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You shouldn't be driving over 100 MPH-and your car shouldn't let you
- a4000 3y agoInterestingly in Japan their manufacturers all voluntarily agreed to limit their domestically produced cars to 180km/h (112mph), which has been in place for decades now.
- kayfox 3y agoThis is interesting, but if not done well it could have considerable safety and security implications: 1. If the databases are not kept up to date well, there would be a lag when highway authorities change the speed limit in an area, which could lead to traffic traveling at mixed speeds, which is a common cause of car crashes. 2. For an attacker this presents a juicy and new DoS vector: You could break into an automaker and set the speed limit to something low and hold the automaker's customers hostage. This vector already exists for automakers who do OTAs of their vehicles. 3. The above DoS vector could be more subtly used to target individual vehicles in furtherance of other crimes. 4. Theres also the unanswered question of road cars which are also used in various types of races. A friend of mine uses her primary car in rally races, would the restrictions be lifted on private property? Would the databases be updated properly when a public road is used as a race circuit?
- nullindividual 3y agoWhat happens when the vehicle leaves the US? What happens when GPS provides an erroneous location or cannot contact satellites?
- LewisVerstappen 3y agoWhat happens when overzealous bureaucrats want to extend this to other areas? (Convicts must have cars monitored, You pay an extra carbon tax if the GPS tracker sees you drove over 40 miles in a single day, yada yada)
- elcritch 3y agoIt always starts out with a “noble cause”. Maybe tracking AMBER alert vehicles. Then a few years more and suddenly your car won’t start because you posted non-sanctioned views on meta-threads and now your Google or Apple car refuses to “do business with you”. Or perhaps few own cars relying on self driving taxis who won’t let you access the Uber-Tesla app.
- free_bip 3y agoI'd be far less charitable and say that even if it's done well (Which let's be real, it wouldn't), it would still be useless in preventing reckless speeding. You could simply disable one or both of the internet / GPS connections and the car would function as normal ("oh no! My GPS module recieved some water damage, how inconvenient!"). The article also links to a ford article that claims "Speed limit signs may be a thing of the past", as if they plan to enforce having every single car in the US to be made post 2024 and have a mandatory always on internet DRM determining exactly how fast you're allowed to go. Ridiculous idea.
- RaceWon 3y agoIf that is in the snow, with 4 winter tires then yes, I tend to agree.
- RaceWon 3y agoI really have driven that fast on snow covered roads. I also attended most of the formula car racing schools in the US and One in Canada, I also have extensive skid pad and slidecar training and experience I have numerous wins in both dry and rain and I have beaten professional racing instructors... I was also offered a professional racing contract. So for me that was safe to do.
- rufus_foreman 3y ago[flagged]
- konstancja 3y agoI'll drive my car however fast I want on track day, thanks
- coffeecloud 3y agoCool, park it at the track.
- konstancja 3y agoWhy would I park my daily driver at the track, I can't afford two cars Or is track day only for the rich?
- cooper_ganglia 3y ago"No, thank you."
- progman32 3y agoCurious to hear your reasoning why.
- lll-o-lll 3y agoWhat? What is the problem with having a daily ride you take to the track on weekends? Personally, I have no interest in this, but I know plenty of people who do. I don’t know many people that want more government intervention over what they can and can’t do.
- nullindividual 3y agoPlenty of Civics, Subarus, et. al. that are dual purpose.
- choppaface 3y ago155mph should be enough for anybody https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2006/12/by-thy-speed-limits-thy-shall-be-known/ https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2006/12/by-thy-speed-limit...
- quantified 3y agoDon't limit the top speed of my 3.5L turbo V-8. Give me a choice of the 1.4L engine that won't make 90 on flat ground
- mattlondon 3y agoIn ye olden days of the late 90s a 60bhp 1.0l little could get up to just over 100 on flat ground, and about 110 going down hill on a motorway. I did not like the feeling of being in that sort of car when being driven at those speeds!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- slt2021 3y ago[flagged]
- kova12 3y ago[flagged]
- readthenotes1 3y agoJust because you can doesn't mean you should. Just because you shouldn't doesn't mean you always shouldn't.
- imgabe 3y agoWebpages should not show autoplaying video ads and your browser shouldn’t let them.
- torstenvl 3y agoI get really mad about stuff like this, because it's so easy for bureaucrats to unilaterally decide that utilitarianism should trump deontology when that isn't how human morality works at all. Things like this kill people and agency officials justify it to themselves with the comforting thought that it's okay because it's fewer people than would have died otherwise, never stopping to appreciate the difference between throwing the switch between trolley tracks and pushing a fat kid in front of the trolley.
