7 ms·

Agreed that the general case is hard to solve. I think you could at least make a case for solving a simpler problem. What's the highest legal speed limit in th

Agreed that the general case is hard to solve. I think you could at least make a case for solving a simpler problem. What's the highest legal speed limit in the country in which the car was sold? Set a global speed limit to that.

kodt 2y ago
This could make it impossible or dangerous to pass in many situations where it may be necessary to temporarily exceed the speed limit.
- cogman10 2y ago
  Especially when you get a jackass that speeds up because you are passing them.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- zehaeva 2y ago
  So if every car is following the speed limit, that is going as fast as they are allowed, why would any one person be passing someone else?
  - mikestew 2y ago
    Perhaps parent isn’t talking about that scenario. But surely you can imagine a different scenario where this applies, right? Maybe Grandma Jones doing 10 under the limit on a two-lane road?
    - matsemann 2y ago
      They're either so slow that they're easy to overtake, or they're so fast that it doesn't matter to stay behind for a while. So just relax, the time lost is minuscule.
  - gambiting 2y ago
    In most EU countries(and UK) you have different speed limits based on the class of the vehicle. So for example in the UK on a single lane road a regular car can go 60mph, a car towing a trailer can only go 50mph, but a heavy goods vehicle(over 7.5 tonnes) can only go 40mph. So on most roads that aren't dual carriageways you constantly encounter a situation where everyone is driving at their top legal speed limit but there is still a need to overtake vehicles.
    - setr 2y ago
      Under that scenario, assuming 10-20mph differential is sufficient, overtaking by faster-class vehicles hasn’t been affected. Slower vehicles presumably shouldn’t be overtaking anyways, except when dealing with… even slower vehicles (but the joys of trucks overtaking each other by like 2mph difference and blocking the whole road for 10 minutes)
  - userulluipeste 2y ago
    Well, you see, it's for the cases where not every car is going as fast as they are allowed.
    - zehaeva 2y ago
      If they're going so much slower than the limit that it's unsafe, wouldn't it be easy to pass at the regulated limit? If they're going just a _little_ bit slower than the limit, why pass them? Are you telling me that 3kmph, or even 10kmph, slower than the limit is slow enough to make an appreciable difference to your everyday driving?
      - lolinder 2y ago
        > wouldn't it be easy to pass at the regulated limit? No. No, it's not, not on a single land road.
  - jbritton 2y ago
    I’m in the US. If you’re on say hwy 395 heading to Mammoth Mountain, the highway is frequently one lane in each direction. If the max speed limit is 70mph, you may come up on a semi truck doing 60mph and you will want to pass using the lane with on coming traffic. This means you need to do 85mph to pass. For this reason our max speed limit laws are woefully inadequate at accounting for real life conditions.
    - zehaeva 2y ago
      Why will you _want_ to pass? Is that 10mph going to get you there _that_ much faster? If you were to follow that truck for all 1300 miles of 395 you would get to your destination 3 hours later than if you were going 70mph the whole way. I would doubt that anyone would want to drive for nearly 19 hours straight, unless you're doing some sort of cannonball run like challenge. If your destination is a mere 120 miles away, and you followed him the whole way you'd get there only 18 minutes faster. Was it really that important to get there that much faster?
      - surgical_fire 2y ago
        > Was it really that important to get there that much faster? The answer may be contingent on how many tacos you ate before this hypothetical trip.
        zehaeva 2y ago
        This is the only answer that I've seen that's reasonable so far!
      - biftek 2y ago
        It's not always about getting there "faster". I regularly encounter trucks with unsecured loads, drivers visibly weaving, and other dangerous situations. I'm certainly not going to die on some "well this is the speed limit" hill behind them. Driving isn't some binary situation, you have to constantly predict erratic behavior and react to your surroundings.
  - randerson 2y ago
    I often find myself behind a truck that is kicking up stones or belching fumes or has a poorly secured load that looks like it could fly off. Doesn't matter if it is going the speed limit, I want to get past it.
    - zehaeva 2y ago
      How close do you find yourself to the truck in front of you? Safe follow distances are, At 65MPH, I'm assuming you're in the US, is approximately 300 feet. I'd be kind of shocked that you're getting stones hitting you and detectable fumes 300 feet away.
      - randerson 2y ago
