Just glossing over implementation. So every car will have to have wireless communications of some sort? Will there be some government system that all California cars will have to be integrated with that tracks where they are at all times so the car can know the correct speed limit? A tracking system that surely would never be abused or turned into a surveillance device.
“I don’t think it’s at all an overreach, and I don’t think most people would view it as an overreach, we have speed limits, I think most people support speed limits because people know that speed kills,” Wiener said.
Not unless they think about it for five seconds.
Speed doesn’t kill.
It’s the sudden stop that kills you.
Be careful, or politicians are gonna draft a bill preventing your from applying too much braking force too quickly. Thats about in line with the logic on this bill.
Next up, skin cancer:
Suns don’t kill people. People with suns kill people.
Funny enough, they already did long ago. It’s call ABS. :)
Doesn’t abs make you stop sooner than both slamming on locking braks or manually pumping them? Idk sounds like more of a sudden stop to me, congress gonna ban ABS next
ABS also shortens your stopping distance. At least good ABS does, originally it sucked.
ABS is designed to prevent the wheels from locking up and skidding. This reduces the total braking force applied a bit, because it’s quickly pulsing the brakes, but is safer because you still have a bit of steering control.
ABS does the same thing as pumping your brakes, just faster. And you don’t need to and probably shouldn’t pump the brakes on a car with ABS.
Skidding also reduces braking force though, just from a perspective of car vs road, not break pad vs rotor. Unless im mistaken, and aside from control, anti lock breaks bring the car to a stop quicker, presuming traction break.
You are correct. Anti-lock brakes emulate cadence braking, and are more effective than threshold braking, and far more effective than locking your brakes
ABS/pumping the brakes is implemented because sliding friction is less that static friction. It’s why you can nudge something on a slope to start sliding and it doesn’t stop but would have happily sat there before hand.
Your car wheels experience static friction because while in motion the patch in contact with the road isn’t moving. Or at least they do until you skid.
So ABS brakes/releases to get a new round of static friction.
Pumping the brakes is probably a phrase that came from before power assisted brakes (when you were manually pressurizing the hydraulics) but still had relevance because it was also ABS.
…or the sudden start.
Lol correct. Speed doesn’t kill, acceleration does
Belter slingshot racers know this all too well. NOTE: Spoiler for an episode in the Expanse which everyone should watch if they haven’t already.
One way I could think to implement it without any tracking or data connection connection with no data being transmitted from the vehicle would be by placing infrared strobe lights periodically along the road, possibly at the same places we already have speed limit signs. The flashing is invisible to the human eye but could be picked up by cameras on the vehicle, vary the speed or pattern of the strobe to indicate a different speed limit.
Something pretty similar is already used by a lot of emergency vehicles to trigger green lights, just the arrangement is reversed with a strobe on the vehicle and a sensor on the traffic signal.
Of course such a system would potentially be vulnerable to things like power outages (strobe can’t strobe if it doesn’t have power) bad weather (heavy fog, or if the camera and/orr strobe are covered in snow,) and someone could potentially circumvent it by just mounting a strobe light on their car pointed at the camera.
You could probably address the snow/fog issue by locking the car to a lower speed if no strobe is detected, maybe 25 or 35mph, because in those conditions people should generally be driving slower anyway, and then you don’t have the expense of needing to put strobes around lower speed areas. And the power issue could be addressed with the kind of solar panels and/or backup batteries that already power some streetlights and such.
And for those who tamper with the system to circumvent it, we’re never going to stop speeders entirely, but we can increase the fines to make up for lost revenue to keep police departments happy, they make less traffic stops and rake in the same amount of money.
The infrastructure limitation could be resolved by using infrared reflectors along the road instead of lights. Have the car shine infrared light at the reflectors so it’s cameras can read the code on them (like an infrared QR code, maybe?)
Blockage by other vehicles, weather wear, angle from the current lane, it’s fraught with problems.
Nah don’t worry, they’ll use 2.4Ghz spectrum and drown out WiFi near a road.
If we’re going to use technically limitations on the vehicle side, we can simply continue to use optical recognition of speed signs instead of changing putting an IR transmitter on every speed sign. It’s gotten really good in recent years.
Apart from roads that don’t have speed signs…
One of our cars uses GPS and a lookup to show the current speed limit on the dash. It’s often wrong. This will not go well.
You realize your car already knows what speed it’s driving without GPS, right?
I don’t think you’re following the implication.