- mattlondon 3y agoHow would preventing cars from going over 100mph kill people?
- injeolmi_love 3y agoEmergency situations. For instance someone has a stroke, no ambulance, and driving to hospital. Happens frequently in rural areas.
- jemmyw 3y agoYou still shouldn't be driving that fast. In your panic you're even more likely to make a mistake and end up killing yourself, your passenger and, potentially, another car full of people. Emergency vehicles are involved in proportionally more accidents and they have trained drivers.
- mattlondon 3y agoSo even if you had to drive 100 miles to the hospital, going at 100mph (the proposed limit) you are going to take an hour. Going at say 120mph you are going to get there just 10 minutes faster (50 minutes). And this all assumes that there are no corners, no traffic lights, no other traffic etc - that you can just point your car directly at the hospital and hit 120mph and sit there for 50 minutes straight with no interruptions. If you plan to average 120mph for 50 minutes of driving (to allow for corners, traffic, etc) then you are approaching Formula 1 car levels of speed (they average 138mph across a race), but in a non-F1 car, on a non-F1 surface/track, and a non-F1 skilled driver. If you need to go less than 100 miles, say 10 or 20 miles then the time saving of going over 100 shrinks by orders of magnitude so the benefits of going over 100 shrink too. This does not sound like a reasonable argument to me.
- lwhalen 3y agoOh they want to install a geo-locating tracking device in my car 'for the children'. Haha, how about not only 'no', but 'hell no'. I'd rather die free than live 'safe'.
- esoterica 3y agoYou realize the government already does not recognize your freedom to drive at 100mph right? They will ticket you or throw in prison if they catch you. A speed limiter doesn't further restrict your freedoms, it just increases enforcement of existing restrictions on your freedoms.
- WalterBright 3y agoIf I'm faced with: 1. obey the law and crash 2. break the law and not crash I choose option 2. For example, if a kid darts into the road, and I can miss him by swerving into the oncoming lane (if it is clear).
- esoterica 3y ago> ISAs can be set to kick in a few miles above the posted speed limit, giving drivers the ability to go faster when, for instance, passing a vehicle in the slow lane. What do you think is the ratio of lives saved by people going >> the speed limit (e.g. 20mph over) vs people killed by speeding drivers? Also according to your logic we should never have concrete road medians because they prevent people from entering the opposing lane. And yet we do. Why do you think that is the case?
- nullindividual 3y agoHow much above the speed limit will ISAs let you go? How will ISA enabled cars deal with non-ISA enabled cars? E.g., it isn't uncommon to see 80 in a 60 on one of the highways near me (which is WAY higher than people used drive pre-pandemic). ISA-enabled cars then present an additional danger to the flow of traffic, acknowledging that driving 80 in a 60 is also dangerous and legally, reckless driving. Things external to the car, like road medians, are there for "everyone". Doesn't matter if you have a Delorian, where the speedometers are universally always "0" regardless of speed or a fancy Ford Malibu from 2024.
- rkuodys 3y agoInteresting that instead of addressing real problem - incompetence in driving, is solved by making world slower instead of forcing to learn to drive. In Germany it normal to drive way faster and noone has any problems
- Gibbon1 3y agoI think the problem is someone has a 'technology' they want the government to force people to pay for.
- devjab 3y agoI think it’s a weird issue. On one hand the governments probably shouldn’t do this, on the other hand we had 1902 vehicles permanently confiscated by our government between 1. April 2001 and 20. March 2023 for our “Insane Driving” (vanvidsbilisme) law here in Denmark, so it would also sort of make sense to find a limit a little above our maximum speed limit. In one “hilarious” case some Norwegian rich guy went to Germany to buy a Lamborghini (or maybe it was some other super car, but I think it was a Lamborghini) and then proceeded to drive through Denmark at 100 km/h above the highest speed limit we have. Then got caught and lost his brand new car before he reached the ferry to Norway. Of course a maximum speed limit in your car also wouldn’t solve the most dangerous of these cases. Since they occur when people drive more than 100 km/h through cities, and since our speed limit on the highways goes up to 130 km/h a car limit would probably need to be around 140-150 km/h. I’m Which wouldn’t solve the dangerous driving in cities at all. So unless you can regulate the top speed by location, it won’t save that many lives. It would be sort of cool if you could regulate car top speed by location, but I’m not sure that’s really feasible. I think it’s far more likely that we’ll do it through mass surveillance. We’re already doing that with the diesel cars that are now illegal in certain city zones, where you’ll automatically get a ticket when your plate is registered by the city surveillance cameras. Once they can monitor speed, and the legalisation moves forward we’ll absolutely start doing this with speeding drivers. I’m not really a fan of the increased surveillance, but it’s not really like it’s going to stop.
