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by janaagaard 1995 days ago
Curious: Why would the Tesla be speeding, since it was in “autopilot” mode? Wouldn’t it know about the speed limits? Or dis the driver set on cruise control first?
2 comments

You can happily set the autopilot speed to above the speed limit. There are a few gotchas and it won’t always let you, but in general, it is fine. I normally set it to 10% higher than the posted speed limit as an example.
You intentionally wish to drive 10% higher than the speed limit.. So, you desire to be in car crash? Also one at faster speeds and therefore exponentially more deadly?

Everyone has to use public roads, not just you. You are endangering all other diligent road users with your behavior, not just yourself.

While I don't condone speeding (and acknowledge the relatively greater damage when accidents happen), I think you need to distinguish between that and unsafe driving which are two very different things.

You can be driving below speed limits very unsafely (and above them safely) and the constant focus on speeding, especially via automated mechanisms like cameras at the expense of traffic officers means we risk a much lower standard of driving and much less safe roads.

Note though my concern is not the crackdown on those who flout the law and/or break speed limits; but the misunderstanding of what unsafe driving is (as implied by your comment), and headline anti-speeding measures that are used to reduce costs and increase risk.

I wonder, do you drive on highways? Because I suspect you don't often. I can't think of a time, sans traffic, that I was cruising under 72 on our local highways (speed limit 65). And I'm usually being passed.
Here in Seattle, in the absence of traffic forcing slower speeds, most people are going ~10mph over the speed limit. On the freeway, although the speed limit is 60mph most people will be going about 70mph. If you use Tesla's autopilot it will match the speed of the car in front of you, up to the maximum specified by the "speed limit". So I usually set the speed limit to something like 75mph so that the car follows the flow of the traffic around it, instead of forcing other drivers to swerve around me because I am going 10mph slower than everyone else.
Curious where you live that people don't speed. Here in Ohio you're expected to go 5 over at all times, people will tailgate and honk if you don't. 10% is lower than that at all but highway speeds
Australia (as an example) has hard speed limits. If you go over their speed limits by 1kph (kilometers), you can get a ticket and they put speeding cameras in abandoned prop cars on roads to catch speeders. I learned this from a coworker who moved here (Chicago) from Melbourne as he was remarking about driving on the highways here.
Most of the US drives faster than the speed limit. It is unsafe to drive the speed limit if everyone is going 10-15mph over the posted limit. Assuming you know the context you clearly don’t makes you look like a jerk. Just because some places (like Australia) strictly enforce speed limits doesn’t mean everyone everywhere does.
Teslas still cannot reliably read signs. It's working in good weather conditions but dirty signs or rainy conditions are still a problem for Tesla's allegedly just around the corner full self driving ability.