        My Adaptive Cruise Control has 4 distance settings and I use the 3rd, further than most people's following distance, and I've had stones kicked up by truck tires that hit my windscreen from that distance.
        zehaeva 2y ago
        I do the same in my Subaru, even at the furthest, the safe distance is choose is no where near the 300feet(approximately 20 car lengths). It's closer to 8 car lengths.
        randerson 2y ago
        Was curious so I just looked up my car's ACC numbers. Setting 3 is 1.8 seconds and setting 4 (the max) is 2.3 seconds, so about 220 feet at 65mph. As another poster said its pointless to be this far back because everyone else just overtakes you to fill the gap, so you're always braking and accelerating and averaging a smaller distance than in setting 3.
      - ricardobeat 2y ago
        Clearly you’ve never driven in the EU. The usual follow distance here is about three meters, the “safe” one is five, any farther and you’re going to get a stream of cars overtaking you just to fill that void :) Regarding stones and lose cargo, they would hit you even 300m away as they bounce and quickly lose speed while you’re still flying into at them at 130km/h.
  - michaelmrose 2y ago
    Roads commonly carry traffic at a different speeds than listed speed based on actual conditions, perception of conditions, condition and nature of vehicles and because speeds are often set inefficienctly. Its not uncommon to see stretches with traffic constantly packed 4+ lanes going 75+ each way. Trying to put the same burden of vehicles through at 65 with 300 ft between would be a joke. A given lane would carry less than half actual traffic. Bad traffic would become a city wide disaster. Then consider that you can only impose this on a portion of drivers per year and drivers have to drive with those without governors indefinitely. You also discount issues with safety by following at an appropriate distance. Trying to fall back 300 ft can only be achieved by driving too slow leading to both passing and people taking this new huge space whist giving you the finger leaving you with even less space.
    - zehaeva 2y ago
      If we're concerned with traffic throughput then shouldn't we just increase the allowed speed? Why even have a limit in the first place? I don't understand your point about having to slow down to follow at a safe distance. If I pull onto a highway and find myself _right_ behind someone I can decrease my speed by one or two mph to fall back to a safe following distance. How is that not safe? The car behind me, who should already be either already at a safe distance or adjusting their own distance should have no issues here. What I think you mean to say is that because you're assuming that everyone else on the road is behaving in an unsafe manner you believe that you, too, have to behave in an unsafe manner. This simply is not the case.
      - michaelmrose 2y ago
        I'm not sure where you are driving (or if you drive anywhere) but you can't actually drop speed substantially with cars right behind you and if you tried to open a space people would just move into that space. Then you don't have that space AND you have cars maneuvering around you. You will have drastically increased your chance of having an accident without acquiring a buffer. Areas that are already burdened as far as the amount of traffic they can bear, which is basically every major urban area in America, see traffic moving at a high rate of speed with 20-30 feet between cars. Picture a simple chute in which you are dumping jelly beans one at a time. Even at the same speed of descent you will be able to drop 1/3 of the beans if you wait 3 seconds between drops instead of 1. Everyone trying to keep 300 feet between to be "safe" would create an expanding parking lot behind that would crash the entire traffic systems ability to function at all. When everyone started arriving 3 hours late for work businesses would fine themselves dysfunctional including critical businesses. People would die because emergency vehicles couldn't move. The mayor would be on TV discussing what they would do about the collective insanity. Anyway this is an awfully long way to say people do need the ability to control the speed of their car in order for the current flawed highway system to function normally. People do actually have cause to pass. They sometimes do have a reason to drive slower than the limit. Others need to exceed it briefly or in an emergency.
  - illiac786 2y ago
    if the car is going slower than the limit but you have a very limited window of time to pass it, the only way is to temporarily go above the speed limit.
    - zehaeva 2y ago
      Slowing down isn't an option?
      - illiac786 2y ago
        It almost always is, it’s just not what the parent post was discussing, check it out.
- bigfudge 2y ago
