California Bill Wants To Mandate Electronic 'Speed Limiters' in Cars (caranddriver.com) 362
"Someday in the not too distant future, it might no longer be possible to drive a brand-new car faster than 80 mph in California," writes Car and Driver:
That's because state senator Scott Wiener earlier this week proposed a new bill that aims to prevent certain new vehicles from going more than 10 mph over the speed limit. In California, the maximum posted speed limit is 70 mph, meaning anything north of 80 mph would be off limits.
The Speeding and Fatality Emergency Reduction on California Streets — or SAFER California Streets, for short — is a package of bills that includes SB 961 that was published Tuesday, which essentially calls for speed governors on new cars and trucks built or sold in California starting with the 2027 model year. These vehicles would be required to have an "intelligent speed limiter system" that electronically prevents the driver from speeding above the aforementioned threshold.
The speed-limiter tech wouldn't apply to emergency vehicles. There's also language in the bill that the passive device would have the ability to be temporarily disabled by the driver, however, it's unclear in what situations that might apply. The bill also states that automakers would be able to fully disable the speed-limiter, but presumably only for authorized emergency vehicles. The commissioner of the California Highway Patrol could authorize disabling the speed-limiter too at their discretion...
The proposed legislation is said to be an attempt to address rising traffic fatalities, which in California have reportedly increased by 22 perecent from 2019 to 2022.
The Speeding and Fatality Emergency Reduction on California Streets — or SAFER California Streets, for short — is a package of bills that includes SB 961 that was published Tuesday, which essentially calls for speed governors on new cars and trucks built or sold in California starting with the 2027 model year. These vehicles would be required to have an "intelligent speed limiter system" that electronically prevents the driver from speeding above the aforementioned threshold.
The speed-limiter tech wouldn't apply to emergency vehicles. There's also language in the bill that the passive device would have the ability to be temporarily disabled by the driver, however, it's unclear in what situations that might apply. The bill also states that automakers would be able to fully disable the speed-limiter, but presumably only for authorized emergency vehicles. The commissioner of the California Highway Patrol could authorize disabling the speed-limiter too at their discretion...
The proposed legislation is said to be an attempt to address rising traffic fatalities, which in California have reportedly increased by 22 perecent from 2019 to 2022.
Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not called the People's Republic of California for nothing.
Re:Of course (Score:4, Interesting)
First it requires all maps in cars to be up-to date so who is to blame when the map get it wrong and as its law California should make sure the cars are up to date at no cost
Second what about all the revenue California is going to miss out on from speeding fines https://www.catalystcalifornia... [catalystcalifornia.org]
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Are you sure it uses map data in California? I'm pretty sure the primary method in Europe is by traffic sign recognition. Otherwise it wouldn't catch temporary speed limits or be of any use in tunnels (of which we have a _lot_ in places).
And, the driver is always ultimately responsible, so if the car gets it wrong you'll still get a ticket, no worries.
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...traffic sign recognition ... which can fail, esp. in bad weather.
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what about all the revenue California is going to miss out on from speeding fines
That's obviously why the proposed limit is 10 MPH over. That's plenty fast enough to land yourself an expensive ticket, and now they'll have even more people to pull over since I'm sure there will plenty of folks who'll mistakenly assume that the car's automatic speed limiter is the legal limit.
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Normal flow of traffic in LA averages like 10-15mph over when there's not traffic preventing it.
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Very few places are pulling people over for 10mph over. If the budget is tight or its a really small town maybe, but in general most cops don't bother pulling people over for less than 15mph over.
Re: Of course (Score:5, Interesting)
I have no doubt he would have ticketed me for going 2 miles over the speed limit had I not turned off my music and heard him, most likely because I had the audacity to pass him.
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I'm not aware of any cars that have this feature in Europe. Some have a speed limiter, which works like cruise control except that you have to rest your foot on the accelerator. I used it quite a bit in my Leafs, as you have the benefit of cruising at a fixed speed but also being able to gently back off any time you need to without cancelling the mode.
Some cars have a feature that warns you when you are exceeding the speed limit. Unfortunately many implementations seem to be very poor. Kia, for example, sta
Re:Of course (Score:5, Informative)
The speed limiter in question is set at 80 mph (10 higher than any legal speed limit in the state). It doesn't adjust for the speed limit of the road, so there is no need for maps. The cars with it would still be able to go 80 mph regardless of whether the road's speed limit is 70 or 50.