What, that up to date speed databases are an impossible problem to solve? Or that you couldn’t possibly get current speed limits from a non-GPS method? These aren’t hard problems.
If it’s not a hard problem, it wouldn’t happen.
You’d be amazed how many problems can be solved when the people involved have legal liability. My first GPS unit was out of date from the moment I bought it. It wasn’t because keeping a map up to date was hard, it was because they didn’t care, you’d already bought the GPS and it was better than not having one at all. This isn’t a technological problem.
Your car’s GPS-localized speed map is wrong because no one cares enough to make it right, not because it’s an unsolvable problem. It’s a gimmick to get you to buy the car, and you already bought the car.
Apple and Google also have problems with speed limits being updated, and they actively attempt to keep their maps updated. Even Waze has incorrect data sometimes, and that can be corrected by anyone. So I don’t think it’s quite as simple as you think it is.
Sure, the car knows its forward speed from its speedometer.
It doesn’t know the speed limit of the road it’s currently riding on, that’s not as easy to directly measure. Currently the most straightforward way to do this is have it look up its location using GPS, use that data to look up what road the car is driving on, and then look up the speed limit for that section of road. This is far from error prone; GPS isn’t perfect and could, for example, confuse your current position for another road nearby; it might think you’re on a slip road next to the interstate you’re driving on, or think you’re on rather than under an overpass, that sort of thing. The database might be out of date or in error, the data connection to that database might be unreliable…
The California legislative process: First, say something totally reasonable. “People should be able to tell if the products they buy contain poisonous or carcinogenic chemicals, let’s require consumer goods that contain hazardous chemicals to bear a label describing them as such.” Next, do absolutely no research, consult no technicians or engineers, only lawyers and yoga instructors get a say. Once you’ve got all the spelling errors ironed out, have it carved into adamantium so that it’s more permanent than god. Finally, strictly enforce the letter of the law in any way it could be interpreted. Which is why literally every single product that might get sold in California up to and including bottles of mineral water all say THIS PRODUCT CONTAINS CHEMICALS KNOWN IN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA TO CAUSE CANCER on the label, and since literally every manufactured good is labeled as hazardous, consumers have exactly no more information than they used to.
I’m a software engineer with colleagues who work with various localization and short range communication. This is totally technologically feasible. All the “what if it’s not sure” cases just default to the higher limit. It won’t be sufficient for self-driving cars to know how fast to drive, but it will prevent the vast majority of excessive speeding.
The what-ifs are just people either flailing around to not have their speeding curtailed or people who assume half-assed apps from companies that don’t have any reason to care if they’re right are the state of the art. They always come up with absurd reasons why they need to speed or why implementation is impossible whenever any road safety improvement is proposed. It’s a boring and pathological response.
Will there be some government system that all California cars will have to be integrated with that tracks where they are at all times
We have that already. They are digital license plates. It’s voluntary right now fortunately.
Folks… it’s available as a subscriptionnn!!!
I really don’t understand why this is a product at all. What value does it provide me for $250/yr?
Saves a few seconds of applying registration stickers every year?
Anti-theft…
Kinda makes sense for fleet vehicles I think, where you’re already installing trackers anyway.
Privacy nightmare for personal vehicles!
I’ll buy the argument on a fleet vehicle. But I miss any reasonable use case that justifies the price for Joe Blow the consumer.
Every car I’ve hired in the last ten years has the current speed limit displayed on the dashboard. It does not require the car to communicate any information, only to receive it.
That is a different question from how car manufacturers could abuse the requirement to get more data to sell, of course. But there’s nothing in this bill that would require the car to collect any data that isn’t already publicly displayed by the roadside.
Mechanical governors for ICE vehicles have been around for over 120 years. It wouldn’t be hard to make an electronic version for e-vehicles.
Those are fixed speed governors for fleet fuel economy and/or manufacturer choice to prevent operators from turning their engine block into something externally ventilated. Not variable governors that require knowledge of where the car is to adapt to the local speed limit, a significantly more complex challenge, and one with a solution that is inherently insecure, privacy-violating, and almost guaranteed to instantly be abused.
Do you think GPS units are broadcasting their location to know where they are? They just download maps and use the signal to localize themselves. Too many people acting like they know how tech works without understanding the basics of the largely non-networked world that existed before smartphones and spyware apps absorbed every feature.
Yes, but speed limits change. There’s no way of reliably knowing what the current speed limit is without wireless communication.
