14 ms·

I drive at the limit almost always. What makes it less useful? I would prefer this compared to the system of fees and irregular enforcement most countries have

I drive at the limit almost always. What makes it less useful? I would prefer this compared to the system of fees and irregular enforcement most countries have now.

codefreeordie 4y ago
> "The objective is to protect Europeans against [...] climate change, empower them with new mobility solutions that match their changing needs" > "[T]here is no reason why these standards can't be reviewed and updated in the near future. We think that is essential," The goal is to discourage driving over time by making vehicles prohibitively expensive, by posting lower and lower speed limits over time due to "climate change", and to continually revise the standards to separate people from their ability to leave their homes as quickly and permanently as they can convince their populace to accept.
- AinderS 4y ago
  Or just prevent driving entirely after curfew/to areas where illegal protests are being held/if there is a warrant out for your arrest. Once your car taking orders from someone else is normalized, anything can happen.
  - freemint 4y ago
    The bicycle won't take orders though. Europe is not as car reliant as the US.
jwie 4y ago
Don’t worry you’ll be able to still get a speeding ticket regardless of whatever crapware they load up into the car.
rad_gruchalski 4y ago
I've been driving through The Netherlands recently. It's so scary how everybody drives so close to each other because of the speed limit 100kph during the day. Bumper to bumper. I feel less safe on the highway in The Netherlands than at the race track with no speed limit.
- shadowofneptune 4y ago
  That's around the top limit in most US cities. I don't see how tailgating is an outcome of driving at the limit.
  - rad_gruchalski 4y ago
    The problem is, the way I see it, everyone wants to be one car ahead. So they all try to push each other out of the way. It wasn’t like that when the limit was higher. Lower limit, people tend to get closer. I don’t see this _so often_ in Germany, neither in Belgium.
- Kim_Bruning 4y ago
  They're supposed to keep 2 seconds distance. (At 100 km/h that's ~28m or so) . Is that not the actual distance kept?
  - rad_gruchalski 4y ago
    Definitely not. 28 meters is roughly 5 car length. That’s not what I experience in The Netherlands, especially during rush hour. Bumper to bumper with zero visibility two cars ahead.
  - iggldiggl 4y ago
    Erm, 100 km/h / (3.6 (km/h)/(m/s)) * 2 sec ≈ 56 m. (And the rule of thumb you learn in driving school is dividing the speed in km/h by two.)
- cameronh90 4y ago
  Feeling less safe is only weakly correlated with being less safe. We're not very good judges of risk. Urban "traffic calming" design attempts to exploit this by trying to engineer roads that feel claustrophobic, causing drivers to slow down. Since kinetic energy is a square of velocity, slowing cars down - even a little - both significantly increases the chance of surviving a crash and also makes it more likely you'll stop in time to avoid the crash in the first place. Also interestingly, lower limits often reduce congestion and increase total road capacity. I'm not sure how safety at the race track works out, but skilled, predictable drivers in well maintained vehicles with race marshalls and huge run off areas probably makes any comparison awkward.
Lammy 4y ago
Anything that makes vehicles more expensive makes them less accessible. This hurts the poorest people first and hardest since the most affordable housing also tends to have the worst car commutes and the worst access to transit. It also sounds a “great” way to crowdsource surveillance since implementing something like this would require cars to have cameras to look at speed signs, or a database of roads and speed limits and a way to locate itself to compare the two.
- _Wintermute 4y ago
  The poorest are least likely to own a car, and likely to be reliant on walking and cycling which are directly negatively impacted by speeding motorists. They're also more likely to live next to major roads, again negatively impacted by speeding motorists.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  If you truly cared about this you'd be fighting for smaller cars, pedestrian friendly roads, both technological and administrative enforcement of speed limits, open firmwares, repairability and documentation on cars. Technical speed limit enforcement absolutely can be done in a way that respects autonomy and privacy. A car can have a camera, a one way data link for maps, a gps, and/or a transponder for signals from speed limit signs preventing it from exceeding the default speed limit without a positive signal/mapped limit or active intervention from the user. None of these things require an uplink, and if you cared about autonomy, privacy, cost, and safety you'd be pushing for such a solution as well as actually caring about the telemetry in almost all new cars without these features. Cars are costly primarily because they are much bigger, much heavier, and much harder to maintain than they need to be. If one didn't have to deal with the near certainty of getting t-boned by a ford ranger or suv doing 20 over the limit in one's lifetime then a microcar capable of 40km/h with a simple lap belt would be safer than the average 1.5t sedan full of airbags (and the requisite limitations on user maintenance) is now. Additionally with options other than lugging around 2-4t of steel and plastic and covering half the city in vast seas of asphalt available, 80% of people would get to their destinations faster.
  - 4y ago
mustyouremember 4y ago
Where do you live that you can safely drive at the speed limit? If you tried that on an interstate in the US, you would end up with annoyed semi trucks tailgating you, and passing motorists might assume that you are impaired.
- shadowofneptune 4y ago
  In Phoenix, which isn't known for its quiet traffic.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Not the OP, I live in Europe and mostly drive under limits as well, don't like collecting tickets. When I don't, usually I get a greetings postcard from a radar.

