9 ms·

Interesting that instead of addressing real problem - incompetence in driving, is solved by making world slower instead of forcing to learn to drive. In Germany

Interesting 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 ago
I think the problem is someone has a 'technology' they want the government to force people to pay for.
devjab 3y ago
I 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....
anarazel 3y ago
Getting a driver's license in Germany costs well over an order of magnitude more than in the US and takes quite a few weeks. And speed limits are much more enforced in the Germany compared to the US.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
What I would give for an eyeroll emoji. Yeah, I'm sure that the story outlined in the article of a guy that killed 9 people in a single accident while on PCP and cocaine could have been avoided if he just had a few more drivers' ed courses...
- TheFattestNinja 3y ago
  I agree with your comment but otoh would a guy on pcp no be just as deadly at 90 mph? If we doing this we should rather do automated reaction speed/sobriety tests. Had a friend almost die bc he drove the day after being drunk bc he fell asleep from being sleep deprived even if he was "sober" by then
  - Nursie 3y ago
    In the case in the article, when talking about geosensitive limiters, presumably they would have been limited to somewhere around the 35mph speed limit in the area.
    - nullindividual 3y ago
      35 mph is still fairly deadly. https://aaafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/2011PedestrianRiskVsSpeedReport.pdf https://aaafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/2011Ped...
      - Nursie 3y ago
        Sure. But it’s not really on the same level as 105.
  - twiceaday 3y ago
    Hard to quantify 'deadly' but kinetic energy is proportional to velocity squared. 100mph has 23% more kinetic energy than 90mph and 56% more than 80mph.
    - 3y ago
mattlondon 3y ago
People regularly drive way faster than 100mph through towns and through junctions at red lights and everyone is fine? I doubt it. Doing over 100 on the motorway/highway/autobahn is a totally different proposition.
esoterica 3y ago
Do you think Germans get to drive at 100mph on city streets? They have speed limits too where necessary.
OrderlyTiamat 3y ago
In Germany the speed limit is frequently much lower that that, and driving faster than about 80 mph (130 kmph, called richtgeschwindigkeit) incurs increased liability even on the autobahn without any speed limits. In my experience not many drivers cruise at speeds of 100 mph (160 kmph). The richtgeschwindigkeit is much more common.
- rkuodys 3y ago
  Well that's kind of my point. People opt for what is right rather what is maximum allowed
- adapiz 3y ago
  I see that, too. It's not even 130 km/h it's often between 100 and 130 km/h. Depending on the speed limit, traffic, lanes available and routing I would say that there are about 5-10% of cars that go faster and maybe 20% that want to go faster but cannot because of traffic. I would agree with a general speed limit of 160 km/h. If you drive around conurbation area "Ruhrpott" you rarely have the chance or aren't allowed to go faster than 100 km/h. Personally I've set my car to alarm me on 200 km/h, just to remind me, that I'm about to do something stupid. When someone is with me, they are also alarmed because it's the usual cockpit beep that tells you, something important popped up like engine failure or tire pressure. I once drove a Ford Focus with an electrical speed limit of 160 km/h in place because it was a company car. But because of this I ended up in a dangerous situation where I was overtaking a slower car that started accelerating. With enough engine power I could accelerate faster up to the point where the limit kicked in and we were at the same speed. As usually I've monitored the situation behind me and I've noticed that there were faster cars approaching. In conclusion I was mislead by the engine to have enough power to handle the situation with ease but the electric limit just cut it of. My foot said: There's more available, but the car suddenly locked it away. Stupid situation. yes. In driving school they teach not to accelerate when someone is overtaking you. Of course this rule changes a bit on the Autobahn, but in this case, speculative driving forced the cars behind me to hit the brakes which is weird when you think that everything will be fine because the slower car just accelerates and overtakes. Stopping the maneuver of all sudden and let the car on the right lane pass you again is is the worst outcome for everyone behind you. That's why I suggest to not limit the car's acceleration curve so the driver notices that the engine is on its limit. Rather I would implement an audible signal at 160 km/h and a repeating signal for over 190 km/h. Because to be honest: It's rarely possible to drive that fast for just a minute. I would also suggest to get these street legal racing machines like Audi RS-models off the road. There's absolutely no sane use for such overpowered cars on public roads. And finally: Company cars should be limited or regulated in some way. Most aggressive and fast drivers seem to be representatives. They don't pay the high prices for fuel and don't care about wear of the car (especially brakes).
jnsaff2 3y ago
In Germany it's also controversial. There is car manufacturers and petrol heads lobby to not touch the unrestricted speed limits on the autobahn but there are also people who lobby for sensible speed limits as most people drive at about the speed a speed limit would be at anyway (120-130km/h) and the added energy used at speed along with dangerous situations coming from very high speed deltas are not good. A truck is always going to be 90-100 km/h and when a thrill seeker whizzes past them at 250 then the reaction time available and potential energy is killer.
- rasz 3y ago
  So "dangerous" Autobahns are right in the middle of the pack suggesting speed limits have nothing to do with it https://www.statista.com/chart/25098/fatality-rate-and-speed-limit-on-european-motorways/ https://www.statista.com/chart/25098/fatality-rate-and-speed...
  - oliwarner 3y ago
    Almost like speed is only one factor in road safety. Autobahns are designed for faster traffic with various features and rules to avoid common collisions. It may be possible to upgrade all the highways designed for 60-70mph to the same specs, but that does seem unrealistic. Just maintaining the surface condition is a common problem in the UK and US. https://www.german-autobahn.eu/index.asp?page=design https://www.german-autobahn.eu/index.asp?page=design
- adapiz 3y ago
  You could lock it away so people start messing with their cars to unlock it again. Yes. I wish people would realize how dangerous it is to be so much faster than the adjacent lane.
- Already__Taken 3y ago
  people only drive 120/130 now because that's what seems right. have this conversation 50 years ago and 60/70km/h seems right. oops we'll never increase it and now everyone speeds anywhere because there's clearly no research put into it. trucks are limited purely on economics €/kmh we do not want the industry racing to use more fuel.
sumuyuda 3y ago
Yeah that’s not true in Berlin. There are regular crashes where people race through the city and end up killing people.
seanp2k2 3y ago
Also interesting that the first paragraph cites 103mph as the speed in a deadly accident. Would 3mph have made a difference here? Volvo already limits top speed to 112mph in all their models since 2021 https://www.goodwood.com/grr/road/news/2020/5/does-volvos-new-112mph-speed-restriction-actually-matter/#:~:text=For%20the%20first%20time%20in,will%20be%20restricted%20to%20112mph https://www.goodwood.com/grr/road/news/2020/5/does-volvos-ne.... Then there’s the time-honored tradition of car mods and the legacy / grandfathering problem. Plenty of cars out there today can hit 160mph or more easily, even pretty modest vehicles like a V6 Honda Accord. Is a 6000# Tesla limited to 100mph much safer than an Accord that weighs a little more than half as much going 160? It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, but the problem is much bigger than what limiting vmax on new vehicles will solve. 100mph is still many tons of force depending on vehicle weight, very much enough to do a lot of damage. Politicians love fixing the easy problem instead of addressing the cultural issues at play here in our society. Listen for how many cat-less exhausts you hear in California as evidence of how effective CARB and inspections have been. Again, it’s not that it’s a bad idea, just that there are too many ways around it and too much will to avoid the law. The best laws are the ones people want to follow. How do we steer society to a place where reckless driving isn’t so appealing?