As someone with an Audi that will adjust your cruise control automatically based on speed limit (or rather what it thinks the speed limit is) I couldn’t be more against this. I had to disable the feature after multiple times where it thought I was on some 15mph ramp rather than the freeway and slammed on the brakes in the middle of traffic going 70mph.
VW and BYD as well, but VW has been the most accurate I have driven. Even with that I would say at best 80% accurate on what the speed limit is.
Almost every new vehicle is already sending info to the manufacturers now.
Did you think about this for even 5 seconds?
There is already a good amount of wireless in most cars. We’ve had standards since the Bush administration for cars to wirelessly communicate with each other.
I personally can’t wait to start hacking cars going by on the freeway to make their top speed a negative value.
That’s going to be so much fun.
Similar things have already been done.
https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/
Oh yeah, I know.
I haven’t read the article, so just spitballing here: I have to assume the approach here is to electronically govern the engine to go no faster than the highest speed limit. I don’t know what the limits are in California, but where I live that’d mean the car would be limited to 80mph. If it was electronic, it could be adjusted if then limits were changed.
Otherwise, it’d be insane, and require the crazy infrastructure you describe. And they simply don’t have the money or the wherewithal to build an actual coverage that would allow the limiter to dynamically scale all the time.
Alternatively, I suppose you could imagine a hybrid system—ie an overall limited engine to the max limit, and then some sort of transponder that would throttle the limit down if you were near an important speed limit zone, like a school, which they could manage to deploy a transmitter at… still seems technologically challenging for the state to really pull off consistently though.
Either way, yeah not a fan or including more required tracking tech in vehicles. I don’t think I’d really hate a reasonably limited car—I really can’t justify needing to drive over 80 ever really, even in an emergency, but it would drive me insane to have the car just magically throttling down whenever it thought it was time to. See
I read the article, it definitely doesn’t bother to think about how something like this would be implemented, but certainly seems to be referring to a dynamic Limiting system… good luck.
or the car use gps, gps is not able to track you(at least not it alane), and you still know where you are
Not Internet, that’s too expensive.
I am not a “muh freedom” guy, I don’t drive more than 10 over anyway. But this is just logistically a bad way to stop speeding.
Where does my car get the current speed limit information? How and when does it update as speed limits change? Will school systems around the country have to submit a list of which days are “school days” for school zone speed limits?
What if the GPS registers you on the 30mph road below or next to the 70mph highway, long term or even for a momentary glitch? Who is at fault if that causes you to be in an accident?
Will school systems around the country have to submit a list of which days are “school days” for school zone speed limits?
Story time!
There is an elementary school a few towns over from me which happens to straddle the only viable throughfare in that area. Note that this is out in the country, so it’s not like it’s on Main Street or anything. There is no other road. Well, it’s got one of those blinker signs that says “15 MPH speed limit when flashing.” It’s meant to be used during pick-up and drop-off times, for obvious reasons.
A few years ago some cantankerous asshole at the school with no real authority decided that people were “zOoMiNg ToO FaSt!!!” on “their” road and during summer vacation flipped the sign on and left it blinking all day and night. Then a bunch of “anonymous” calls starting coming in to the local PD about people exceeding the 15 MPH speed limit. They had to get somebody with keys to come out and turn the fucking sign off. And the next morning, lo and behold the sign was once again mysteriously turned on. This process repeated for several weeks until the culprit was finally caught, who unsurprisingly was some low-grade administrator for the local school district. Insofar as I am aware no actual punishment was meted out.
Tl;dr: If you give petty egos even a tiny amount of perceived control over people’s lives they absolutely will abuse it to the fullest extent they are physically or technically able to, without fail. It’s not a matter of if, it’s only a matter of when.
What about in an emergency? What is someone needs to go over that limit for evasive maneuvers or something?
I get it, people speed, but put the cameras up and just fine them. That’s all.
What about in an emergency? What is someone needs to go over that limit for evasive maneuvers or something?
(Technologically speaking) Do it. Since we’re talking communication and electronics, you’ll be automatically reported. Present your excuse and let’s see what happens.
(I’m not saying that I’m in favour of this.)
Oh, and I’ve driven a car with speed limiter. It’s like cruise control, but it doesn’t let you go above the speed you choose. It was an amazing experience, I loved it. You press the accelerator, you get to that speed and it stays there. You feel a resistance on the pedal. If you want, simply force the pedal a bit more. It will turn the controller off and let you drive faster.
It says it allows the driver to temporarily override the speed restriction.
I actually quite dislike cars but this is fucking insane
Authoritarian nonsense.