Re:Of course (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not called the People's Republic of California for nothing.
Course, on the opposite side of the coin you've got Florida where assholes drive around with no mufflers and their vehicles rollin' coal. Which I suppose is fine until they drive past your home while you're trying to sleep, or you're driving behind them and not wanting to choke to death.
I'm not saying that California's nanny state situation is superior, but perhaps that there's a sane middle ground somewhere between the two.
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California is doing what right-wing voters ask for but don't really want, we're making decisions based on economic impact.
If you actually cared about theft you would be agitating for enforcement of wage laws, because wage theft exceeds all other theft combined. The laws around it are barely enforced.
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It's funny you go on about enforcement when the example of the poster above you along with your own insight that such things are illegal in Florida completely works against you. It's an incredible rarity to see a car belching out black smoke in California as the poster claims.
Furthermore, given the sub $1000 damage on everything you list none of it should be penalized with a life ruining felony. Ruining some ones future employment prospects for a crime worth less then a grand is a great way to have a minor
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Once again, a distinction without a difference. If the DA's will not charge and prosecute those misdemeanors -- then they are effectively not crimes. If the DA's will not charge and prosecute those misdemeanors, then the police will stop arresting the criminals. If the police will not arrest the criminals, then the stores/people will stop reporting those crimes...
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Every measure associated with safety is implemented like that.
Re:Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
I forgot to add this: when you drive through TX in a white van a CA license plate, people look at you with a mix of pity, concern, and genuine curiosity and ask "so, you are (finally) leaving!?". Has happened to me - in white rental vans. For someone who has never lived in California it was just ... comical.
Emotions Separated By Glass Boxes. (Score:2)
Interesting how, in a car-centric society, people try to communicate emotions when separated by glass boxes.
Does not work that well.
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No need to move, cuz while apparently, "everything's bigger in Texas", "it's all better in California" ('cept the bbq.)
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Nanny-state'ing only matters when it assumes the majority of people in the state are complete morons (that would be Florida.)
California is not one of those. Rather California suffers from detachment of the rich from the realities of how their state works. All the money is made in the state, but they offshore it, so none of the tax revenue benefits California.
Hence, a lot of regulations that seem excessive, particularly when the result is a fine, is to target exactly those people who can pay the most, those
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But the real problem is that there is no speed limit on private roads, so why are you trying to limit how fast I can go on a private road if there is no law preventing me from doing so?
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It could be tied to the speedometer. GPS has nothing to do with it.
TFA seems to talk about using GPS to determine the location and, hence, the local speed limit and limiting the car to 10 MPH over that.
Re:Of course (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow... new attack vectors using GPS spoofing.
GPS spoofing to speed (fool your own car.)
GPS spoofing to cause traffic jams (force cars to suddenly decelerate when previously traveling at freeway speeds.)
Actually, depending on how this is implemented, you won't even need to spoof GPS. Are you using an onboard database or an external one to determine speeds? If an onboard one, that has to be able to be updated on a regular basis. If an external one... you might be able to man in the middle that.
Re:Of course (Score:4, Insightful)
This would be an utter disaster - can you imagine the delays when the car wrongly thinks it's on a feeder road or parallel country road when it's actually on the highway?
California Bill has lost his mind.
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What happens if for example you have a motorway [highway] with a speed limit of 70mph, and an all purpose road running parallel to it with a speed limit of 30mph; and the GPS incorrectly detects you as being on the slower road?
That happens sometimes on my satnav. The impact for me is that it starts barking out incorrect directions, but if the speed limiter was connected to it, it could slam on the brakes and cause an accident.
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It is a genetic thing. States that provide poor quality education end up with an ignorant populace. This is what separates California from Florida. California attempts to educate all it's kids, no matter what color or creed. So, you get teenagers & 20 year olds that put some value on their life. Florida... not so much.
California is behind Florida in every major education achievement category. As AA5_Traveler tried pointing out before he was modded down, California ranks 20th in education while Florida outranks them in every category, coming in 1st place [usnews.com].
Further, California, does an abysmal job of educating its minorities, especially considering that dollar per pupil amount that they spend on minorities is, by state mandate, higher than what they spend on White and Asian districts [edsource.org]:
By the law center’s calculation, California provided the poorest districts with $2,500 per student more than it funded wealthy districts, a difference of 20% in 2019-20. Since then, Gov. Gavin Newsom has expanded funding under the formula for districts with the highest concentrations of low-income families and also steered them to billions of dollars in funding for community schools and extending the school day by three hours. That too will show up in future rankings.