  You sound like a motoring journalist. Honestly, if you’re exceeding the speed limit to pass you’re unlikely to be gaining much anyway. 99% of the time people should just chill out and accept that driving a car already comes with so many unpaid externalities that not killing other people with your tonne of steel is a reasonable compromise. Speed is the major contributor to mortality and injury on the roads (and in developed countries the leading cause of death in some age groups). Also, can some describe in detail a scenario where accelerating makes things safer than simply slowing down. Or where the knowledge that a speed limiter would kick in would not already have changed behaviour in a safety enhancing way?
  - gambiting 2y ago
    >>Also, can some describe in detail a scenario where accelerating makes things safer than simply slowing down Mostly in a situation where you've already messed up. Like you're in a middle of an overtake and suddenly you realize you're not going to make it before the incoming car, speeding up to close the gap can save your life in a way that slamming the brakes and just getting hit head-on wouldn't. And yes, you shouldn't have gotten into that position in the first place. But if you did then accelerating can save your life(obviously dependant on the specific situation, it's an extreme edge case of course).
    - bigfudge 2y ago
      This scenario doesn’t make sense. In every case if you slow down and pull in you will have less chance of hitting a car coming the other way. If limits were there it sounds like you think this scenario would also become less common?
      - gambiting 2y ago
        >>In every case if you slow down and pull in you will have less chance of hitting a car coming the other way. If you're in a middle of the overtake with nothing but trucks on the side, once the differential in speed is large enough you'd need the skill of an F1 driver to slow down just enough to merge back in(assuming they even let you in) and not get hit by the traffic behind you and not to lose control of the car. Add any kind of adverse weather conditions and I'd argue this is actually much more difficult to pull off. >>This scenario doesn’t make sense. I guess if you've never seen that scenario play out in real life it's hard to imagine how it would happen. >>f limits were there it sounds like you think this scenario would also become less common? Of course, but OP wanted an example where accelerating helps, so I gave them one.
- numpad0 2y ago
  Hot take: temporarily exceeding the speed limit to "match flow of traffic" and such are nonsense and should be phased out. Along streetside parking.
- giantrobot 2y ago
  Good regulation would only mandate a driver warning. If you exceed the highest speed of any highway in the area, you get some audible/visual warning. In the case of you speeding but not realizing it you just ease up on the accelerator. In the case of needing to pass you just deal with an annoying beep for a few seconds. Reducing control authority in a vehicle is very dangerous. It's difficult to make it obvious control authority is reduced. It also falls down in every corner case where the prohibited action is in fact necessary.
  - SECProto 2y ago
    > Good regulation would only mandate a driver warning Then you must be in favour of this regulation. From the article: > The EU regulations permit a system that can use a cascaded acoustic warning, a cascaded vibrating warning, an accelerator pedal with haptic feedback, or a speed control function in which the speed of the vehicle will be gradually reduced [...] the first two options may not quite compel any actual changes in speed on the part of the vehicle, and that's by design. They will also have to be short in duration not to annoy the driver.
    - giantrobot 2y ago
      > The EU regulations permit The very thing you quoted has reduced control authority as points three and four! They're dangerous inclusions. It should have stopped with the audible warning, the vibrating feedback has the potential to be dangerous but isn't automatically. I'm on board with speed warnings in cars. They're helpful in cars where it's easy to speed. My partner's ICE car has a turbocharger and a very smooth ride. It's way too easy to hit 85mph on the freeway and not really notice. Many EVs have the same problem. I'd actually like a speeding dummy light in that car. What I don't want is reduced control authority because someone not in the car with me and not in my current traffic situation decided I should never be able to go over 75mph ever for any reason.
      - SECProto 2y ago
        Options 3 and 4 are options - not requirements (hence the "or" between 3 and 4). Manufacturers choose which of the 4 options to implement. If you don't want them, dont buy the cars from manufacturers that do. What you suggest would impose manufacturers who want to do 3 and 4 must also do option 1 or 2, which would make them unreasonable.
- gumby 2y ago
  The EU system clearly takes this into account, beginning with an alarm and only later reducing engine power. Unless you're overtaking a dozen vehicles you're probably OK. OK, it won't help you escape the bad guys chasing you but they'll probably have the limiter too.
