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It takes a long time for societies to evolve and it is a gradual process. Implementing this in new cars now would mean a couple decades or more before it's ubiq

It takes a long time for societies to evolve and it is a gradual process. Implementing this in new cars now would mean a couple decades or more before it's ubiquitous. As the father of a young boy, I would be willing to make the sacrifice to know that by the time he's old enough to make stupid mistakes these protections would be in place on the road. Allowing almost anyone to operate a multi-ton, extremely powerful machine at high speeds, that can kill people in a instant, and is indeed a leading of cause of death, is not a natural human right. The public road is already a highly regulated environment, as it should be. Traffic laws are not "running" anyone's life, that's just a reactionary sound bite. Future generations (if our civilization survives long enough) will look back at this era of automobile deaths and horrific accidents caused by human error as barbaric. In the long term, all cars will be autonomous and humans will not be allowed to drive themselves on public roads. Speed limiters, and other automated safety measures, are a logical step towards that future. The increased safety, in the long term, will allow legal speed limits to be safely increased. Don't get me wrong, I don't live in the EU, and I do speed on the highway, but I'm not proud of it and I'm terrified of other drivers who speed (sometimes recklessly). As a start, a "generous" mandatory speed limiter (such as 50km/h OVER the legal speed limit) makes a great deal of sense. Someone doing 100km/h in a 50km/h zone, where children could be playing, is a heinous crime.

hansvm 4y ago
Human life is messy, and mandatory controls risk doing more harm than good. To your exact "generous" example, a decade or so ago we suspected my great grandfather might be in trouble (didn't call his son at the normal time, couldn't be reached, wasn't home when we went to check), and we eventually found him nearly dead from hypothermia after he'd slipped trying to move a tree out of the road and couldn't get back in his truck. It was in the middle of nowhere and would've taken at least ten minutes just to drive somewhere that had some kind of landline or cellular connection to call an ambulance out, and we instead drove roughly 113km/h on a 48km/h road to get him to the hospital (limit was so low because it's super windy and steep, not because it's residential). We got him to the hospital 10-30 minutes faster than the soonest he would have been in an ambulance otherwise and more than an hour faster than how long it would have taken for the ambulance to arrive and get him hospital. I don't know if the extra time made the difference, but I wouldn't want to have to fight some kind of mandatory speed limiting if I had to do that again. If it could be disabled (maybe even every time you start the vehicle) I'd be a lot more okay with the idea -- kind of like how traction control usually does what I want but once in awhile I need to disable it to get out of a hairy situation when it doesn't quite understand what's happening with a foot of snow and patches of ice on the ground.
jaywalk 4y ago
Many cars (worldwide) already have the ability to configure a speed limit (among other settings) based on which key is used. So you could configure a speed limit for your son's key, while your key would be unlimited.

hansvm 4y ago

Human life is messy, and mandatory controls risk doing more harm than good. To your exact "generous" example, a decade or so ago we suspected my great grandfather might be in trouble (didn't call his son at the normal time, couldn't be reached, wasn't home when we went to check), and we eventually found him nearly dead from hypothermia after he'd slipped trying to move a tree out of the road and couldn't get back in his truck. It was in the middle of nowhere and would've taken at least ten minutes just to drive somewhere that had some kind of landline or cellular connection to call an ambulance out, and we instead drove roughly 113km/h on a 48km/h road to get him to the hospital (limit was so low because it's super windy and steep, not because it's residential). We got him to the hospital 10-30 minutes faster than the soonest he would have been in an ambulance otherwise and more than an hour faster than how long it would have taken for the ambulance to arrive and get him hospital. I don't know if the extra time made the difference, but I wouldn't want to have to fight some kind of mandatory speed limiting if I had to do that again. If it could be disabled (maybe even every time you start the vehicle) I'd be a lot more okay with the idea -- kind of like how traction control usually does what I want but once in awhile I need to disable it to get out of a hairy situation when it doesn't quite understand what's happening with a foot of snow and patches of ice on the ground.

jaywalk 4y ago

Many cars (worldwide) already have the ability to configure a speed limit (among other settings) based on which key is used. So you could configure a speed limit for your son's key, while your key would be unlimited.