That money isn't buying them much, appar
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The subject is educating kids - you're looking at the ranking for higher education. For higher education, their stat is based on cost and completion rate. Not the quality of the education.
For Pre-K-12, Florida does rank higher than California but one of the major ranking criteria is how many enroll in Pre-K, which Florida offers universally for free and California has eligibility requirements. That would definitely drag them down but doesn't really reflect the quality of the education.
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Oh, and you should not take those cars to large parts of Texas
Avoiding Texas is always recommended.
ruled out (Score:2)
Ruling out...the usual. (Score:2)
have they ruled out other factors - I find it hard to believe that speed is more of a problem now than it was in 1999. Maybe more of a problem than it was in 1969 !
By other "factors", you mean like factoring in the massive profits auto insurance companies are going to make each and every time that "passive" device is "temporarily disabled by the driver"?
Or do you mean the massive profits created by those selling access to a new database tracking each and every vehicle that is now capable of live monitoring of speed limits, likely via GPS or other real-time location device?
You mean those kinds of factors? As if this has fuck all to do with safety...
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A new database? Cars allowing for tracking isn't remotely a new thing OnStar has been around for decades. Cars already know the speed limit where you are driving and put a digital marker on your speedometer. A Ford can drive itself now (not as well as a Tesla). Have you been in any recent new vehicles? This useful yet creepy tech is all very common place now.
Re: Ruling out...the usual. (Score:3)
Driver Education. Not Speed. (Score:5, Interesting)
Speed is not the issue _at_all_.
Here in Europe, we have Germany with unlimited speeds on half the Autobahns, people sometimes rocketing at 300km/h when traffic is light.
The second half of Autobahns, with reasonable speed limits does not have less accidents, nor less fatalities.
The real issue is driver education.
Get a real driving license education (getting a license seems to be much too light in USA)
Also a problem in USA, is that having mostly no usable public transport makes it hard to live without a car, and thus hard to remove a license of offenders, and hard to justify making the license harder to obtain in the first place....
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Of course some people are willing to take greater risks than others, but when their riskier behaviour forces a higher
Re:Driver Education. Not Speed. (Score:5, Insightful)
It gets even more complicated. For example, while speed limits are SUPPOSED to reflect the road, in a lot of the USA, it's set more by politics. For example, people near the highway will lobby for the speed limit to be set lower because they think that will make it quieter. But it doesn't - people just speed more. Then you have speed limits set to enable speed traps/ticking, speed limits set by politics, whether for "safety", "saving fuel", or "emissions".
The real risk is driving at speeds substantially different than the traffic around you. Especially dangerous is things like tailgating, unsafe lane changes, and such.
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That is complete rubbish.
There was a recent debate about this in Germany, when a government commission recommended a 130 km/h speed limit to cut transport sector emissions. Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer dismissed the idea as unrealistic and contrary to common sense, claiming German motorways are the safest worldwide.
Germany ranks tenth in Europe for motorway safety, with a death risk about twice that of Britain or Denmark. Studies by the German Road Safety Council (DVR) indicate 25% more deaths on auto
Re: Driver Education. Not Speed. (Score:2)
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That kind of speed is hazardous in more ways than one. Imagine checking your side mirror, confirming the nearest car in the left lane is FAR away, then looking ahead to make sure the car in front of you isn't in the process of moving into the left lane, and by the time YOU move into the left lane you get torpedoed at ~150 km/h when accounting for your own speed.
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Speed is not the issue _at_all_.
I wouldn't say "at all", but I do agree that speed is often a bullshit reason given when the actual causality is too complex to fit into a headline.
People driving faster than is adequate for the situation is a huge problem. And that includes not even going over the speed limit, the safe driving speed can be well below the speed limit given the density of traffic or the weather conditions.
I constantly see people overtaking on a stretch of road near my home where IMHO you have to be insane to do that. There's
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here's your driving license for cars up to 50 mph and x acceleration.
Which would probably get you fucking killed merging on and off of I-4 Express here in central Florida, because the on and off ramps are all on the left (where people are generally doing 70-75MPH regardless of the speed limit). In fact, that was one of the contributing factors in why my partner decided to get a Bolt EUV. Certainly, it's not what most people would consider to be a high performance car, but the electric drivetrain responds immediately, which makes accelerating to safely merge over much easie
Incorrect tehre are more death (Score:3)
https://correctiv.org/faktench... [correctiv.org]
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Speed is not the issue _at_all_.
