going slowly relative to everyone else on a section of road.

Whether or not this makes sense, I find it completely unbelievable that this will be explicitly allowed by regulations in basically any country, as a completely autonomous strategic decision by the car's computer.

Perhaps I could see it being 'allowed' as an option to be manually toggled by a human - in the same way that most current road-legal cars have the capability to reach speeds way beyond the limit and yet remain legal.

The law wouldn't explicitly allow this option to be used, but it of course would be, and a blind eye would be turned in cases where it's obviously not a problem, and prosecutions against the human who enabled the option would occur in cases where it is - in other words how speeding laws are currently enforced.

[bradtemp]

The law doesn't allow you to speed, and tickets you if you do. The law does not require your cruise control or throttle block you from speeding if you choose to do so. Yes, you need it to not be a hazard to traffic (as you would be at 65mph on I-280) but also because if you don't allow it, then people in a hurry will switch to manual driving to go fast, thus reducing safety overall.

It's not "allowed" by regulations. The regulations simply don't speak to it. But in Canada, for example, speed limiters in cars were found to violate the constitutional rights of drivers!

[eb0la]

They're still very common in secondary (rural) roads. I Hope you did enjoy the trip.