Yes, enforcing “laws” is authoritarian.
I saw a video yesterday of cars fleeing the 2011 tsunami in Japan, I’m willing to bet those people exceeded 10mph over the posted speed limit trying to get away from the water.
Limiting the speed of the vehicles isn’t going to improve driving skills or eliminate distractions. It isn’t going to make people drive safer, just slower. I’m sure any situation where people need to go 10+ miles over the speed limit is going to be exceedingly rare and limited to things like fleeing forest fires or tsunamis, but limiting the speed isn’t going to have a huge impact on accidents.
It could decrease fuel consumption and emissions though 🤷♂️.
But it still seems like a problem that could be solved with better enforcement.There are reasons other than natural disasters that happen all the time. Health emergencies are a fine example of this. Yes, ideally you’d wait for an ambulance but oft times that’s just not viable.
I’ll risk bleeding out in the highway trying to get to the hospital on my own than pay $15k for a five minute ride in the wee woo wagon
Haha, as someone currently in the states, I agree whole heartedly. I’d rather drive myself to the hospital with a stab wound than deal with an ambulance bill.
Excellent point!
As a somewhat recent arrival to NZ, I found it interesting — starting with our rental car — that the speed limit is displayed on your dashboard. It changes colour as soon as you go 1 km over the limit.
All very cool. The most notable issue with this is there are sections of roads where this doesn’t work at all.
That said, there is a LOT of traffic calming here.
There’s still the occasional assclown that goes way over the limit. Unsurprisingly, that usually happens on long, straight roads without traffic calming.
10mph over? Have they driven on CA freeways? The vast majority of traffic is moving at 15+ mph over.
This will cause traffic slow downs and more road rage.
One interesting about speeding in traffic. Often you’re rushing just to stop.
It’s been proven that if you cap the max speed in heavy traffic everyone gets through it faster. Less stop and go with merges and guesses.
Think of all the times someone sped up to prevent you from changing lanes? Or someone blocks you during a zipper merge.
Traffic wouldn’t suck as much if people didn’t suck. I can’t wait until a few decades from now we’ve got AI cars Managing it for us.
Variable speed limits just keep the road ticking over and they’re great. In the UK there were a bunch of highway improvements being rolled out, like reversible lanes, traffic flow monitoring and, yes, full-time variable speed limits and they all worked really, really well. But they also got rid of the hard shoulder (refuge lane) and the whole thing was collectively referred to as “smart motorways”. Needless to say that lots of people were injured or killed by the lack of hard shoulders, so now the government is poised to announce a rollback of all the smart motorway measures, including the absolutely superb variable speed limits.
Ah yes, the all-or-nothing approach, typical anglosphere reaction to a problem.
Canada does this shit too, it is infuriating.
I’m citing the Smart motorways in my response but I forgot my source.
I also didn’t know about the shoulders. Thank you
This will cause traffic slow downs
That’s literally the point.
Especially since they won’t be able to make older cars follow this.
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You will own nothing and be happy
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There are plenty of rules your car has to comply with in order to use public roads.
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This tech should be developed and used to stop chase vehicles. Also if it is used to stop people from going 10 over then we shouldn’t have cops checking people’s speed anymore.
Come to Omaha, where they already don’t.
Well, city cops don’t. State patrol ain’t got shit to do and will absolutely fuck up your day. But they don’t leave I80.
Despite all the chest-beating and holier-than-thou bullshit they spout whenever there’s a high profile traffic incident or chase, not a single police department on Earth actually gives a fuck about enforcing traffic regulations for “safety.” Maybe at some point in history, but no anymore. In modern times, traffic stops have only two aims in mind for police departments: Money, in the form of reliance on fines and citations for their budget; and as a pretext to harass, intimidate, search, and otherwise attempt to violate the 4th amendment rights of sections of the population they don’t like.
The police will vehemently oppose any mechanism or proposal that will in any way limit the volume of traffic stops they initiate and number of tickets they write. Even if it is demonstrably “for safety.”
I totally agree and that’s why the people need to stand up against them. Everyone likes to think they can’t change everything it we need to stand united. Calling representatives and demanding change and if they don’t then replace them. We need people to actually stand up for once
Ah. No thanks. New cars already bend us over a barrel for our data. I don’t need you monitoring me 24/7 on my speed and location. I like the side guards on semis idea though. Run with that one, Wiener.
Nothing about the proposal requires any tracking.
Can’t go 10 over the speed limit, right?