"According to the Federal Statistical Office, 424 people died in accidents on German highways in 2018. According to this, improper speed was partly responsible for 196 or 46 percent of motorway fatalities. On sections without a speed limit , inappropriate speed was a cause of accidents in 45 percent of traffic fatalities (135 out of 301 accident fatalities), and on sections with a speed limit in 50 percent of fatal accidents (61 out of 123 accident fatalities)."
From (google translated): https://www.spiegel. [spiegel.de]
so must buy map updates and / or data plan? (Score:2)
so must buy map updates and / or data plan? So that the car can get the needed data?
under posted speed limits make roads unsafe (Score:3, Interesting)
under posted speed limits make roads unsafe when road that can 65-70+ is posted at 55 you get people who just do 65-70 while the people just doing the 55 are the ones makeing it unsafe.
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I agree, this is more of a problem than excess speed. People driving slower than the rest of traffic end up impeding other drivers and causing dangerous lane changes. Especially when they're in the passing lane. Unfortunately they usually end up causing accidents for other people and never see the consequences of their poor driving choices.
Re:under posted speed limits make roads unsafe (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ever since watching Hot Fuzz, I always call them collisions. This is in fact accurate (hot fuzz was reportedly very accurate about police work, well, up until the end).
Re: under posted speed limits make roads unsafe (Score:2)
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Sometimes the limit is low because in poor weather it might be unsafe to do 70. In Europe they have dual speed limit signs, with one for dry and one for wet.
Speed isn't the problem.... (Score:3)
...It's the sudden stop at the end.
I had always heard that excess speed was rarely a causal factor in accidents. You can lose control at any speed, and it could be fatal. But I admit I've never bothered to look at the studies. I just hope nobody ever needs to go more than 10mph over the speed limit to get around an erratic driver or avoid an obstacle.
Personally I prefer to drive older cars, without the distracting screen blinding me and forcing me to fumble with unintuitive touch controls. It seems like everyone forgot that the soft red light on the instrument panel is supposed to let you maintain your night vision, and now everyone's okay with blue LEDs glaring in your face.
Re:Speed isn't the problem.... (Score:4, Informative)
...It's the sudden stop at the end.
I had always heard that excess speed was rarely a causal factor in accidents. You can lose control at any speed, and it could be fatal. But I admit I've never bothered to look at the studies. I just hope nobody ever needs to go more than 10mph over the speed limit to get around an erratic driver or avoid an obstacle.
Personally I prefer to drive older cars, without the distracting screen blinding me and forcing me to fumble with unintuitive touch controls. It seems like everyone forgot that the soft red light on the instrument panel is supposed to let you maintain your night vision, and now everyone's okay with blue LEDs glaring in your face.
In Norway, speed is the main factor in about 30-40% of accidents. [vegvesen.no]. Also, the rule doesnt seem to be "max 10 mph above speed limit",but "max 10 mph above max speed limit". There's not a lot of scenarios where that limit - 80 mph - should be an actual problem.
Maybe fifty (Score:2, Interesting)
Not letting cars go fifty miles over the speed limit seems reasonable. Nobody needs to go 120mph on public roads. But 10? I can't see that happening.
Re:Maybe fifty (Score:4, Interesting)
Not letting cars go fifty miles over the speed limit seems reasonable. Nobody needs to go 120mph on public roads. But 10? I can't see that happening.
On major interstate-grade highways in Sunnyvale, CA, my Tesla routinely thinks that I'm on a side street with a 25 MPH speed limit. Driving 50 MPH over the actual speed limit isn't reasonable. Driving 50 MPH over what my car thinks is the speed limit, however, could be as little as 10 MPH above the actual posted limit, which is not nearly as unreasonable.
The technology for reporting speed limits absolutely sucks horribly, and the state government hasn't done its job in making speed data available from municipalities. Without huge amounts of government support, this idea is utterly dead in the water. And even with it, you can probably expect GPS road snapping errors to cause at least one or two collisions per week in the Bay Area alone, given the rate of errors that I've seen.