Gibbon1 3y ago

I think the problem is someone has a 'technology' they want the government to force people to pay for.

devjab 3y ago

I 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....

anarazel 3y ago

Getting a driver's license in Germany costs well over an order of magnitude more than in the US and takes quite a few weeks. And speed limits are much more enforced in the Germany compared to the US.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

What I would give for an eyeroll emoji. Yeah, I'm sure that the story outlined in the article of a guy that killed 9 people in a single accident while on PCP and cocaine could have been avoided if he just had a few more drivers' ed courses...

TheFattestNinja 3y ago
I agree with your comment but otoh would a guy on pcp no be just as deadly at 90 mph? If we doing this we should rather do automated reaction speed/sobriety tests. Had a friend almost die bc he drove the day after being drunk bc he fell asleep from being sleep deprived even if he was "sober" by then
- Nursie 3y ago
  In the case in the article, when talking about geosensitive limiters, presumably they would have been limited to somewhere around the 35mph speed limit in the area.
  - nullindividual 3y ago
    35 mph is still fairly deadly. https://aaafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/2011PedestrianRiskVsSpeedReport.pdf https://aaafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/2011Ped...
    - Nursie 3y ago
      Sure. But it’s not really on the same level as 105.
- twiceaday 3y ago
  Hard to quantify 'deadly' but kinetic energy is proportional to velocity squared. 100mph has 23% more kinetic energy than 90mph and 56% more than 80mph.
  - 3y ago

mattlondon 3y ago

People regularly drive way faster than 100mph through towns and through junctions at red lights and everyone is fine? I doubt it. Doing over 100 on the motorway/highway/autobahn is a totally different proposition.

esoterica 3y ago

Do you think Germans get to drive at 100mph on city streets? They have speed limits too where necessary.