How the hell will they know the speed limit where I am at?
Good God, use your imagination just a tiny little bit!
Ok. I’m using it.
My car has the hover ability from Back to the Future 2, and they are still going to track me. What now?
How about your car has maps stored on it that contain stored limit information?
Not everything is about tracking you.
Pre-download speed maps or passively receive speed broadcasts from the roadside.
Isn’t this already happening though?
Some have them. Wouldn’t mind seeing them on all trailers.
Sounds like a roundabout way to track everyone
You don’t have to track a car to limit how fast it goes. Speed governerors exist inside gas powered cars already. All that has to be done is 1) legally require a manufacturer to limit speeds of their vehicles, and 2) prosecute them when they do not implement those restrictions. The rest is lawyers and lines of code (and lines of coke I guess)
You need location data to be able to determine what limit to impose.
And I bet you anything it will be a cloud based system.
How do you think GPS receivers work?
They don’t transmit the speed limit of the current road, and for things like construction they’ll need real-time updates.
I’m certain they won’t want to push the entire database out to every vehicle for every update…
I have a hard time believing it would be impossible to wire up a device that sends out a wireless signal with the local speed limit at every speed limit sign.
Why does it need to go to a database for it instead of have a receiver on the vehicle itself to pull data as it passes speed limit signs?
In fact, a centralized database would likely have more problems with not being accurate or current. Have you ever dealt with government databases?
Edit: Part of the reason the database would be trash is because speed limits are set by cities, not by the state. So in the database scenario every time a city updates their speed limit, they have to document all the zones and upload them to the database. All it takes is paperwork getting backed up a week for that to cause problems.
The problem with proposing infrastructure is that people hate it. Even if it would be beneficial. Train traffic is limited to 79 mph in the US because the companies in charge were told “put in more safety devices or you’re limited to 79 mph”, and they said “okay sure”.
They usually act like anything that wasn’t around when they were born is impossible. I can’t imagine trying to get a smoking ban passed now, or capping the national speed limit at 55 because of an oil crisis.
i’d sabotage those signs’ transmitters so fast
We got a tough guy here.
EDIT: Also I’m fairly sure that destruction of government property is a felony and if it’s wired for this, it could easily be wired to take and send photos when tampered with, but you do you. I guess people do just hate infrastructure more than *checks notes… being spied on. Because when given an alternative without a database, they shit on it.
Generally temporary speed limit changes just go down, so the worst case is for a little while your car will let you speed. And if it goes up but the town fucks up and doesn’t update the database, people will complain while being forced to drive a little slower than the new maximum.
It would work everywhere except construction sites, where we can just have cops like we do everywhere right now.
GPS is a great solution, it already tells you what the speed limits are depending on the software.
They don’t need real time updates to accomplish their goals. The car just needs accurate days most of the time. Having the car download periodic updates to a database that covers the whole state is perfectly feasible and involves no tracking.
You should be worried more about tracking through license plates and cameras.
In the cloud…
You don’t, just just need localized broadcast and a receiver in the car. Or cameras and signs as other people have mentioned.
How do you determine the location of the car and the speed limit on that section of road? Sounds awfully close to tracking it.
Cars can already read speed limit signs without any form of tracking. What’s funny is it will read unofficial speed limit signs on private driveways. It’s anecdotal but a 2021 Camry I drove recognized a 10 mph sign that looked very similar to a DoT sign and displayed it on the dash.
Working in the industry on these technologies, this is a horrible idea. I’ve driven vehicles that already have it, and it’s nice when it’s optional, but would legitimately be a hazard if it was on all the time.
What happens when it’s dark and/or rainy, and it reads the 45MPH sign on the side road you were on, but misses the 70MPH sign when you’re actually on the highway? It limits your ability to actually accelerate to the flow of traffic as well, since it generally won’t change the speed until after you pass it. Or even better, you’re doing 70 and it catches a 35MPH on a side road adjacent to the highway? What happens if you just cover the camera and it can’t read anything? Does the car just go into limp mode and limit you to 25MPH?
This isn’t a hypothetical, I see it happen very, very regularly in even the best systems available. They also probably won’t work for the lighted school zone speed limit signs by me, or the express lane type signs.
Map based also eliminates school and construction zones, which is where you want this most,
As it stands today, covering or disconnecting the camera results in the car throwing a warning. The system will either partially disable only the directly related features, or will disable entirely. With the Camry I drove, you lose lane keep assist, sign detection, collision avoidance and automatic cruise control. All of the driver assistance features rely on the front camera. Some cars use a combination of radar and camera so not everything is lost.