So no, this isn't even remotely reasonable, nor is anything even slightly resembling this even remotely reasonable. It's one of those ideas that sounds good and even obvious to people who don't understand how GPS or navigation systems work, but makes anyone who does understand how either or both of those systems work want to never come within a thousand feet of any California roadway for the rest of their lives. :-)
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It's one of those ideas that sounds good and even obvious to people who don't understand how GPS or navigation systems work
I'm sure this idea will work just as well as when Google Maps tells me "Keep right to stay on I-4 Express".
(To anyone who is unfamiliar with central Florida's roadways, I-4 Express are toll lanes on the left side of I-4. If you followed Google's instruction, you'll end up exiting back on to the regular lanes.)
Nobody would be THAT stupid. (Score:2)
>> If you followed Google's instruction
Who would trust google?
Nobody would be THAT stupid.
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Plenty of stories here and elsewhere that say otherwise. Like idiots driving of piers because google maps told them to.
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If I were engineering such a system, I'd use machine readable signs. Some kind of barcode/2D code, with heavy checksumming to avoid errors. If the car sees them, it enforces the limit for the next 1km. No GPS, no trying to read human readable speed signs, extremely low error rate.
Probably painted on the road, or in some other place where they can't be confused for signs on a different road, or a slip road.
That also solves the issues of manufacturers charging for map updates.
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As I read it, this is just a 'lock' on any speed over 80mph - not "10 miles over the current speed limit". You can still do 80 in a 30 if you want. You just can't ever do 81.
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Not letting cars go fifty miles over the speed limit seems reasonable. Nobody needs to go 120mph on public roads. But 10? I can't see that happening.
It not 10 over the speed limit, it's "10 above max speed limit" - meaning "not above 80 mph on public roads".
Won't Pass (Score:2)
I'm assuming that there's no chance of this actually passing. It's about getting a discussion going, just like is happening here.
Obviously there are tons of technical issues, like how does the car know the speed limit? I've seen my car get the wrong speed limit both with incorrect databases and with incorrect sign reading. It could determine that it's in California, so no limits over 70mph (allowing the +10). It would obviously need to adjust out of state where speed limits are higher (presumably turn o
Yes, it WILL Pass (Score:5, Insightful)
The California legislature has been more than super-majority Democrat [wikipedia.org] for years. The state Senate is 32 Democrats to 8 Republicans, and the Assembly is 62 Democrats to 18 Republicans. After primaries were made non-partisan, we have often seen November General Election ballots where both candidates for a given office are Democrats (nobody of any other party on the ballot). On many issues the Republicans are not even consulted, the Democrats just ram them through. This means there are is no real push-back in the legislature, and there's no real limit on how dumb a piece of legislation can be - it's not healthy for EITHER party to be in that great a majority and thus not face any need to justify its actions in the face of any challenge from competing ideas or difficult questions.
Don't bother contacting your state legislature if you disagree with the majority's agenda - they do not need nor care about your negative input; they have lobbyists and special interest groups to satisfy.
The only hope that this would not pass is if they angered lots of their base Democrat voters... but that would just make them stop this effort and resurrect it later under another name and pass it when people are less aware. We've seen this exercise many times, including on things like vehicle registration fees, gas taxes, and high speed rail.
Re:Yes, it WILL Pass (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't assume that just because one Democrat proposes something that all Democrats will support it. Is the person pushing this in the leadership, or just some random member?
I'm in Massachusetts, which has similar veto-proof majorities in both houses, but it doesn't make it easy to get bills through unless the leadership wants them. There have been things on the Democratic state platform for decades that have never even been voted on.
And never underestimate the impact of sending letters to your elected officials.
Improved enforcement (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the real solution to California's increasing road fatality problem is not putting speed limiters on vehicles but rather putting more unmarked CHP and local police and sheriff's cars on the roads pulling people over engaging in unsafe driving. I see it all the time, particularly when I drive down I-5 to the Los Angeles area but I see it in other places where there are multiple lanes. Too many people passing on the right in traffic trying to get just a little bit ahead of you, making unsafe lane changes, tailgating, etc. And then there are the slow trucks. The 55 mph speed limit for trucks and vehicles with trailers is far too slow. Most states don't have truck speed limits. It is these speed limits that actually increase the unsafe driving habits of people in cars and pickups, with one slow truck passing a slightly slower truck causing a long line of cars to pile up behind it in the left lane, begging impatient drivers to pass on the right and then find a way to cut into the left lane. I think a combination of the elimination of the truck speed limit and a rigorous enforcement of staying right except to pass (essentially German autobahn discipline) would to much to enhance safety.