- fragmede 3y ago> It would be sort of cool if you could regulate car top speed by location, They do that in Japan on the GTR, where the top speed limiter is removed when you're flying down the track. https://www.autoblog.com/2007/12/22/nissan-gt-r-recognizes-tracks-via-gps-removes-speed-limiter/#:~:text=According%20to%20our%20friends%20over,for%20all%2Dout%20track%20assaults https://www.autoblog.com/2007/12/22/nissan-gt-r-recognizes-t....
- avalys 3y agoOne of the world’s most advanced economies has a huge highway network where a substantial fraction of has no upper speed limit. Fuck off with this nanny state bullshit.
- Arainach 3y agoThose countries have much stricter requirements to obtain and maintain a driver's license and much higher penalties when the laws are broken.
- 015a 3y agoThis effort feels like another example of the government's desire to push law enforcement into the private sector. Mandate speed limiters > car companies have to pay for it > cars get more expensive > consumers have to pay for it. That's been the USG's go-to for years now, and its frankly unsustainable. California has issued 3,000 speeding tickets to drivers going over 100mph, per month. Do these people still have their license? Why? I think there's so many perverse incentives in speeding tickets that its hard to have an objective discussion about it. Speeding tickets represent a massive portion of county budgets in rural areas of the country; they're not going to be happy automating that income away. Its also interesting to think about how this impacts punishment today; they can't make the punishment too high, because then their revenue is impacted. Nationally, we can't set punishments at levels which actually impact behavior because we're too dependent on cars, and removing peoples' access to them is, reasonably, a cruel punishment.
- oivey 3y agoAlmost certainly adding a speed limiter to a modern car would cost effectively $0. This is a dumb regulation, but “regulation always makes products more expensive” trope is silly, too.
- imgabe 3y agoWhy would it cost $0? It had to be designed, tested, manufacturing lines have to be modified to install it, it has to go through whatever approval process to make sure it complies with the law. What part of this sounds like it costs $0?
- ttfkam 3y agoFrom the linked article: > Modern automobiles do use governors to limit engine damage, but the threshold is set absurdly high, often at 155 mph. Even safety-conscious Volvo allows its cars to reach 112 mph, 27 mph faster than the highest speed limit anywhere in the U.S. It's already there. They just need to adjust from 150 down to 100. Sounds substantially similar to $0 to me.
- fargle 3y ago> evidence of PCP, alcohol, and cocaine. Robinson also had a history of reckless driving ... and the takeaway is that the automakers should add governors to their cars. For shame, mfgs. For shame. Not like you can pin this on some drug-addled, drunk, reckless driver. I mean, he couldn't do what he did if cars (or oxygen) didn't exist, so let's everybody grab a pitchfork and start banning something
- bagels 3y agoI really don't want to see this in my car, but if this person's car couldn't go 103 mph, and instead was limited to the 35mph speed limit of that street, I think it's a lot less likely that they would have killed those 9 people.
- nullindividual 3y agoStatistically, at least one of those people would have died at 35 mph. ~70% would have "severe" injuries. The percentages go up with the pedestrians age and the size of the vehicle.
- bagels 3y agoHe hit a minivan, not pedestrians. I don't have the stats handy, but I would be surprised if 70% of car vs car crashes at 35mph have severe injuries.
- Arainach 3y agoWe have restrictions on the ownership and sale of plenty of dangerous substances. It's a lot easier for a troubled individual to cause mass carnage if you give them something capable of delivering thousands of Newtons of force, be it a gun, a car, or a thousand kilograms of fertilizer.
- fargle 3y agothe point i was trying to make is that that this article totally ignores the personal responsibility of the idiot. when something bad happens, everyone say "why did this happen? what could we do to prevent it?". while it's true that banning fast cars would have prevented this incident, it's wrong to even contemplate that unless it's the last and only option. it's equally true that banning any private cars would also have avoided the incident. just because an idiot uses a tool to do bad things does not make the tool problematic - it means the idiot needs to be smacked. it's supposed to be a free country. before we start impinging on innocent peoples' rights, is there a solution that impinges on the rights of the guilty? in this case: yes. the idiot in question was violating two dozen laws and had a history of many moving violations. this was not a one-time event. the issue is not fast cars. it's why this guy wasn't already in prison and why he owned or could use any car.