OrderlyTiamat 3y ago

In Germany the speed limit is frequently much lower that that, and driving faster than about 80 mph (130 kmph, called richtgeschwindigkeit) incurs increased liability even on the autobahn without any speed limits. In my experience not many drivers cruise at speeds of 100 mph (160 kmph). The richtgeschwindigkeit is much more common.

rkuodys 3y ago
Well that's kind of my point. People opt for what is right rather what is maximum allowed
adapiz 3y ago
I see that, too. It's not even 130 km/h it's often between 100 and 130 km/h. Depending on the speed limit, traffic, lanes available and routing I would say that there are about 5-10% of cars that go faster and maybe 20% that want to go faster but cannot because of traffic. I would agree with a general speed limit of 160 km/h. If you drive around conurbation area "Ruhrpott" you rarely have the chance or aren't allowed to go faster than 100 km/h. Personally I've set my car to alarm me on 200 km/h, just to remind me, that I'm about to do something stupid. When someone is with me, they are also alarmed because it's the usual cockpit beep that tells you, something important popped up like engine failure or tire pressure. I once drove a Ford Focus with an electrical speed limit of 160 km/h in place because it was a company car. But because of this I ended up in a dangerous situation where I was overtaking a slower car that started accelerating. With enough engine power I could accelerate faster up to the point where the limit kicked in and we were at the same speed. As usually I've monitored the situation behind me and I've noticed that there were faster cars approaching. In conclusion I was mislead by the engine to have enough power to handle the situation with ease but the electric limit just cut it of. My foot said: There's more available, but the car suddenly locked it away. Stupid situation. yes. In driving school they teach not to accelerate when someone is overtaking you. Of course this rule changes a bit on the Autobahn, but in this case, speculative driving forced the cars behind me to hit the brakes which is weird when you think that everything will be fine because the slower car just accelerates and overtakes. Stopping the maneuver of all sudden and let the car on the right lane pass you again is is the worst outcome for everyone behind you. That's why I suggest to not limit the car's acceleration curve so the driver notices that the engine is on its limit. Rather I would implement an audible signal at 160 km/h and a repeating signal for over 190 km/h. Because to be honest: It's rarely possible to drive that fast for just a minute. I would also suggest to get these street legal racing machines like Audi RS-models off the road. There's absolutely no sane use for such overpowered cars on public roads. And finally: Company cars should be limited or regulated in some way. Most aggressive and fast drivers seem to be representatives. They don't pay the high prices for fuel and don't care about wear of the car (especially brakes).

jnsaff2 3y ago

In Germany it's also controversial. There is car manufacturers and petrol heads lobby to not touch the unrestricted speed limits on the autobahn but there are also people who lobby for sensible speed limits as most people drive at about the speed a speed limit would be at anyway (120-130km/h) and the added energy used at speed along with dangerous situations coming from very high speed deltas are not good. A truck is always going to be 90-100 km/h and when a thrill seeker whizzes past them at 250 then the reaction time available and potential energy is killer.

rasz 3y ago
So "dangerous" Autobahns are right in the middle of the pack suggesting speed limits have nothing to do with it https://www.statista.com/chart/25098/fatality-rate-and-speed-limit-on-european-motorways/ https://www.statista.com/chart/25098/fatality-rate-and-speed...
- oliwarner 3y ago
  Almost like speed is only one factor in road safety. Autobahns are designed for faster traffic with various features and rules to avoid common collisions. It may be possible to upgrade all the highways designed for 60-70mph to the same specs, but that does seem unrealistic. Just maintaining the surface condition is a common problem in the UK and US. https://www.german-autobahn.eu/index.asp?page=design https://www.german-autobahn.eu/index.asp?page=design
adapiz 3y ago
You could lock it away so people start messing with their cars to unlock it again. Yes. I wish people would realize how dangerous it is to be so much faster than the adjacent lane.
Already__Taken 3y ago
people only drive 120/130 now because that's what seems right. have this conversation 50 years ago and 60/70km/h seems right. oops we'll never increase it and now everyone speeds anywhere because there's clearly no research put into it. trucks are limited purely on economics €/kmh we do not want the industry racing to use more fuel.

sumuyuda 3y ago

Yeah that’s not true in Berlin. There are regular crashes where people race through the city and end up killing people.

seanp2k2 3y ago

Also interesting that the first paragraph cites 103mph as the speed in a deadly accident. Would 3mph have made a difference here? Volvo already limits top speed to 112mph in all their models since 2021 https://www.goodwood.com/grr/road/news/2020/5/does-volvos-new-112mph-speed-restriction-actually-matter/#:~:text=For%20the%20first%20time%20in,will%20be%20restricted%20to%20112mph https://www.goodwood.com/grr/road/news/2020/5/does-volvos-ne.... Then there’s the time-honored tradition of car mods and the legacy / grandfathering problem. Plenty of cars out there today can hit 160mph or more easily, even pretty modest vehicles like a V6 Honda Accord. Is a 6000# Tesla limited to 100mph much safer than an Accord that weighs a little more than half as much going 160? It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, but the problem is much bigger than what limiting vmax on new vehicles will solve. 100mph is still many tons of force depending on vehicle weight, very much enough to do a lot of damage. Politicians love fixing the easy problem instead of addressing the cultural issues at play here in our society. Listen for how many cat-less exhausts you hear in California as evidence of how effective CARB and inspections have been. Again, it’s not that it’s a bad idea, just that there are too many ways around it and too much will to avoid the law. The best laws are the ones people want to follow. How do we steer society to a place where reckless driving isn’t so appealing?