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The truck issue is primarily just on roads that are only two-lanes in each direction, such as that long I-5 stretch between SF and LA.
There are a number of issues in LA that are plainly obvious to any daily driver---including [as your point out] huge numbers of people not keeping to the right as they should. in many cases I find it's more common that people are passing on the right than the other way around. Not fun in 5+ lanes of traffic.
More rigorous enforcement of current rules (and perhaps fixing issues
For-Profit solutions for sale. Problems optional. (Score:2)
I think the real solution to California's increasing road fatality problem is not putting speed limiters on vehicles but rather putting more unmarked CHP and local police and sheriff's cars on the roads pulling people over engaging in unsafe driving.
Does this solution, truly have a measurable problem there?
First time going to California years ago I remember thinking to myself I was traveling "smarter" by scheduling a late flight and landing at LAX at 10:30PM in order to avoid all the infamous traffic. I was crawling on the freeway in bumper to bumper bullshit an hour later. After many trips I can't really recall a time when traffic was clear enough to justify "solutions" such as the one proposed.
Then again, a for-profit State program mandating that n
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local police and sheriff's cars on the roads pulling people over engaging in unsafe driving.
If California is anything like where I live, that's the same as flying cars and robots doing the dishes - a nice idea, won't ever happen.
I've been driving to work every day until Covid. My strong impression: Not once, EVER have I seen a cop pulling over even one of the hundreds if not thousands of blatantly unsafe drivers. I mean seriously unsafe, to the point where I slowed down and fell back just so I'm not driving near them for my own safety.
But I have seen cops doing tons of easy, no-real-work-necessary
All cars should be tracked (Score:2)
Food for thought (Score:2)
Are you free when you can't choose to break the law?
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ISA mandatory in EU since July 2022 (Score:2)
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They're only advisory. "Standard" German sports cars are still being made with a 155 mph limiter which is a Gentleman's agreement between BMW, M-B, and VWAG going back decades. They'll do that speed through the whole country even though that would only be legal on the Autobahn, even the 2022 and newer models.
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As far as I know, the autobahns still have no speed limits. So whatever "Intelligent Speed Assistance" is, at least in Germany, the driver would still have the final say.
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As far as I know, the autobahns still have no speed limits. So whatever "Intelligent Speed Assistance" is, at least in Germany, the driver would still have the final say.
It's been a few years since I was there, but there were definitely speed limits on the Autobahns. The speed signs were digital and displayed - typically - 100kph around cities and 120-130kph between cities. Officers were pulling people over too.
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awesome! (Score:2)
Hard nope (Score:2)
No (Score:2)
I can't wait to see all the wrecks this causes (Score:4, Interesting)
As someone who has, over the last month, seen my Tesla incorrectly and reproducibly report a 5 MPH speed limit on at least three different roads — most of Stewart Dr. in Sunnyvale, one of the access roads parallel to 237 or 101 in Sunnyvale (I forget which one), and a several-mile-long stretch of highway A1A in Cocoa Beach, Florida, and who regularly sees 25 MPH speeds on US-101 and CA-237 through Sunnyvale (with 65 MPH speed limit), let me just laugh at this congressman as hard as a human being can possibly laugh.
The number of times that I've had to override AutoPilot by pressing the gas pedal to go more than 20 MPH faster than its incorrect speed limit data indicates is well into the double digits. Per year. And every time I have to do that, I lose the automatic braking that helps keep me from accidentally rear-ending someone. So even if all you do is limit cruise control to 10 MPH over the speed limit, you're actively reducing safety with our current level of technology on a regular basis.
But if we're talking about limiting all driving to 10 MPH, that will be downright deadly, and the people responsible will be held liable — the car companies and the government officials who mandated the tech before it was actually safe to do so. Here are some likely scenarios:
There is no safe way to have speed limiters until such time as cars are entirely driven autonomously. There are simply too many situations where drivers legitimately need to go faster than what their car believes is the speed limit.
I hope somehow the good senator or his staff reads this post, because it is quite clear that he doesn't understand just how many billions of dollars and decades of engineering we are away from such a thing being possible to do safely. To understand why, we have to take a look at how speed limit data gets into your car.
GPS position
This is the first flaw. GPS has a worst-case accuracy of 26 feet, in theory. In practice, when you get on a freeway, the hard concrete walls can create reflections that can significantly increase error, resulting in your car thinking that you are hundreds of feet away from your actual location. Mountains can have the same effect, as can buildings, etc.