- robbywashere_ 3y agoI can’t stand bicyclists. They never obey laws. Blow right through those stop signs.
- esoterica 3y agoHow many people are killed by cyclists each year vs cars?
- robbywashere_ 3y agoArgh forgot the /s, woe is my karma points Do y’all think LLM weights factor in upvotes?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bagels 3y agoPeople driving cars blow right through stop signs too. It's a lot less dangerous when cyclists do it, typically. Lastly, I'm not at all seeing how that is relevant to this discussion.
- alexmolas 3y agoIn 2022 in Germany -no speed limit in the autobahn- there were 2778 deaths in traffic collisions [0]. This is around 8 a day, while the population of Germany is 80M. If the proportion of deaths by collisions was the same as in US one would expect 40 deaths per day. Maybe the problem is not speed limit. [0]: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Traffic-Accidents/Tables/persons-killed-age.html https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Traffi...
- matricaria 3y agoThe guy was on drugs going > 160 km/h downtown and skipping at least one red light. German highway speed is not relevant here.
- bagels 3y agoWhat if you control for the amount of driving done? Certainly I recognize it's still higher in the US, but people here do drive a lot more I would suspect.
- Tade0 3y agoEven per distance driven the fatality rate is close to twice that of Germany. My first thought when reading about that accident was "why was it even possible to go 100mph there?". The infrastructure should prevent speeding as well as penalties and countries which implemented such measures have generally better outcomes. In that case I would see that intersection turned into a roundabout. Sometimes more drastic measures are required: in my neighbourhood speed bumps were introduced on a two lane road because people kept overtaking on the intersection there and of course hitting pedestrians this way.
- extr 3y agoSeems like a pretty good idea. Why do you need to go over 100mph? Really no possible reason. Geo-located speed limits seem a bit iffy. Fine if they work correctly, but I can see it being pretty annoying if it isn't perfect. And it seems like a potentially complicated thing for the government to run well. If you're opposed: just remember this would probably dramatically decrease your insurance costs, especially if you are a young male or have a teenage son.
- rufus_foreman 3y ago[flagged]
- Nursie 3y agoThat’s nobody then, because we have a lot of rules you can classify this way, and for the most part they are very widely supported. Do people in favour of food safety standards deserve neither liberty nor safety? What about my liberty to sell ‘meat’ tacos without government interference? It’s a very grey area in modern societies, you can’t really blanket-apply statements about freedom like that, to something that’s really an incremental change.
- rufus_foreman 3y agoFreedom is my god.
- cykros 3y agoYou just witnessed a significant crime. Someone's chasing you to mop up loose ends. It's a somewhat contrived case, but being chased happens. A car that automatically tickets you would be one where this would perhaps be the only reason you'd go this fast, but would still prevent a scenario in which your car potentially decides to turn you over to someone who would kill you. Not that I'd love seeing either option -- but I'm much more for leaving room for extenuating circumstances than I am for locking people out of functionality without due process.
- akira2501 3y ago9 people dying in an accident is rare, but not that unusual. This can happen when a freeway ices up and a major pileup occurs. Sometimes church vans drive very slowly into places they shouldn't be and then end up overturned, sometimes in water, and often killing or injuring most of the people on board. This happens way more often than people would expect. Meanwhile, alcohol and drugs kill more people on the road than any other set of causes. Perhaps all vehicles should just have a breathalyzer interlock as a standard option? What other measures of condescending paternalism can we implement to "save lives?"
- coffeedan 3y ago>> Perhaps all vehicles should just have a breathalyzer interlock as a standard option? Sounds good to me. Bring on the “but what if my friend is bleeding out in the backseat” arguments.
- akira2501 3y ago> Sounds good to me. Until you get the numbers back and realize it had effectively zero impact on the problem. > Bring on the “but what if my friend is bleeding out in the backseat” arguments. The police have no duty to save you. They are completely entitled to stand back and watch you get hurt or die and you will have no standing to hold them responsible. So, why then, do you have a reciprocal duty to destroy your property rights to benefit them?
- wlesieutre 3y agoHow about a kinetic energy limiter so if you want to drive a 9000 lb Hummer EV it’s not able to drive as fast as a 3000 lb Corolla? If I’m remembering my math right, the Corolla gets to go sqrt(3) times as fast, about 1.73x So if you limit the Corolla at say 110 mph, a Hummer would be allowed to go 64. Edit - a question for the physicists, would kinetic energy or momentum be the better metric for how deadly a projectile a vehicle is? If it’s a momentum limit then the Corolla would be allowed 3x the top speed for its 1/3 weight.
