[northisup]

Possibly unpopular idea here, but I want cars to enforce a speed cap inside cities. They have all the relevant speed limit and GPS data. And hopefully this would stop those cars from going 45mph on my 20mph street.

ebikes already have this, why not cars?

[ggreer]

E-bikes have a speed cap so they don’t get classified as motorcycles, which would require insurance, registration, and extra licensing to use on public roads.

The problem with dynamic speed caps is that they fail in very dangerous ways. If you’re on a freeway but your GPS thinks you’re on a residential street, you’re suddenly going much slower than surrounding traffic.

A simpler solution would be to actually enforce traffic laws. It’s only a tiny fraction of drivers who endanger the public. The sooner we identify them and get them off the road, the safer we’ll be.

[forgotusername6]

There are insurance providers in the UK that fit black boxes that work using GPS to check you are following the speed limit. They offer you a lower rate if you obey the law. There are numerous cases of this technology not working and people's policies being cancelled as a result. You couldn't ever attach a limiter to such a system, it would be far too dangerous.

[FrankoDelMar]

This exists in the US as well. In a situation where you need to make emergency maneuvers where you’re likely accelerating or decelerating quickly? Opps, your premium just went up.

[acdha]

> A simpler solution would be to actually enforce traffic laws. It’s only a tiny fraction of drivers who endanger the public.

I don’t know where you live but in every city I’ve visited that fraction is close to half, and for certain behaviors like not stopping for a stop sign or turn on red it’s like 95%.

With regards to speed, I think a lot of this could be addressed by having the vehicle do something like turn off the sound system and play a warning that you’re exceeding the limit when you do more than a certain percentage over for more than a short time. That’d take the fun out of it and interfere with someone’s Zoom call while still allowing them to ignore it if there’s some GPS bounce or something while leaving the freeway.

[reaperman]

Sometimes it is legal to speed for emergency purposes. For example if you are escaping an attacker or taking a dying person to an emergency room.

[Rebelgecko]

I don't think either of those are legal. The only law I can think of that has a relevant exception would be the law about phone use while driving, which has a 911 call exemption.

Regardless, I think those situations are relatively rare and the potential lives saved would pale in comparison to daily traffic deaths

I saw a post here recently about how even ambulance companies are considering revising their policies for speeding and disrupting traffic because there's data showing it leads to worse mortality outcomes. And that's WITH a professional ambulance driver using their lights and sirens

Edit: here's the link https://www.ems1.com/ambulance-safety/articles/14-groups-iss...

[readthenotes1]

Replace legal with appropriate...

And know that whoever malefactors will not have that speed governor

[tensor]

Are either of those things really legal? I'm highly doubtful. In fact, at least for the latter, the official government position is to call an ambulance, don't take someone to the hospital yourself.

[acdha]

Unless you’re a character in an action movie, no. Your dying patient is going to be worse off when you get t-boned driving that aggressively or simply shaking them around. The primary limiting factor in a city are other vehicles, not speed, and not having a siren matters more there.

[s1artibartfast]

This reduces a complex tradeoff between risk of speeding and patient delay to a declaration that it is always better to delay.

It is dogmatic and antiscientific.

[acdha]

Look, I get it, it’s fun to pretend that you’d have an excuse to drive like Tom Cruise but that kind of thing doesn’t matter in real life. If you need to get to the hospital, the limiting factor is traffic and safety: you can’t go faster than the guy ahead of you and the things which could save you time are things like running lights which have a high risk unless you live somewhere with no cross traffic and excellent visibility. In most cases, the time you save is likely to be less than you save by not parking when you get there and less than you’d save by having an EMT drive them in a vehicle which has both legal permission and lights & sirens to get traffic out of the way.

[s1artibartfast]

I dont think you get it. The problem is the arrogance to think you can draw blanket risk conclusions without even bothering to know the circumstance.

You simply imagine a scenario, make up some predictions, and call it a universal truth.

[acdha]

I’m not the one arguing against something which would provably save thousands of lives annually. You’re welcome to show your homework that there are a comparable number of cases where the difference between life and death comes down to being able to exceed the speed limit in an urban area.

[reaperman]

It is legal to do it though.

[acdha]

No, it’s not legal:

https://www.progressive.com/lifelanes/on-the-road/speeding-i...