Navigation systems compound this problem, because they have to do something called "road snapping". That means that it snaps your position to the nearest road. But when two roads split, such as many entrance ramps, this can cause the nav system to think you're on one road when you're actually on another.
The net result is that GPS frequently thinks that drivers are on one road when they're actually on another. This happens at a rate of probably low single-digit incidents per car per month. If every single one of those results in the car's speed limit being significantly off, with ~15 million cars in California, that's likely hundreds of millions of incorrect speed limits per year in California alone.
I don't think you're prepared for that level of bedlam.
Speed limit data
If, by some miracle, your navigation system actually knows what road you're on, and doesn't think you're on a 25 MPH side street, there's still the problem of speed limit data. As far as I'm aware, California has no central authority whatsoever for providing speed limit data (or any other road data) t
I could see this working in 2040. (Score:2)
I could see this working in 2040, but right now there's still way too much possibility of cars thinking they're on different roads than they are.
However I absolutely approve of a hard limit of 90 mph, no matter the location. Obviously you can get around this stuff if you really want to, but it should take some work.
But the important numbers are in acceleration, not absolute speed. Fast take-offs at stop lights are really dangerous (I know for example, a woman who can attest to this with the parts of her b
Motorcycles FTW (Score:2)
I'll see you cagers in my mirror.
Mate in 2 (Score:3)
1st, pass the bill calling it a speed limiter. Think of the children, etc.
2nd, convert the limiters to kill switches, in-place. 0mph is a limit too.
So many edge cases (Score:2)
Slam on the brakes when GPS flakes (Score:3, Interesting)
The carpool flyover ramp from 101 north to 85 north in south San Jose has been open for 20 years.
Google Maps on my phone has *never* been able to figure out this ramp exists. Every time I take it, Maps snaps me to a number of different adjacent roads. Maps usually tells me to turn right (in the middle of the overpass). And the speed limits on those roads are 40 mph.
So all of a sudden, my new Californicated car will decelerate, and the cars or trucks behind me will have nowhere to go but into me or off the overpass.
Maybe this is a play to ensure new car sales spike in 2026, as everyone rushes to get a car that won't slam on the brakes at random times?
The local posted speed limit, not just 70 MPH. (Score:2)
That's because state senator Scott Wiener earlier this week proposed a new bill that aims to prevent certain new vehicles from going more than 10 mph over the speed limit. In California, the maximum posted speed limit is 70 mph, meaning anything north of 80 mph would be off limits.
TFA discusses limiting the speed of the vehicle to 10 MPH over the local posted speed limit, using GPS and/or other tech.
Speed governors will be required in all vehicles sold in the EU beginning July of this year. The devices must warn drivers when they have surpassed the legal speed limit of a specific roadway through alarms or accelerator resistance.
In line with NTSB recommendations, SB 961 requires every passenger vehicle, truck, and bus manufactured or sold in the state to be equipped with speed governors that limits the vehicle’s speed based on the speed limit for the roadway segment. The maximum speed threshold over the speed limit for that segment that the speed governor may permit the vehicle to travel at is 10 miles per hour over the speed limit. SB 961 also permits the vehicle operator to temporarily override the speed governor function. SB 961’s speed governor requirement does not apply to emergency vehicles.
another way to approach this (Score:5, Funny)
One more thing (Score:3, Funny)
I hope it defaults to off (Score:3)
First the disclaimer that I don't live in California and don't visit there very often. My state does have stretches on interstate highway with a posted limit of 80, with traffic really going 85 or 90. This California bill would affect me if I were to buy a vehicle manufactured in California or originally meant for the California market. I would either be a safety hazard for going too slow or manually disable the system every time I get on that stretch of highway. Not cool if a California law intefers with drivers in the other 49 states (plus DC). My van already has a configuration where it displays a warning when going over a certain speed (user configurable). My van won't override my accelerator or apply the brakes; just a red speed warning where the digital speed would normally be displayed (the analog speedometer still displays the correct speed).
Other posters mention using GPS to dynamically determine the speed limit. As pointed out by others, GPS and map data isn't 100% reliable. It can take years for map data to be updated, and commercial GPS could be off by a 3 to 5 meters radius when traveling at highway speed. And what happens when signal is lost?
Rising fatalities? (Score:3)
So why exactly are fatalities rising?
If it's down to speeding, then why are people speeding more now than they were before? People have been speeding for as long as speed limits have existed.