That’s a perfectly valid reason for it cars to not do it today.
That’s not a valid reason for saying we shouldn’t legislate it as a requirement. “If a car can’t prevent itself from going 10mph over the speed limit on our roads, it’s not allowed to drive on our roads”. Done.
Nothing is fool proof. There will be failures, and that’s okay. We can handle them the exact same way we handle them today: speeding tickets.
Thanks. Now I could easily see the havoc one troll with a sign can do with over-regulating like this.
Yeah I’ve seen that technology. But it definitely isn’t widespread.
Oh it is. Pretty much every automaker selling a mid and high level trim for any model has the feature. If it has the driver assistance features included, it can read signs. Base models are less likely to have it, but it’s not unheard of. A 2018 and later base model, 2wd, 2d Tacoma comes with lane keep assist, collision avoidance, automatic cruise control, and sign reading. It’s a $22k truck.
Tracking is the action of a 3rd party.
The car itself has GPS, knows it’s own speed, and can read speed limit signs. This can easily be done without the government needing to know the exact speed, position, and velocity of every vehicle on every section of road.
That would only be true if there was only one speed limit everywhere. Which there isn’t.
A car can tell it’s own speed, can know where it is, and can read speed limit signs. It’s not rocket science.
I drove a rental car 10 years ago in the Netherlands that would beep when the GPS said I went over the speed limit.
This system can easily be implemented without needing a government spying program. You just need legislation, and enforcement.
Those systems are shit. I had one in a fleet truck and I had to explain to management why I was going 65 in a 45 mph zone. I was on the highway, but the GPS system placed me on the frontage road that runs next to the highway.
Now imagine if instead of an alert to the management it slowed my vehicle down suddenly. That’s a problem on a busy highway.
Implementation and regulation are separate. It doesn’t matter if the systems to implement it are shit, it’s still the government’s responsibility to put regulation in place on how the roads can be used.
If electric cars can’t implement a system to keep them 10mph or lower under the speed limit, then they can’t be sold in the state. And if they are sold in the state, they get fined, and if electric car drivers are found going more than 10 mph over the speed limit, they get a speeding ticket.
It’s not a complicated system. There’s no need to bring state wide fleet monitoring of every car on the road into this. It can be solved with much simpler systems, and more mature technology.
Since a lot of discussion is happening around how they’re going to implement this, and the article doesn’t go into the details, here’s more information: https://sd11.senate.ca.gov/news/20240124-senator-wiener-introduces-groundbreaking-bills-slash-california-road-deaths-epidemic
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.
And if anyone really wants to dive into it, the actual text for the bill is here: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB961
Why not just make vehicles that can’t do insane speeds?
I had a fucking 4-cylinder Ford Ranger from the 80’s that topped out at 65mph. I don’t mean the speedometer stopped at 65mph, the speedometer went to 80. I mean with the pedal fully floored, that’s the fastest I could go.
This is a choice by automakers, just like the oversize way-too-tall child-killing truck hoods are too.
Just making a car that can’t go that fast was always a solution and honestly, the fact that we just let automakers make cars that can go like 200mph when they’re supposed to be “street legal” is a fucking joke and a half. Nobody needs that shit, but every chucklefuck who wants to bang a young woman thinks some sports car is how they’re gonna do it. Fucking pathetic.
Cars are designed for fuel efficiency (well, it should at least be considered.) To make an IC engine efficient, it has to be able to rev higher, and reach higher speeds. So while it can technically reach 100 mph, it’s most efficient at 55.
If you make an engine with a top speed of 65mph, and run it at 65mph all the time, it’s going to guzzle fuel like an alcoholic going through an angry divorce.
Plus what if the car is loaded down with 5 people instead of just 1? Or something on the roof like a roof box? Now your 65mph top speed is 50. And what about hills?
…and EVs are just as terrible for the environment as ICEs in respect to the fact that they’re not public transit. They produce more microplastic/microrubber waste from tires because they’re heavier than ICE vehicles. More tires on the road, more microplastics.
EVs don’t reduce traffic and while there is an energy savings, it would be a lot bigger if we were dumping all those EV batteries into trains and buses, both of which reduce traffic. (and reduce tires on the road)
Beyond this, every EV is a luxury item. I’ll start giving a shit about EVs when I can get one with roll-down windows, no AC, no sensors, no rear-view camera, no stereo other than an FM radio, because then you’ll see some fucking energy savings over time. Every EV has a bunch of extra shit drawing power in them.