  - netsharc 2y ago
    Maybe the cars will come with something similar to "Are you of legal age to watch porn?" dialog boxes on porn websites, but it'll be "Are you in the EU?". Or if it uses GPS, I wonder if the next thing will be a Faraday cage to surround the GPS antenna, and a GPS spoofer that tells the car it's currently located outside of the EU.
mr_mitm 2y ago
That will finally stop the Swiss from speeding in Germany
- luplex 2y ago
  I mean no, because there's (as of July 2024) no speed limit on the Autobahn.
  - peterpost2 2y ago
    Plenty of parts of the autobahn have speedlimits, only a bit more than half of it does not have a temporarily or permanent speedlimits.
  - mr_mitm 2y ago
    Sorry, my comment was meant to be below another reply. Not sure what happened but now it doesn't make sense.
causalmodels 2y ago
Doesn't the autobahn have unrestricted sections with no speed limit?
- gambiting 2y ago
  It does. And people drive between countries all the time in Europe, I personally drive through Germany few times a year and I'd hate it if my car had a speed limit purely because I bought it outside of Germany. But perhaps that's somewhat of an edge case that would work with a simple GPS geofence.
  - slau 2y ago
    My car instantly recognises that I’m in Germany and knows what speed I used in the unrestricted sections, and automatically switches back to that. When I’m in Belgium it knows the speed on the highway is 120 km/h. In France or Denmark 130 km/h. In Germany in an unrestricted section? Whatever I last set it to.
- slau 2y ago
  Well, yes, but not really. The recommended speed limit is still 130 km/h. However going past the recommended speed limit is not illegal. If you get into an accident while going faster than 130km/h which could have been prevented by going the advised speed limit, you may be considered more liable by the courts. I’ve heard that there may be cases where your insurance might not cover you, but I’ve never found proof of that online. Edit: rephrased “decriminalised” as “not illegal” as per comment.
  - asyx 2y ago
    That wording is not correct. Recommended speed is a mechanism that is employed in many countries (in the Netherlands you see it on highway exits). The only rules that apply on a highway without signs is a recommended speed of 130 km/h with all the legal consequences this entails (e.g. if you have an accident you are at least partially at fault because the traffic situation obviously didn't allow you to drive as fast as you did) but speeding is not decriminalized as THC products are decriminalized in the Netherlands. There just is no speed limit. Period.
ncruces 2y ago
Yeah, this. Geofencing countries would work for highway speeds (except for Germany, but that's their problem to fix). But it won't do much to reduce pedestrian fatalities, unless you allow cities to (roughly) geofence lower limits.
cogman10 2y ago
> What's the highest legal speed limit in the country in which the car was sold? Set a global speed limit to that. Bad move. Particularly because scenarios where lanes end somewhat unexpectedly are not uncommon (think construction). Further, legislation can change the highest legal speed limit at the drop of a hat. It's the "why are timezones so hard" problem times 10.
- zehaeva 2y ago
  So the solution to a lane ending unexpectedly is to speed up? One would imagine that slowing down or even stopping would be the correct solution there.
  - synecdoche 2y ago
    Probably most of the time, but not every time. Which strategy is best in different situations cannot easily be predicted I'd imagine.
  - bluefirebrand 2y ago
    Stopping in traffic is almost never the safest option If you are approaching and have room but someone is closing the gap, it may indeed be safer to speed up so you can take the spot before it closes and you are forced to stop Granted, drivers should not be taking away the room you need to merge, but if everyone on the road were good drivers then we might not be seeking such nannying tech built into our cars to force them to drive better
    - zehaeva 2y ago
      If all vehicles are limited in the same way I am uncertain how this could even happen. If the computer enforced max speed is 120km, and I'm going 120km, and the vehicle coming up is also going 120km, they can't overtake you, they can't close the gap. Maybe, if the vehicle ahead of both of you is going much slower than either of you then yeah, they could close the gap. But even in that situation you could speed up to the max speed, matching that of the approaching vehicle, and merge. You'd still need to slow down to match the vehicle ahead, but so too would the one behind you, regardless of what you were going to do.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
veeti 2y ago
People drive between countries.
mikestew 2y ago
In the U. S. state of Washington, it is legal to exceed the speed limit when passing (might be restricted to two-lane roads, but the point stands).