Modern cars should be safer than older cars, so fatalities should be going down all else being equal.
Increased traffic congestion also decreases the chance of people speeding.
Has there been a reduction in the number of police trying to catch people speeding?
Or perhaps the increased fatalities has some other cause and it's just easy to blame people speeding.
Never ending regulatory drip (Score:3)
Ah California... the state of death by hundreds of thousands of cuts where it's cool to continuously pile on regulation making life increasingly expensive and unpleasant for the public in exchange for ever diminishing returns (and windfall profits for those who stand to profit from mandates).
So now after you blow into the breathalyzer to start your car and the AI driver monitoring system confirms you are fit to drive the car still won't start because it's -11F outside and the TPMS thinks your tires are flat.
Now you may ask yourself hang on...wait a second... how is it possible for fatalities to increase as a function of time when vehicles are getting safer with each passing mandate? Well you see there is this little thing called statistics.
If you put all that tech on a car (Score:2)
What I find stupid though about putting all this tech on cars that basically takes control away from the user is that it ends up being public transportation but vastly less efficient.
I keep coming back to the YouTube or named "Adam Something" who does videos about City
Re: (Score:3)
Honestly, a car should NOT be street-legal if it is capable of going significantly faster than the highest speed limit in the region where it was sold. If it is, it should have the right tires, a roll cage, a 5-point harness, and be on a track and not the regular roads with the rest of us schmucks.
Why? None of this is even necessary if you're driving on a straight road. Shit, in some parts of the world there is no speed limit at all and they don't mandate any of that crap.
FFS may as well just demand that all cars come in bubble wrap. Depending on road conditions you can get in some pretty bad accidents at speeds much lower than any given speed limit.
The problem is this won't stop there. It'll move on to 'mandatory GPS map that tells your car what the speed limit is on the current road' and then to 'mandatory Internet connection to upload live data when possible and dump cached data after when not'. Then comes the remote disable for law enforcement. And all the problems that causes will just be 'understandable issues' you just have to accept.
California wants to be a surveillance state.
https://www.kdrv.com/news/regi... [kdrv.com]
(The real irony here is that California doesn't actually repair any of its r
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Re: It's sort of OK but not really. (Score:2)
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Honestly, a car should NOT be street-legal if it is capable of going significantly faster than the highest speed limit in the region where it was sold. If it is, it should have the right tires, a roll cage, a 5-point harness, and be on a track and not the regular roads with the rest of us schmucks.
I own two cars that are both capable of more than doubling California's 70mph speed limit with ease. One car is just shy of 700HP and the other is just a bit over 600HP. They're not even the fastest cars on the road and would be considered "entry level" numbers in terms of power output in some circles. The last speeding ticket I got was more than a decade ago and I wasn't even driving a car when I got it. It may come as a complete surprise to you, but it is possible to responsibly drive cars like this witho
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To get technical, that's why they specified "significantly faster", not just "faster".
There's a difference between a car that can do, say, 90 mph when the highest speed limit is 75, and one that can do 150 or 225.
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What cars are limited to 90 mph? You might want to read the GP's example speeds again. Many new cars can go 120 to 150 mph, although they stop accelerating well at such high speeds.
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Hmm... So I presume that the increased fatalities can mostly all be tied to commercial trucking?
If you want to avoid troll mods, a citation [uark.edu] might be helpful:
Accidents went up 11.6% for owner-operators, and 9% for fleets of 2-20 trucks.
That's actually pretty scary.
Works. (Score:2)
>> The Electronic Logging Devices were mandated and all of a sudden commercial truck drivers had no choice but to go at the maximum speed they possibly can
Yeah. That has been solved in EU already, long time ago....
We have electronic logging EU-wide since over 20 years. And also speed limiters mandatory for trucks at 80. (90 km/h in practice -> 56 mph a truck physically cannot go over)
No truck without it.
Also, it logs the speed, and the fines are hefty.
Drivers sleep. Trucks are not dangerously too f
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Although the test may be perilous, when one of these speed limited cars arrives I absolutely have to try going down a hill until I hit 80, then going to neutral and seeing what the car does when it hits 90+... full system crash? Engine shutoff? Speed limiter broken for duration of trip?
lol what on earth are you talking about?
Have you never driven a car with cruise control or it's close relative a speed limiter before?
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That would require a lane be open for you to pass in. In my experience, you'll run into a convoy of old people all running parallel to each other, taking up all the lanes, soon enough.