I’m pro-EV, but not for individual consumers. Cars have broken society. It’s time to return to public transit.
Especially in places like Seattle, because the promise of “going wherever you want, whenever you want” by owning your own car is a fucking joke its impossible to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time with so much traffic. Buses and trains reduce traffic.
If it’s energy savings we’re actually going for, EVs as they are aren’t the answer.
If it’s energy savings we’re actually going for, EVs as they are aren’t the answer.
If we take the real awnser of public transportation out of the picture then moving to EVs as a replacement for SOVs does in fact conserve our energy.
An internal combination engine are Only 35-40% efficient as a lot of heat is generated and lost. A gas turbine on the other hand can be as as high as 80% efficient .
It’s more efficient for us to burn fuels to generate electricity to power EVs including transmission losses and charging losses than to burn them in ICE vehicles. Again though public transportation is the better solution overall.
that may have been the case during the carter administration, but the efficiency curve of a modern car tops out a fair bit higher than 55.
Most cars still do drastically drop off in efficiency past 55mph, wind resistance is still the same as it was in 1975.
Modern cars are more efficient at 70mph than older ones, but they’re still less efficient than they were at 55.
Citation needed. Hybrids and EVs at least are actually most efficient at even slower speeds.
Okay, but that’s only because the top speed is much higher to bring the RPMs down into the efficiency sweet spot.
In high school I drove an old Vanagon camper that could hit 65.
With a tailwind.
Downhill.
But it had a bed in the back, which was nice. Weird that my parents didn’t let me keep it.
If the speed limit is 10 then that wouldn’t help at all.
To be clear about my position on this though, it’s dystopian as could be.
10mph is also slow enough to be relatively safe during an accident, which kind of makes your point more moot.
EDIT: Under 20mph is pretty safe. 20mph-35mph you’re risking higher likelihood of some minor injuries in an accident. 35-55mph is when serious injuries and risk of fatality begin to happen and over 55mph you’re dealing with crashes that are almost always fatal. Keeping the top speed to just barely over 55mph actually does help in a lot of ways.
You talk as if cars are appliances. Hell, even appliances go overboard. Why does a toaster or fridge need WiFi? Why does my washer or dryer have downloadable custom cycles? Because innovation is what sets companies and products apart. It’s not always done “right”, but who’s to judge if a feature is superfluous? You? What makes you qualified?
Cars aren’t just machines to get you from A to B. They certainly can be, but they’re also a fashion item, a status symbol, marvels of engineering, and a tool for testing your skill. Cars can be taken to a racetrack and driven hard. Just because something is being misused doesn’t mean it should either be illegal or shouldn’t be made. Your view on this is incredibly myopic. Just because you aren’t into cars doesn’t mean the “right” thing to do is make all cars the same. And before you suggest making fast cars track only, that would be absurd and make the hobby even less approachable. Not everyone can have two vehicles (apartment buildings that only allow one vehicle, or a city with limited parking). That would be the same as when governments require permits for a product or activity, but make the permits impossible to get.
Other countries have figured out how to handle this situation in different ways. Germany has a harder test for getting your license. Not every idiot can pass. Some countries in Europe make fines a percentage of your income instead of a flat fee. That means breaking the law hurts everyone to a similar degree, rather than rich people paying the fine without a second thought as just the cost of doing business. If you really have a problem with cars then at least get creative with your solution. Trying to stamp them out is genuinely worse than this proposed bill.
Excuse me, I live in a country where little kids are dying because to get around regulations about cars vehicle companies started pumping out giant SUVs and trucks that are outright designed dangerously and put more pedestrians in danger (you literally can’t see kids over the top of the hood).
I would give a shit about “doing it a different way” if I had any faith that US congress could pass anything let alone as something as useful or “complex” as actually fining rich people related to what they’re worth.
Nobody in charge gives a shit about what I think anyway, you’re myopic thinking a bill like this would actually pass or that the US federal or state governments actually give a shit about the well-being of their citizens. Pro-tip: they don’t.
It feels like you completely ignored my argument against outlawing fast cars and simply moved to your argument about SUVs and trucks. If you choose to hand-wave my points because you’re “thinking of the children”, then I see no merit in your argument. And you’re saying that what I said is invalid because I believe the bill will pass? But that you can say whatever because you’re fed up with the government’s ineffectiveness so you’re just being bombastic? That detracts from your own statements, if you’re admitting your own rhetoric is just for effect because you have no faith in politicians.