What you’re hoping is that a police officer would agree with your decision and choose not to write you a ticket. That might work, but if you try this you are gambling on that and almost certainly not saving any meaningful amount of time.

[drdaeman]

Not debating the legality (it surely isn't), but I suspect in some cases a speeding ticket may end up costing less (even including the increased insurance premiums) than the ambulance fees.

[acdha]

Likely but I was simply responding to the false assertion that it was legal. It’s a common lie people use to present the most positive spin for their unwillingness to drive safely in conditions which are exceedingly unlikely to be more serious than “didn’t feel like waking up prudently early”.

[distant_hat]

GPS is notoriously terrible inside cities with tall buildings and when you have overlapping roads, nearby roads with vastly different speed limits and so on. This would lead to way more accidents.

[Rebelgecko]

Just saying that the speed is limited to the maximum speed limit of any road within 1 mile would be a huge improvement. When nearby highways have speed limits of 55mph, there's no good reason to allow cars to drive 70 on surface streets.

[whalesalad]

Freedom is the reason.

[northisup]

i'd like to be free from being hit by cars. its not freedom if its killing other people

[PKop]

Why not pass a law to cut off the hands of speed violators? Would that not solve the problem?

Why invade the cars of every single person. Absurdly heavy-handed, and not necessary nor likely as effective at stopping people speeding on your street.

Narrow, targeted enforcement against violators of existing laws would suffice. Keep incrementally increasing the penalty until it works.

[qbrass]

>Would that not solve the problem?

If it didn't work the first time, it's not going to work the second time.

[PKop]

Of course it would work. Harsh punishment in Singapore works fine. When has that been tried? We don't even do this to stop retail theft let alone residential speeding. What on Earth are you referring to re:the first time?

[nikanj]

That doesn't sound very american of you. A real patriot would solve the issue by buying a bigger car, so if you're hit, it's the other guy who gets hurt

[whalesalad]

they are not mutually exclusive

[PKop]

Enforcement of the law with harsher penalties and a few speed-bumps would stop this. Seems more reasonable than some expensive, dystopian back-door in every car.

[tensor]

Harsher penalties are vastly inferior in all cases to simply making a crime impossible or inconvenient or not have much payoff.

[plagiarist]

It'd be cooler if this wasn't another Third Party Doctrine abuse violating the spirit of the 4th Amendment with telemetry shared around to insurers and anyone else who wants it.

[s1artibartfast]

harsher penalties dont really matter. It all comes down to actual enforcement and general belief in the law.

If nobody thinks they will get caught, penalties dont matter. If the majority decides not to follow the rules, the police cant enforce them meaningfully, there simply not enough police to enforce all the rules against all the people, all the time

[saalweachter]

You could do all sorts of technological enforcement of traffic laws.

You could have cars not permit going above the speed limit on highways for more than X minutes [to facilitate overtaking]. You could dynamically lower the speed limit during inclement weather. You could lower the speed limit when approaching an emergency vehicle by the side of the road. I'm not sure we have accurate enough position info to somehow force people out of the passing lane after a certain amount of time.

Hell, you don't even have to make it outright impossible to drive a car fast -- add a manual override switch, that removes the governor while logging your location and speed with the appropriate authorities. Audit after the fact to distinguish between "automatic speed limits were incorrect", "someone in the car was bleeding out on the way to the hospital" and "I wanted to go real fast".

[jollyllama]

And this is why many of us will never, ever switch to electric/drive by wire cars.

[tensor]

You do realize electric and drive by wire is completely orthogonal to the point here right? There are plenty of electric conversion kits for older vehicles that are "dumb", no internet connection and only enough intelligence to manage the battery and motor.

[plagiarist]

Like it's impossible to programmatically disable ICE cars? You've got a false sense of security. You'll have to buy used cars forever to be safe from such a law.

[rokkitmensch]

I certainly mourn the impending laws preventing end-users from modifying their cars in ways that undermine the nanny-locks.

[JohnFen]

I wouldn't object to this as long as implementing it doesn't require the car to talk to any servers.

Edit: I'm curious (not complaining) as to why this comment is being downvoted. Is it because people disagree with me about not objecting to the idea of speed-limiting in cities, or because people disagree with me about not wanting to talk to servers?