[eitland]

Generally because machines should serve us instead of telling us what to do. This is an important principle for many of us.

That said I generally stick to the speed limits [1], but what if I need to get to the hospital in a hurry? At least around here local laws are quite clear that you are allowed to break laws and regulations to save lives.

[1]: old habit, wasn't always a well paid programmer and also I mostly think it is the right thing to do :-)

[apatil]

We could have speed governors with an opt-out button, where use of the opt-out button gets logged and has to be justified.

[eitland]

This can be a good idea in certain applications, but the idea of applying it generally comes off as outright scary to me.

What history, politics and leadership classes at school (as well as following the news for a couple of decades afterwards) has told me is that such tools should be used to protect ordinary citizens against abuse of power, not to simplify the lives of those in power.

Otherwise we should just as well make it mandatory that everyone wears GPS trackers and has cameras installed in their living rooms as that should certainly reduce unsolved crimes ;-)

(To make it clear: I support the police, at least our local police, but I still think they should be logged whenever they do something at work that ordinary citizens aren't allowed to while ordinary citizens - and off duty cops for that matter - should only be logged after a judge has allowed it for the investigation of a specific case.)

Edit:

A very practical example: 3 kilometers down the road next to me there is work going on, so instead of 80 km/h the limit is 30km/h.

All well and good except the speed limit doesn't stop until a few hundred meters after the roadworks. Almost everyone breaks the speed limit here, or can we just accept that sometimes people have good reasons for breaking the rules?

Do we want all that information in the hands of already powerful people so that they can selectively enforce it against their enemies? (admittedly less of a problem here in Norway, but you catch my drift).

[apatil]

I didn't have cases like your example in mind. If you couldn't know that the speed limit would decrease soon, eg you had no idea the speed limit was going to change until you were nearly level with the sign, then presumably the law should require you to slow down promptly but safely. The opt-out button shouldn't be required in that case.

The opt-out button would be for rare situations where you actually need to exceed the speed limit for reasons of health or safety.

I don't want information getting into the hands of powerful people without a very good reason, but I think the safety benefits of universal speed limit compliance with exceptions for health and safety would constitute a very good reason.

In terms of privacy, this idea seems more or less equivalent to traffic cameras that capture images of license plates when drivers fail to comply with traffic signals.