New cars will stop drivers from speeding under European laws • Hacker News Board

Re: New cars will stop drivers from speeding under European laws

#151

Post by nicbou » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 6:18 AM UTC

atoav wrote: post #126

userbinator wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First it's optional. Then they make it increasingly harder to disable. Then they make it mandatory. Surely everyone who has experienced abusive changes in software can see that pattern from a mile away? They aren't going to roast the frog, but instead boil it very slowly...

Ok I'll bite. The single most thing I hate about driving car in Germany is the lack of an upper speed limit on big stretches of the Autobahn. If you cross over from any neighbouring country any driver will notice that what before was a friendly chugging along now has become a stressful battle between people who just want to go somewhere with a good compromise of speed and fuel use and speedsters who will breath up yo…

I drive under 100 in the rightmost line and it's not a problem, since there are trucks and campers there. Just stay out of the left lane.

However speed limits make sense from an environmental perspective. The difference between 100 and 130 is quite a lot of petrol.

Re: New cars will stop drivers from speeding under European laws

#152

Post by picsao » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 6:19 AM UTC

atoav wrote: post #126

userbinator wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First it's optional. Then they make it increasingly harder to disable. Then they make it mandatory. Surely everyone who has experienced abusive changes in software can see that pattern from a mile away? They aren't going to roast the frog, but instead boil it very slowly...

Ok I'll bite. The single most thing I hate about driving car in Germany is the lack of an upper speed limit on big stretches of the Autobahn. If you cross over from any neighbouring country any driver will notice that what before was a friendly chugging along now has become a stressful battle between people who just want to go somewhere with a good compromise of speed and fuel use and speedsters who will breath up yo…

Straw man, germany has physical speed limits on most of the Autobahn. Meaning the rightmost lane is usually filled with trucks, leaving one or two lanes, were the aging populations slowest drivers create a upper speed limits (usually 120). And even those struggle with those slow Netherlands caravans. Your habbits are not a borthright to be a traffic obsticle in another country.

Re: New cars will stop drivers from speeding under European laws

#153

Post by nicbou » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 6:24 AM UTC

fatcat500 wrote: post #48

At this rate, Europe will become 2nd world by the end of the century. Instead of focusing on innovation and competition in the global market, Europeans are busy legislating their freedoms away.

I feel the opposite about America. We have many consumer and social protections that Americans don't. They seem to value freedom over the well-being of the average citizen.

Perhaps we'll never have as many nobel prizes per capita, or as many millionaires, but I quite enjoy things being regulated in favour of the average citizen.

Re: New cars will stop drivers from speeding under European laws

#154

Post by mint2 » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 6:25 AM UTC

kurupt213 wrote: post #4

There are valid reasons for exceeding the speed limit

Is Propping up oil company profits one of those reasons? Driving the speed limit would likely drive gas prices down due to a >10% decrease in demand

Or according to this site maybe >20% https://www.mpgforspeed.com/

People who speed don’t really mind the gas prices. Because Speeding is like paying $1.20 extra per gallon in CA

Re: New cars will stop drivers from speeding under European laws

#155

Post by nicbou » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 6:26 AM UTC

__d wrote: post #121

I'd really like my car to automatically limit itself to a bit under the legal limit. As it is, I find maintaining 40km/hr difficult, so I tend to engage the cruise control. But that's pretty painful. I'd much rather it just did it for me. It already shows the speed limit on the dash display, so it'd be pretty simple to hook that up to the cruise control. And sure, it'd be good to have an override for when something's…

I'd love to have that as an option. I'm not in a hurry to get anywhere. I usually get speeding fines because I'm not paying attention to the speed limit or my own speed.

It's a bit like cruise control. I like not having to constantly monitor my speed.

Re: New cars will stop drivers from speeding under European laws

#156

Post by sofixa » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 6:26 AM UTC

exabrial wrote: post #5

They'll roll this back pretty quickly once it cuts into revenues

Nope, because that's an EU law, the ones collecting speeding fines are national governments. And the saved lives, and resources from having less traffic police, will probably make up for the fines lost anyways.

Re: New cars will stop drivers from speeding under European laws

#157

Post by fho » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 6:27 AM UTC

atoav wrote: post #126

userbinator wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First it's optional. Then they make it increasingly harder to disable. Then they make it mandatory. Surely everyone who has experienced abusive changes in software can see that pattern from a mile away? They aren't going to roast the frog, but instead boil it very slowly...