I’m not talking about SUVs, trucks, politicians, or the US legal system. You made a point that cars that drive over 65 shouldn’t be made, and I countered. I don’t hear anything from you except “politicians won’t fix it” while turning around and saying “fast cars should be illegal”, which would require those very same politicians you’ve lost faith in to somehow be effective enough to pass that very legislation.
“fast cars should be illegal”
Literally did not say that, I just said “why not just not make them.”
Maybe I’m not engaging with your argument because you’re doing dumb shit like this and misrepresenting the point.
Also, once again, nobody in charge gives a shit what I say, I’m just some guy on the internet without an ounce of influence. Do you really need to win this argument with a nobody? You’re acting like I’m the governor ready to pass the bill! Guess what, I’m not Gavin Newsom, thankful to say.
Buddy, I hope you have a better day than you’re currently having. I’m not sure what purpose putting your opinion on the Internet served if you were going to pretend it and any responses to it are pointless. Take care of yourself, man. You’re talking like nothing and nobody matters. In the cosmic sense, you’re right. Humanity, is just a flash in the pan, so none of us individually matters. In a human sense, even a small act of kindness might change somebody else’s life, and I think those moments DO matter. I don’t want to tell you how to live your life and I genuinely hope you don’t misconstrue what I’m saying. I do actually hope you can live just a small amount less cynically and can see some positivity, despite how our political system and news keep pushing the negative in our faces day after day. I don’t think hope is just for fools.
I don’t think hope is just for fools.
Are you gonna magically pay for my $16k a month cancer medication? Fuck off.
Hope is for fools.
Hope is for idiots who have never faced real hardship so they don’t actually know what it’s like to be in a position where there is no hope.
Why don’t you ask the kids in Gaza what they think about hope? You know, the place that’s been under siege for decades and where the average age is 16 because all the actual adults keep getting killed? I’m sure they’d love to hear your bullshit spiels about hope you out of touch wanker.
I lost my job six months ago and am currently struggling to find another. Even if I did find another job that paid what I was getting paid before, I would not and could not pay for your cancer medication. But that doesn’t mean I would choose to turn a blind eye to it. I would continue to fight for basic human rights to water, food, a home, and healthcare, because that’s what I’ve believed in and will continue to believe in. Maybe I wouldn’t change anything in your lifetime or mine, but I’ll still try. And maybe in a few generations, once we’re gone, we opened the door for them to have those things that allow us to keep our dignity.
I won’t pretend to know how you feel, so I won’t give you any platitudes. How you choose to live your life is your own decision, and I won’t insult you by pitying you. Your struggle doesn’t mean it’s impossible for you to make somebody else’s life any better or worse, though, just through simple human interactions. Sure, people are starving, dying, and going through much worse than me, or even you. That takes nothing away from the problems we encounter, the joy or pain we feel. I’ll do what I can to influence my circumstance, because nobody gets to tell me I can’t do something. When possible, I’ll try to do the same for others, even if nobody sees it or gives me a pat on the back. I’ll hold out hope that others might do the same for me when they can, but I won’t expect it because I’m not owed it.
I’m not saying any of this to prove I’m better than you in any way or to win an Internet argument. Call me whatever names you like. I promise I won’t respond beyond this comment. I simply wish you well, or at least better than at present.
Why not just make vehicles that can’t do insane speeds?
Because you might need to do those speeds to escape zombies or run from a tornado one day.
Or, more realistically, the moment the car suffers any sort of wear and tear it would no longer be able to reach the speed limit. Driving significantly below the speed limit is hazardous too.
i had a high miles, no-frills mustang with the base engine (same 4cyl used in the pinto) that was basically the same. it could barely make it to 65 and it took forever to get there.
Old cars for the win!
Lots of people arguing about the practicality of this, or whether it can be done without invading privacy or slippery-sloping into mass surveillance.
The thing is: Even if it could be done perfectly — giving instant leeway when emergencies occur, being perfectly private forever, with perfectly accurate sensors — I still don’t think we’d want it.
That’s because laws are not just mechanical things. They are social things. When we put up a speed limit sign, it’s not just to configure a number in the driver’s mind. It’s to remind them to think about how they’re interacting with the community around them.
De-emphasizing that responsibility runs counter to this social purpose, which I think we intuitively understand at some level even if we reflexively bring out other claims in order to object to the policy.