kodt 2y ago

This could make it impossible or dangerous to pass in many situations where it may be necessary to temporarily exceed the speed limit.

cogman10 2y ago
Especially when you get a jackass that speeds up because you are passing them.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
zehaeva 2y ago
So if every car is following the speed limit, that is going as fast as they are allowed, why would any one person be passing someone else?
- mikestew 2y ago
  Perhaps parent isn’t talking about that scenario. But surely you can imagine a different scenario where this applies, right? Maybe Grandma Jones doing 10 under the limit on a two-lane road?
  - matsemann 2y ago
    They're either so slow that they're easy to overtake, or they're so fast that it doesn't matter to stay behind for a while. So just relax, the time lost is minuscule.
- gambiting 2y ago
  In most EU countries(and UK) you have different speed limits based on the class of the vehicle. So for example in the UK on a single lane road a regular car can go 60mph, a car towing a trailer can only go 50mph, but a heavy goods vehicle(over 7.5 tonnes) can only go 40mph. So on most roads that aren't dual carriageways you constantly encounter a situation where everyone is driving at their top legal speed limit but there is still a need to overtake vehicles.
  - setr 2y ago
    Under that scenario, assuming 10-20mph differential is sufficient, overtaking by faster-class vehicles hasn’t been affected. Slower vehicles presumably shouldn’t be overtaking anyways, except when dealing with… even slower vehicles (but the joys of trucks overtaking each other by like 2mph difference and blocking the whole road for 10 minutes)
- userulluipeste 2y ago
  Well, you see, it's for the cases where not every car is going as fast as they are allowed.
  - zehaeva 2y ago
    If they're going so much slower than the limit that it's unsafe, wouldn't it be easy to pass at the regulated limit? If they're going just a _little_ bit slower than the limit, why pass them? Are you telling me that 3kmph, or even 10kmph, slower than the limit is slow enough to make an appreciable difference to your everyday driving?
    - lolinder 2y ago
      > wouldn't it be easy to pass at the regulated limit? No. No, it's not, not on a single land road.
- jbritton 2y ago
  I’m in the US. If you’re on say hwy 395 heading to Mammoth Mountain, the highway is frequently one lane in each direction. If the max speed limit is 70mph, you may come up on a semi truck doing 60mph and you will want to pass using the lane with on coming traffic. This means you need to do 85mph to pass. For this reason our max speed limit laws are woefully inadequate at accounting for real life conditions.
  - zehaeva 2y ago
    Why will you _want_ to pass? Is that 10mph going to get you there _that_ much faster? If you were to follow that truck for all 1300 miles of 395 you would get to your destination 3 hours later than if you were going 70mph the whole way. I would doubt that anyone would want to drive for nearly 19 hours straight, unless you're doing some sort of cannonball run like challenge. If your destination is a mere 120 miles away, and you followed him the whole way you'd get there only 18 minutes faster. Was it really that important to get there that much faster?
    - surgical_fire 2y ago
      > Was it really that important to get there that much faster? The answer may be contingent on how many tacos you ate before this hypothetical trip.
      - zehaeva 2y ago
        This is the only answer that I've seen that's reasonable so far!
    - biftek 2y ago
      It's not always about getting there "faster". I regularly encounter trucks with unsecured loads, drivers visibly weaving, and other dangerous situations. I'm certainly not going to die on some "well this is the speed limit" hill behind them. Driving isn't some binary situation, you have to constantly predict erratic behavior and react to your surroundings.
- randerson 2y ago
  I often find myself behind a truck that is kicking up stones or belching fumes or has a poorly secured load that looks like it could fly off. Doesn't matter if it is going the speed limit, I want to get past it.
  - zehaeva 2y ago
    How close do you find yourself to the truck in front of you? Safe follow distances are, At 65MPH, I'm assuming you're in the US, is approximately 300 feet. I'd be kind of shocked that you're getting stones hitting you and detectable fumes 300 feet away.
    - randerson 2y ago
      My Adaptive Cruise Control has 4 distance settings and I use the 3rd, further than most people's following distance, and I've had stones kicked up by truck tires that hit my windscreen from that distance.
      - zehaeva 2y ago
        I do the same in my Subaru, even at the furthest, the safe distance is choose is no where near the 300feet(approximately 20 car lengths). It's closer to 8 car lengths.
        randerson 2y ago