Ok I'll bite. The single most thing I hate about driving car in Germany is the lack of an upper speed limit on big stretches of the Autobahn. If you cross over from any neighbouring country any driver will notice that what before was a friendly chugging along now has become a stressful battle between people who just want to go somewhere with a good compromise of speed and fuel use and speedsters who will breath up yo…

The crazy thing is that the Autobahns are not exactly safe ... Sure, millions of people drive on them every day and most of them will never be in an accident. Still there are about 15000 accidents per year on the Autobahns [1].

More anecdotally, my SO was commuting on the A2 for about a year. She saw the aftermaths of (minor) accidents basically every day and was the first car not to collide in a pile up twice.

(To be fair, most accidents on the A2 happen on that stretch around Gütersloh iirc.)

[1] https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Verkeh...

Re: New cars will stop drivers from speeding under European laws

#158

Post by atoav » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 6:29 AM UTC

noduerme wrote: post #136

atoav wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrary to other "think of the children"-scenarios this one has an actual death number tacked to it. And you might not be surprised, that children dying in traffic accidents does happen.extremely frequent. But forget the children, this also infringes on rights of regular people like me. Your right to drive around 2 tons of steel and plastics don't outweigh my right to not get killed by any stretch of the imagination…

For the last time, my comment is not about the privilege of people to drive (which you seem to want to abolish?) it's about the right to move around without being tracked. Also, it is about your rights to privacy if you should want to exercise them.

I am not sure how you extrapolate me being against people driving from me being against people speeding. You can drive very well without speeding.

Tracking is a different issue sure, but there is nothing in this problem that relies on tracking. You need to read the current map data and the position of the car via GPS. You need to write nothing (and given the privacy laws in Europe, I don't really see why we would).

Re: New cars will stop drivers from speeding under European laws

#159

Post by ThatGeoGuy » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 6:31 AM UTC

CharlesW wrote: post #120

ThatGeoGuy wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit preposterous. First off, do you know how speeds are set? Civil engineers build a road, and then figure out the 85th percentile speed for that road based on sample data collected. [0] That's a couple things: 1. Not based on any actual design criteria for the road 2. Assumes that 85% of drivers are somehow more knowledgeable than the engineers who are supposed to be designing our roads and transportation.…

> The claim that you should be always able to go 5-10mph above the limit seems to be a mythos invented in and ingrained in the fabric of the American psyche. I think you're misinterpreting the parent commenter. They said that, in the U.S., speed limits are almost universally slower than the natural (i.e. prevailing) speed of traffic by 5-10 MPH, and so everyone driving at the prevailing speed of traffic is inevitably…

> That is definitely true, at least if you're not in the rightmost lane of traffic sandwiched between semis and box trucks. 75-80 MPH in 70 MPH zones is common, and it's not unusual to see people driving 85+ MPH.

As an observation I'd agree. However, my impression of the parent commenter was that they implied that 5-10mph over the speed limit is the correct way to drive. Were that true, why wouldn't we just set the limit anyways? How did that limit get chosen?

Again, this goes back to the 85th percentile - the ways in which we decide how fast to go on a road or street are wrong. Of course, there's two things going on in this thread:

- Using tech to warn / limit drivers from being able to speed over an agreed upon limit.

- Engineering our roads so that the intended speed matches the prevailing speed of traffic.

Now I'm more in the second camp on this one than the first, I'll admit, but I don't think that we should just sit by and accept "some people speed, therefore we should all go faster" as a given. I have definitely witnessed people going 85+ MPH, especially if you're on an interstate far away from any city. However, this is not the norm and not really where the tech in TFA is going to be deployed.

Either way, the issue I take is with moralizing going faster than the speed limit. You might say it's the flow of traffic, but that just smells like justifying something that most drivers already want to do (go faster), instead of understanding the action (speeding) and its effect on the environment around us (increased danger, increased fuel consumption, increased noise pollution, etc).

Re: New cars will stop drivers from speeding under European laws

#160

Post by nicbou » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 6:31 AM UTC

legostormtroopr wrote: post #55

This is not a bad idea - but speed limits have not changed to reflect changing cars. Speed limits are stuck at 100km in Australia and have been for decades - despite cars introducing anti-lock breaking, predictive breaking, anti-rollover technology, lane assist and so on. Cars are now much much safer, and yet speed limits outside of cities have not changed to reflect this. If the government wants to introduce speed l…

I can drive stupid fast on the Autobahn and still be fairly safe, but it burns fuel at an alarming rate.

A few years ago, they considered a speed limit not for safety, but for the environment.

Another thing is that a modern car is not much safer in adverse conditions. When it snows or rains, things get dicey.