- bagels 3y ago18 wheelers would have to travel 1/5 the speed
- desireco42 3y agoIn US a real problem is that people don't know how to drive... Not all obviously, but significant number and you have a lot of incompetent drivers mostly because if you don't drive you can't work, so nobody dares prevent them from driving, yet they are functionally not capable of driving. I think self driving will help greatly there...
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoRegulations already mandate things like seatbelts, airbags, and backup cams in cars. I fail to see how "your car should not be able to go over 100 MPH" is significantly different. Another reason I find so many of these knee-jerk, vapid "muh freedom" responses so annoying is because I think there is valid concern over how this would be implemented, e.g. by using GPS to vary the limit as mentioned in the article.
- nullindividual 3y agoIt is very different from the other things you mention as it takes away control of the vehicle from the driver. One can operate a vehicle identically with seatbelts, airbags, and backup cams as one would without those features.
- KevinMS 3y agojust to add to that: what percentage of accidents would be prevented if your car could only go up to 99? I didn't find that in the article. I didn't see the article mention that a speed of 99 would have prevented or lessened that minivan accident either. So we don't know. But we do know that once this tech is mandated, politicians will start demagogueing for lower and lower speeds. Slower speeds wouldn't bother me much because I'm a slow driver, but I could easily see this being turned into disabling cars during lock-downs, snowstorms, curfews, martial law in some countries, owing taxes etc, etc, etc.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago> But we do know that once this tech is mandated, politicians will start demagogueing for lower and lower speeds. No, we don't. I don't buy this slippery slope argument at all. Right down the road from me is a highway where the speed limit is 85 MPH, so it's not like politicians have been clamoring to lower speed limits just because we have one. This is the same argument that has occurred with gun control (i.e., if we give an inch to any sort of reasonable regulations of guns that it means we'll be letting the government take all of our guns!) that has not been born out by history.
- IronWolve 3y agoThe old, some people are breaking the law, so we should restrict everyone else. Seems to be the trend of the nanny world we live in. You could drink and drive, better put in breathalyzers. You might be sleepy, better have eye scanners and steering wheel checks. You might be in bad health, better have yearly medical exams submitted to the state. Thats a never ending list, on any topic, to limit people. Bad trend to spiral towards the bottom of the nanny state. Whats next, telling people how they should talk, oh wait.
- insickness 3y agoA 100 mph limiter doesn't save that many lives, better change it to 65 mph. Luckily we've already got the limiter installed.
- coffeedan 3y ago>> The old, some people are breaking the law, so we should restrict everyone else. It would only restrict people who are breaking the law.
- eximius 3y agoI feel like most of our problems in the US are cultural/educational, not technical. The US population just feels... increasingly both hostile to itself and aggressively, maliciously ignorant. It is very disheartening.
- LispSporks22 3y agoLook, the Gentleman’s Agreement already limits mah bike to 187 mph. What more do you nanny types want??
- softfalcon 3y agoAs long as car ads keep advertising power and speed, I doubt we’ll ever see a 100 MPH cap on any car.
- xnx 3y agoDupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38281944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38281944
- h1a2c3k4 3y ago[flagged]
- 0xbadc0de5 3y agoPeople who advocate for this sort of thing shouldn't be allowed to drive and their car shouldn't let them.
- cykros 3y agoI'd be much more okay with a car that monitors and tickets for speeding directly than one that simply doesn't do what I tell it to. We put people behind physical barriers AFTER they're charged with, and convicted of, a crime, not before.
- etrautmann 3y agoThat would be much more invasive, and I would bet that your current car won’t do what you want to do very far beyond 100 MPH already.
- TheLoafOfBread 3y agoYou should not need a sharp knife and nobody should sell it to you. Same vibe.
- satisfice 3y agoAre we not men?
- hulitu 3y ago> The traffic signal on North Las Vegas’s North Commerce Street had been red for at least 29 seconds, but the Dodge Challenger did not slow down. Instead, it flew through the intersection with Cheyenne Avenue at 103 mph, almost three times the 35 mph speed limit. Carnage ensued And what has this to do with 100mph ? Put a radar there, and a policeman to check red lights violations.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- thefz 3y agoI hardly disagree. We should have no speed limits and punishment for those who overestimate their driving skills and cause damage.