        Was curious so I just looked up my car's ACC numbers. Setting 3 is 1.8 seconds and setting 4 (the max) is 2.3 seconds, so about 220 feet at 65mph. As another poster said its pointless to be this far back because everyone else just overtakes you to fill the gap, so you're always braking and accelerating and averaging a smaller distance than in setting 3.
    - ricardobeat 2y ago
      Clearly you’ve never driven in the EU. The usual follow distance here is about three meters, the “safe” one is five, any farther and you’re going to get a stream of cars overtaking you just to fill that void :) Regarding stones and lose cargo, they would hit you even 300m away as they bounce and quickly lose speed while you’re still flying into at them at 130km/h.
- michaelmrose 2y ago
  Roads commonly carry traffic at a different speeds than listed speed based on actual conditions, perception of conditions, condition and nature of vehicles and because speeds are often set inefficienctly. Its not uncommon to see stretches with traffic constantly packed 4+ lanes going 75+ each way. Trying to put the same burden of vehicles through at 65 with 300 ft between would be a joke. A given lane would carry less than half actual traffic. Bad traffic would become a city wide disaster. Then consider that you can only impose this on a portion of drivers per year and drivers have to drive with those without governors indefinitely. You also discount issues with safety by following at an appropriate distance. Trying to fall back 300 ft can only be achieved by driving too slow leading to both passing and people taking this new huge space whist giving you the finger leaving you with even less space.
  - zehaeva 2y ago
    If we're concerned with traffic throughput then shouldn't we just increase the allowed speed? Why even have a limit in the first place? I don't understand your point about having to slow down to follow at a safe distance. If I pull onto a highway and find myself _right_ behind someone I can decrease my speed by one or two mph to fall back to a safe following distance. How is that not safe? The car behind me, who should already be either already at a safe distance or adjusting their own distance should have no issues here. What I think you mean to say is that because you're assuming that everyone else on the road is behaving in an unsafe manner you believe that you, too, have to behave in an unsafe manner. This simply is not the case.
    - michaelmrose 2y ago
      I'm not sure where you are driving (or if you drive anywhere) but you can't actually drop speed substantially with cars right behind you and if you tried to open a space people would just move into that space. Then you don't have that space AND you have cars maneuvering around you. You will have drastically increased your chance of having an accident without acquiring a buffer. Areas that are already burdened as far as the amount of traffic they can bear, which is basically every major urban area in America, see traffic moving at a high rate of speed with 20-30 feet between cars. Picture a simple chute in which you are dumping jelly beans one at a time. Even at the same speed of descent you will be able to drop 1/3 of the beans if you wait 3 seconds between drops instead of 1. Everyone trying to keep 300 feet between to be "safe" would create an expanding parking lot behind that would crash the entire traffic systems ability to function at all. When everyone started arriving 3 hours late for work businesses would fine themselves dysfunctional including critical businesses. People would die because emergency vehicles couldn't move. The mayor would be on TV discussing what they would do about the collective insanity. Anyway this is an awfully long way to say people do need the ability to control the speed of their car in order for the current flawed highway system to function normally. People do actually have cause to pass. They sometimes do have a reason to drive slower than the limit. Others need to exceed it briefly or in an emergency.
- illiac786 2y ago
  if the car is going slower than the limit but you have a very limited window of time to pass it, the only way is to temporarily go above the speed limit.
  - zehaeva 2y ago
    Slowing down isn't an option?
    - illiac786 2y ago
      It almost always is, it’s just not what the parent post was discussing, check it out.
bigfudge 2y ago
You sound like a motoring journalist. Honestly, if you’re exceeding the speed limit to pass you’re unlikely to be gaining much anyway. 99% of the time people should just chill out and accept that driving a car already comes with so many unpaid externalities that not killing other people with your tonne of steel is a reasonable compromise. Speed is the major contributor to mortality and injury on the roads (and in developed countries the leading cause of death in some age groups). Also, can some describe in detail a scenario where accelerating makes things safer than simply slowing down. Or where the knowledge that a speed limiter would kick in would not already have changed behaviour in a safety enhancing way?
