News: 0175101507

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California Drivers May Soon Get Mandatory In-Car Speed Warnings Like the EU (caranddriver.com)

(Saturday September 21, 2024 @10:41PM (EditorDavid) from the you-can-drive-55 dept.)


"Exceed the speed limit in one of the 27 European Union countries, and you may get some pushback from your vehicle," [1]reports Car and Driver . "As of July, new cars sold in the EU must include a speed-warning device that alerts drivers if they exceed the posted limit."

The warnings can be ither acoustic or haptic, "though the European Commission gives automakers the latitude to supplant those passive measures with either an active accelerator pedal that applies counterpressure against the driver's foot or a governor that restricts the vehicle's speed to the legal limit."

> Drivers can override or deactivate these admonishments, but the devices must default to their active state at startup.

>

> Now California is looking to emulate the EU with legislation that would mandate in-car speed-warning devices [for driving more than 10 miles per hour over the speed limit — in "just about every 2030 model-year vehicle equipped with either GPS or a front-facing camera"].

The article cites statistics that 18% of those drivers involved in fatal crashes were speeding.

Although the projects director at the European Transport Safety Council also acknowledges the systems may struggle to identify speed limits from passing signs — and that their testing shows the systems generally irritate drivers, who often deactivate the systems...

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader [2]sinij for sharing the article.



[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a62225420/car-speed-warning-devices/

[2] https://www.slashdot.org/~sinij



Correlation != Causation (Score:2)

by commrade ( 79346 )

> The article cites statistics that 18% of those drivers involved in fatal crashes were speeding.

I don't speed a lot but could it possibly be the case that uncautious drivers ignore multiple safety factors (seat belts, tires, brakes, following distance) due to a general lack of giving a fuck and that lack correlates with fatal crashes? Seems like a clumsy correlation.

Re: (Score:2)

by Baron_Yam ( 643147 )

Speed reduces reaction time relatively - if everyone is hurtling down the road at 20% over the limit (that's actually LOW where I live) then everyone still has the same reaction time to deal with other drivers braking or changing lanes or whatever.

What causes more accidents is aggressive drivers who want to go faster than the flow of traffic and tailgate, weave in and out, and cut people off.

And while I haven't actually done my own rigorous study of this... I drive the 400 series highways in Ontario all the

I can't dive 55! (Score:2)

by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 )

what used to take hours now takes all day.

Versus the 98% of all drivers who speed... (Score:4, Insightful)

by OneOfMany07 ( 4921667 )

"The article cites statistics that 18% of those drivers involved in fatal crashes were speeding."

And it provides an excuse to judge other people instead of minding your own business or actually helping somehow.

I feel confident they're some of those people who think going slower is always safer. And that they're helping by forcing other people to suddenly slow down (while not allowing anyone to merge near them).

Re: (Score:2)

by jroysdon ( 201893 )

100 of all drivers who are in accidents were in automobiles. So let's ban autos... Such broken logic the nanny state of California has.

So ... (Score:3)

by PPH ( 736903 )

> 18% of those drivers involved in fatal crashes were speeding.

... 82% were not speeding. Sounds like a clear case to get everyone moving faster.

So there's a conspiracy theory going around (Score:3)

by rsilvergun ( 571051 )

That the reason for walkable cities and public transportation is so the government can control where you go.

It's kind of silly if you stop to think for a moment since government pays for all the roads since roads are too expensive for car companies to make and make a profit from so they need our taxpayer dollars to build the infrastructure for their product...

But it's even sillier when you see stuff like this which is clearly being driven by and pushed by the auto insurance industry. More and more your car isn't yours it's the property of insurance company and they will do whatever it takes to prevent you from having an accident so that they don't have to pay out.

But it does mean before long we're going to have all of the disadvantages of cars with all the disadvantages of trains. The absolute worst of both worlds. I'm reminded of Adam conover's stand-up bit about why cars suck

Re: (Score:2)

by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 )

> It's kind of silly if you stop to think for a moment since government pays for all the roads since roads are too expensive for car companies to make and make a profit from so they need our taxpayer dollars to build the infrastructure for their product...

The US's interstate highway system (proper name: Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways) was built at least in part to make it easier to move the military around the country as necessary.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System

No Problem (Score:2)

by PPH ( 736903 )

> their testing shows the systems generally irritate drivers, who often deactivate the systems...

Just [1]pull the breaker [slashdot.org]. After all, drivers are far better trained than a bunch of airline pilots.

[1] https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23461271&threshold=0&commentsort=1&mode=thread&cid=64804489

CA (Score:2)

by RitchCraft ( 6454710 )

Nanny says no speed for you!

Sounds counterproductive (Score:2)

by Linux Torvalds ( 647197 )

The article cites statistics that 18% of those drivers involved in fatal crashes were speeding.

Of course, 25% of the drivers not involved in any crashes are speeding at any given time, but never mind that.

This is excellent news! (Score:2)

by Miles_O'Toole ( 5152533 )

If this idiotic idea doesn't die a well-deserved death, I eagerly anticipate making a lot of money by designing something that will use the car's OBD2 port to silence this annoyance, and wipe all traces of itself from the car's many computers whenever the driver decides there is a need not to get caught using it.

Double your disk space - delete Windows!

-- Albert Dorofeev