I drive at the limit almost always. What makes it less useful? I would prefer this compared to the system of fees and irregular enforcement most countries have now.

codefreeordie 4y ago

> "The objective is to protect Europeans against [...] climate change, empower them with new mobility solutions that match their changing needs" > "[T]here is no reason why these standards can't be reviewed and updated in the near future. We think that is essential," The goal is to discourage driving over time by making vehicles prohibitively expensive, by posting lower and lower speed limits over time due to "climate change", and to continually revise the standards to separate people from their ability to leave their homes as quickly and permanently as they can convince their populace to accept.

AinderS 4y ago
Or just prevent driving entirely after curfew/to areas where illegal protests are being held/if there is a warrant out for your arrest. Once your car taking orders from someone else is normalized, anything can happen.
- freemint 4y ago
  The bicycle won't take orders though. Europe is not as car reliant as the US.

jwie 4y ago

Don’t worry you’ll be able to still get a speeding ticket regardless of whatever crapware they load up into the car.

rad_gruchalski 4y ago

I've been driving through The Netherlands recently. It's so scary how everybody drives so close to each other because of the speed limit 100kph during the day. Bumper to bumper. I feel less safe on the highway in The Netherlands than at the race track with no speed limit.

shadowofneptune 4y ago
That's around the top limit in most US cities. I don't see how tailgating is an outcome of driving at the limit.
- rad_gruchalski 4y ago
  The problem is, the way I see it, everyone wants to be one car ahead. So they all try to push each other out of the way. It wasn’t like that when the limit was higher. Lower limit, people tend to get closer. I don’t see this _so often_ in Germany, neither in Belgium.
Kim_Bruning 4y ago
They're supposed to keep 2 seconds distance. (At 100 km/h that's ~28m or so) . Is that not the actual distance kept?
- rad_gruchalski 4y ago
  Definitely not. 28 meters is roughly 5 car length. That’s not what I experience in The Netherlands, especially during rush hour. Bumper to bumper with zero visibility two cars ahead.
- iggldiggl 4y ago
  Erm, 100 km/h / (3.6 (km/h)/(m/s)) * 2 sec ≈ 56 m. (And the rule of thumb you learn in driving school is dividing the speed in km/h by two.)
cameronh90 4y ago
Feeling less safe is only weakly correlated with being less safe. We're not very good judges of risk. Urban "traffic calming" design attempts to exploit this by trying to engineer roads that feel claustrophobic, causing drivers to slow down. Since kinetic energy is a square of velocity, slowing cars down - even a little - both significantly increases the chance of surviving a crash and also makes it more likely you'll stop in time to avoid the crash in the first place. Also interestingly, lower limits often reduce congestion and increase total road capacity. I'm not sure how safety at the race track works out, but skilled, predictable drivers in well maintained vehicles with race marshalls and huge run off areas probably makes any comparison awkward.

Lammy 4y ago

Anything that makes vehicles more expensive makes them less accessible. This hurts the poorest people first and hardest since the most affordable housing also tends to have the worst car commutes and the worst access to transit. It also sounds a “great” way to crowdsource surveillance since implementing something like this would require cars to have cameras to look at speed signs, or a database of roads and speed limits and a way to locate itself to compare the two.

_Wintermute 4y ago
The poorest are least likely to own a car, and likely to be reliant on walking and cycling which are directly negatively impacted by speeding motorists. They're also more likely to live next to major roads, again negatively impacted by speeding motorists.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
If you truly cared about this you'd be fighting for smaller cars, pedestrian friendly roads, both technological and administrative enforcement of speed limits, open firmwares, repairability and documentation on cars. Technical speed limit enforcement absolutely can be done in a way that respects autonomy and privacy. A car can have a camera, a one way data link for maps, a gps, and/or a transponder for signals from speed limit signs preventing it from exceeding the default speed limit without a positive signal/mapped limit or active intervention from the user. None of these things require an uplink, and if you cared about autonomy, privacy, cost, and safety you'd be pushing for such a solution as well as actually caring about the telemetry in almost all new cars without these features. Cars are costly primarily because they are much bigger, much heavier, and much harder to maintain than they need to be. If one didn't have to deal with the near certainty of getting t-boned by a ford ranger or suv doing 20 over the limit in one's lifetime then a microcar capable of 40km/h with a simple lap belt would be safer than the average 1.5t sedan full of airbags (and the requisite limitations on user maintenance) is now. Additionally with options other than lugging around 2-4t of steel and plastic and covering half the city in vast seas of asphalt available, 80% of people would get to their destinations faster.
- 4y ago

mustyouremember 4y ago

Where do you live that you can safely drive at the speed limit? If you tried that on an interstate in the US, you would end up with annoyed semi trucks tailgating you, and passing motorists might assume that you are impaired.

shadowofneptune 4y ago
In Phoenix, which isn't known for its quiet traffic.
pjmlp 4y ago
Not the OP, I live in Europe and mostly drive under limits as well, don't like collecting tickets. When I don't, usually I get a greetings postcard from a radar.