- gambiting 2y ago
  >>Also, can some describe in detail a scenario where accelerating makes things safer than simply slowing down Mostly in a situation where you've already messed up. Like you're in a middle of an overtake and suddenly you realize you're not going to make it before the incoming car, speeding up to close the gap can save your life in a way that slamming the brakes and just getting hit head-on wouldn't. And yes, you shouldn't have gotten into that position in the first place. But if you did then accelerating can save your life(obviously dependant on the specific situation, it's an extreme edge case of course).
  - bigfudge 2y ago
    This scenario doesn’t make sense. In every case if you slow down and pull in you will have less chance of hitting a car coming the other way. If limits were there it sounds like you think this scenario would also become less common?
    - gambiting 2y ago
      >>In every case if you slow down and pull in you will have less chance of hitting a car coming the other way. If you're in a middle of the overtake with nothing but trucks on the side, once the differential in speed is large enough you'd need the skill of an F1 driver to slow down just enough to merge back in(assuming they even let you in) and not get hit by the traffic behind you and not to lose control of the car. Add any kind of adverse weather conditions and I'd argue this is actually much more difficult to pull off. >>This scenario doesn’t make sense. I guess if you've never seen that scenario play out in real life it's hard to imagine how it would happen. >>f limits were there it sounds like you think this scenario would also become less common? Of course, but OP wanted an example where accelerating helps, so I gave them one.
numpad0 2y ago
Hot take: temporarily exceeding the speed limit to "match flow of traffic" and such are nonsense and should be phased out. Along streetside parking.
giantrobot 2y ago
Good regulation would only mandate a driver warning. If you exceed the highest speed of any highway in the area, you get some audible/visual warning. In the case of you speeding but not realizing it you just ease up on the accelerator. In the case of needing to pass you just deal with an annoying beep for a few seconds. Reducing control authority in a vehicle is very dangerous. It's difficult to make it obvious control authority is reduced. It also falls down in every corner case where the prohibited action is in fact necessary.
- SECProto 2y ago
  > Good regulation would only mandate a driver warning Then you must be in favour of this regulation. From the article: > The EU regulations permit a system that can use a cascaded acoustic warning, a cascaded vibrating warning, an accelerator pedal with haptic feedback, or a speed control function in which the speed of the vehicle will be gradually reduced [...] the first two options may not quite compel any actual changes in speed on the part of the vehicle, and that's by design. They will also have to be short in duration not to annoy the driver.
  - giantrobot 2y ago
    > The EU regulations permit The very thing you quoted has reduced control authority as points three and four! They're dangerous inclusions. It should have stopped with the audible warning, the vibrating feedback has the potential to be dangerous but isn't automatically. I'm on board with speed warnings in cars. They're helpful in cars where it's easy to speed. My partner's ICE car has a turbocharger and a very smooth ride. It's way too easy to hit 85mph on the freeway and not really notice. Many EVs have the same problem. I'd actually like a speeding dummy light in that car. What I don't want is reduced control authority because someone not in the car with me and not in my current traffic situation decided I should never be able to go over 75mph ever for any reason.
    - SECProto 2y ago
      Options 3 and 4 are options - not requirements (hence the "or" between 3 and 4). Manufacturers choose which of the 4 options to implement. If you don't want them, dont buy the cars from manufacturers that do. What you suggest would impose manufacturers who want to do 3 and 4 must also do option 1 or 2, which would make them unreasonable.
gumby 2y ago
The EU system clearly takes this into account, beginning with an alarm and only later reducing engine power. Unless you're overtaking a dozen vehicles you're probably OK. OK, it won't help you escape the bad guys chasing you but they'll probably have the limiter too.
- netsharc 2y ago
  Maybe the cars will come with something similar to "Are you of legal age to watch porn?" dialog boxes on porn websites, but it'll be "Are you in the EU?". Or if it uses GPS, I wonder if the next thing will be a Faraday cage to surround the GPS antenna, and a GPS spoofer that tells the car it's currently located outside of the EU.

