How do we tweak our political system to minimize the impact of control freaks?
The freaks would reply, “how do we tweak our traffic infrastructure to minimize the effect of deadly irresponsibility?”
Controversial California bill would physically stop new cars from speeding
31–40 of 51 posts
Re: Controversial California bill would physically stop new cars from speeding
#32[deleted]
Re: Controversial California bill would physically stop new cars from speeding
#33He would have more success, and I bet he plans to negotiate back down to, simply setting a governor limit of 85 miles per hour for all cars sold in the state. It won’t stop residential harm, but it’ll stop the people weaving highway traffic at 90+ mph, and that’s a useful step to take.
Re: Controversial California bill would physically stop new cars from speeding
#34This is like how CI forces developers to write better code by nudging us towards good behaviors. Is it annoying sometimes to write well-formatted code with high test coverage? Sure. Is it annoying to drive at the speed limit? Sure. Ultimately, it leads to a better outcome. If this gets adopted, within 10 years people won’t be able to imagine how we lived without it
It seems like most Americans genuinely believe they have not only a right to break the law when it comes to speed limits, but an obligation to speed. Or at least they drive like it. "I'm following the flow of traffic" as if other people breaking the law makes it OK? They feel like they have to race other cars on the road.
I had several completely "straight edge" friends who were obsessed with morality and would never break any law. Except get in a car with them and they go 10-15 mph over, but obsessively look for cops. If they see one, they go 5-10 mph under the limit. If they get a ticket, to them it wasn't like they did something wrong, they just had bad luck. I like to go the speed limit in the second from the right hand lane, often behind a large 18 wheel truck, put it in cruise control, and mostly watch the cars fly by me. This idea was unthinkable to them, even when they were not in a rush.
Re: Controversial California bill would physically stop new cars from speeding
#35> The technology would use GPS and a database of roadway speeds to prevent cars from going 10 miles per hour over the speed limit wherever they are. Sometimes my GPS thinks I'm on an adjacent road, especially when I'm on the freeway. Seems like that kind of error would be catastrophic in combination with a system like this. Also, what's the rationale for letting people go 10 over the limit? That's effectively admitti…
Re 10 over: As-written and as-lived are quite different. You'd see the governor turned out in the next election if he signed that bill. Michael Dukakis lost his home state of Massachusetts in the presidential race after he sicced the state police on drivers for exactly this during his campaign. The law says to stay stopped at a stop sign for 3 seconds, and signal turns 800 feet in advance on the highway too, 600 feet…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_United_States_presidentia...
Michael Dukakis did not have a great election night, but he did win his home state.
Re: Controversial California bill would physically stop new cars from speeding
#36The road to hell is paved with good intentions. While this is based on good intentions to try to reduce traffic fatalities, I personally feel it's an overstep to try and mandate devices to track to limit a car's top speed. This isn't even considering the edge cases and ensuring this works properly.
The only close thing I can relate this to is an Ignition Interlock Device to limit DUIs, but that seems more acceptable to me since it limits the starting of the car instead of interfering while the car is running and it's required after someone loses the community's trust by having DUIs.
Re: Controversial California bill would physically stop new cars from speeding
#37This is like how CI forces developers to write better code by nudging us towards good behaviors. Is it annoying sometimes to write well-formatted code with high test coverage? Sure. Is it annoying to drive at the speed limit? Sure. Ultimately, it leads to a better outcome. If this gets adopted, within 10 years people won’t be able to imagine how we lived without it
It seems like most Americans genuinely believe they have not only a right to break the law when it comes to speed limits, but an obligation to speed. Or at least they drive like it. "I'm following the flow of traffic" as if other people breaking the law makes it OK? They feel like they have to race other cars on the road. I had several completely "straight edge" friends who were obsessed with morality and would never…
>It seems like most Americans genuinely believe they have not only a right to break the law when it comes to speed limits, but an obligation to speed. Or at least they drive like it. "I'm following the flow of traffic" as if other people breaking the law makes it OK?
That seems to be a true sentiment, though[0][1][2]. Deviating significantly from the speed of actual traffic will likely lead to more accidents. Insisting stubbornly on following the letter of the law when it is actually detrimental to safety is not moral; it is merely pedantic. Fiat justitia ruat caelum is not a particularly healthy view of the relationship between the legal system and society.
[0]: https://trid.trb.org/view/306976 (From the abstract: "A major influence on speed variance is the difference between the design speed and the posted speed limit. It was determined that speed variance will approach minimum values if the posted speed limit is between 5 and 10 mph lower than the design speed. Outside this range, speed variance increases with an increasing difference between the design speed and the posted speed limit. It was also found that drivers tend to drive at increasing speeds as the roadway geometric characteristics improve, regardless of the posted speed limit, and that accident rates do not necessarily increase with an increase in average speed but do increase with an increase in speed variance.")
[1]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1904038 ("A model of the optimal speed limit is developed which explicitly recognizes the role of average speed, speed variance, and the level of enforcement. An unusual result emerges, namely that a higher speed limit may be optimal when reducing the variance in highway speeds reduces accident externalities.")
[2]: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/17098/... ("Separate studies by Solomon (1964) and Cirillo (1968) concluded that, as vehicle speeds deviated from the average speed of the traffic stream, crash involvement rates increased... Studies throughout the 1970s produced findings consistent with the research... For crash severity, higher vehicle operating speeds are associated with more severe crash outcomes. However, the relationship between crash frequency and speed is not as clear. There is some indication that increasing posted speed limits is associated with an increase in expected crash frequency; however, the relationship between operating speed and crash frequency has yet to be well established.")
Re: Controversial California bill would physically stop new cars from speeding
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
> what's the rationale for letting people go 10 over the limit One reason among many: for passing, especially semis, without spending forever in their blind-spot
Is it technically legal to exceed the speed limit when passing? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying no one ever speeds. I’m just wondering what the reasoning would be in this case. Seems to reify speeding, if anything.
Some good anecdotes here: https://www.quora.com/Have-you-ever-been-pulled-over-for-goi...
Re: Controversial California bill would physically stop new cars from speeding
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think many people will argue that running from the police is something we want to legitimize. It is also is never going to end well. The police have orders of magnitude more resources and will eventually catch you. (And meanwhile, you've probably put hundreds of innocent lives at risk while speeding through traffic.) The correct venue there is to argue your case in court. As for the hospital... that's a nuanc…
If this law/tech had been in place in the 1940s and 50s NASCAR would have never been created. By imposing it, who knows what possibilities of creative expression we're artificially pruning from our cultural trajectory.
We make tradeoffs like this all the time. Who knows how many amazing adventurous frontier literature we're missing out on, as we've moved on from gun slingers regularly robbing banks and having duels with bounty hunters at high noon.
(I'm not arguing for / against the auto-enforced speed limit)
Re: Controversial California bill would physically stop new cars from speeding
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it technically legal to exceed the speed limit when passing? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying no one ever speeds. I’m just wondering what the reasoning would be in this case. Seems to reify speeding, if anything.
Some good anecdotes here: https://www.quora.com/Have-you-ever-been-pulled-over-for-goi...
Oof, that one about the misidentified blue Camry sounds maddening.