mr_mitm 2y ago

That will finally stop the Swiss from speeding in Germany

luplex 2y ago
I mean no, because there's (as of July 2024) no speed limit on the Autobahn.
- peterpost2 2y ago
  Plenty of parts of the autobahn have speedlimits, only a bit more than half of it does not have a temporarily or permanent speedlimits.
- mr_mitm 2y ago
  Sorry, my comment was meant to be below another reply. Not sure what happened but now it doesn't make sense.

causalmodels 2y ago

Doesn't the autobahn have unrestricted sections with no speed limit?

gambiting 2y ago
It does. And people drive between countries all the time in Europe, I personally drive through Germany few times a year and I'd hate it if my car had a speed limit purely because I bought it outside of Germany. But perhaps that's somewhat of an edge case that would work with a simple GPS geofence.
- slau 2y ago
  My car instantly recognises that I’m in Germany and knows what speed I used in the unrestricted sections, and automatically switches back to that. When I’m in Belgium it knows the speed on the highway is 120 km/h. In France or Denmark 130 km/h. In Germany in an unrestricted section? Whatever I last set it to.
slau 2y ago
Well, yes, but not really. The recommended speed limit is still 130 km/h. However going past the recommended speed limit is not illegal. If you get into an accident while going faster than 130km/h which could have been prevented by going the advised speed limit, you may be considered more liable by the courts. I’ve heard that there may be cases where your insurance might not cover you, but I’ve never found proof of that online. Edit: rephrased “decriminalised” as “not illegal” as per comment.
- asyx 2y ago
  That wording is not correct. Recommended speed is a mechanism that is employed in many countries (in the Netherlands you see it on highway exits). The only rules that apply on a highway without signs is a recommended speed of 130 km/h with all the legal consequences this entails (e.g. if you have an accident you are at least partially at fault because the traffic situation obviously didn't allow you to drive as fast as you did) but speeding is not decriminalized as THC products are decriminalized in the Netherlands. There just is no speed limit. Period.

ncruces 2y ago

Yeah, this. Geofencing countries would work for highway speeds (except for Germany, but that's their problem to fix). But it won't do much to reduce pedestrian fatalities, unless you allow cities to (roughly) geofence lower limits.

cogman10 2y ago

> What's the highest legal speed limit in the country in which the car was sold? Set a global speed limit to that. Bad move. Particularly because scenarios where lanes end somewhat unexpectedly are not uncommon (think construction). Further, legislation can change the highest legal speed limit at the drop of a hat. It's the "why are timezones so hard" problem times 10.

zehaeva 2y ago
So the solution to a lane ending unexpectedly is to speed up? One would imagine that slowing down or even stopping would be the correct solution there.
- synecdoche 2y ago
  Probably most of the time, but not every time. Which strategy is best in different situations cannot easily be predicted I'd imagine.
- bluefirebrand 2y ago
  Stopping in traffic is almost never the safest option If you are approaching and have room but someone is closing the gap, it may indeed be safer to speed up so you can take the spot before it closes and you are forced to stop Granted, drivers should not be taking away the room you need to merge, but if everyone on the road were good drivers then we might not be seeking such nannying tech built into our cars to force them to drive better
  - zehaeva 2y ago
    If all vehicles are limited in the same way I am uncertain how this could even happen. If the computer enforced max speed is 120km, and I'm going 120km, and the vehicle coming up is also going 120km, they can't overtake you, they can't close the gap. Maybe, if the vehicle ahead of both of you is going much slower than either of you then yeah, they could close the gap. But even in that situation you could speed up to the max speed, matching that of the approaching vehicle, and merge. You'd still need to slow down to match the vehicle ahead, but so too would the one behind you, regardless of what you were going to do.

deleted 2y ago

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veeti 2y ago

People drive between countries.

mikestew 2y ago

In the U. S. state of Washington, it is legal to exceed the speed limit when passing (might be restricted to two-lane roads, but the point stands).