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New anti-speeding system coming to Australia is dangerous

carexpert.com.au

21–30 of 96 posts

Re: New anti-speeding system coming to Australia is dangerous

#21
post #7

Once it goes beyond alerting, this is going to kill someone. A driver will be on a 2-lane road (1 lane each way), and attempt to pass the driver in front of them. A car will be coming the other way, and they won't be able to get in front in time. They'll try to slow and get back in, but the other cars will have filled the space. They'll have nowhere to go. Perhaps in this example the driver shouldn't have tried to pa…

This scenario is terribly specified. If you don't have clear time to pass a car in front of you without going an absurd amount over the posted speed limit, you almost certainly are putting yourself in danger already? I'll go further and say that people that take excess speeds in this scenario are already causing more accidents today, than a limiter would cause in the future. Edit: I should say I think it would be a b…

I wholeheartedly disagree. When you’re passing someone on a two-lane highway you should always speed way up to get the hell out of the lane of oncoming traffic.

Re: New anti-speeding system coming to Australia is dangerous

#22
hard caps and mandating enforcement like this makes me yearn for the meteor. speed limits make more sense as average speeds, but I suspect I may be of a different species than somone of such a literal mind who holds the opposite view where they would advocate for this sort of thing. I don't see how this is reconcilable.

Re: New anti-speeding system coming to Australia is dangerous

#23

Drove a rented Kia in Central Australia recently that had this. It was fine: just stick below the speed limit. "Dangerous" to someone who continuously rides the speed limit perhaps.

The speed limit is the speed you should be driving in most circumstances, and is set far below the maximum safe speed for the road. Driving significantly below the pasted speed is as dangerous driving significantly above it.

Re: New anti-speeding system coming to Australia is dangerous

#24
I'm generally strongly in favor of technical system for making speeding impossible -- for example I don't think it should be legal to sell cars that are able to go 100km/h on city streets. But this implementation seems designed to elicit backlash. Beeping is bad, and setting the tolerance at zero is not friendly given general driver behavior. I'd find it much more sensible to have "smooth" systems, such as a constant "buzzing" sound whose volume increases with the square of the speed excess, or translating pedal pressure into speed in such a way that convexly increasing amounts of pressure are required to go further above the limit.

Re: New anti-speeding system coming to Australia is dangerous

#25

Drove a rented Kia in Central Australia recently that had this. It was fine: just stick below the speed limit. "Dangerous" to someone who continuously rides the speed limit perhaps.

I own one, unfortunately it is often wrong about what the speed limit is. So it’s not quite so straightforward.

Re: New anti-speeding system coming to Australia is dangerous

#26
post #3

From the article: "To put it simply, the system is dangerous." And then it proceeds to spend zero time at all describing exactly what is dangerous about it. Seriously, the article doesn't even hypothesize about what makes this dangerous, it just says that it's bad. The car I drove about 10 years ago had trouble exceeding the speed limit at times because it was a diesel! It was never dangerous. Trucks including rental…

I think there's a fundamental issue here that the posted speed limit is often not the same thing as a reasonable maximum speed that's appropriate for conditions. Speed limits are set for all sorts of reasons that don't often match up with safety, and even then, they're usually set for normal conditions; when you have great visibility, dry pavement, and low traffic, it's often not unsafe to exceed the posted limit; just the same as when there's poor visibility, wet or icy pavement, or heavy traffic, following the posted limit is unsafe.

Having an alarm that distracts the driver when they're driving a safe and reasonable speed is an unnecessary distraction. And it won't help drivers maintain a safe and reasonable speed in unfavorable conditions, unless this also comes with real time updates for pavement conditions, visibility, construction, etc.

For cars that have trouble exceeding the speed limit, it can be dangerous --- sometimes there are scenarios where exceeding the speed limit is the safest course of action; but experience with the vehicle would help you anticipate its capabilities, and it is what it is. Usually there's pretty clear feedback that the vehicle isn't going to go much faster, so you will tend to avoid putting yourself in situations where you need lots of speed.

Rental trucks governors aren't necessarily as obvious, but that's also more of a statement that trucks should have a lower maximum limit regardless of conditions and that the rental company doesn't trust renters to be aware of safe speeds for trucks.

Re: New anti-speeding system coming to Australia is dangerous

#29
post #3

From the article: "To put it simply, the system is dangerous." And then it proceeds to spend zero time at all describing exactly what is dangerous about it. Seriously, the article doesn't even hypothesize about what makes this dangerous, it just says that it's bad. The car I drove about 10 years ago had trouble exceeding the speed limit at times because it was a diesel! It was never dangerous. Trucks including rental…

If you are accelerating, particularly in an EV, and your car starts screwing with your controls while pelting you with a high decibal alarm you used to only hear in an imminent collision, your chances of losing control are going to skyrocket.

It happens all the time with inexperienced drivers and high performance vehicles, and consumer EVs are also high performance vehicles. Hyundai - one of the manufacturers mentioned in the article - makes an EV with a sub-3s 0-60 time.

Re: New anti-speeding system coming to Australia is dangerous

#30
> Freedom of choice is a fundamental part of human nature. So much so it has net effect on our mental health. There are dozens and dozens of peer reviewed studies that correlate the capacity to choose with happiness.

For many people, a car is a phenomenon of personal freedom. Like any freedom, some people abuse it. Taking freedoms away (even perceived ones) is dangerous.

My big issue with attempts like this are that they fail to encompass the whole experience of driving. An obvious one: if it’s speed that you want to control, then you need lower and upper limits. Lower limits means that some cars need to be stopped from entering certain roads at all. A tractor that can only go 15 mph should never be on an interstate… unless, of course, it’s working on the interstate. Good luck with that!

The system of driving was made with fairly simple rules for humans to abide by. It wasn’t designed for and isn’t made strictly safer by partially automating portions of driving. I have yet to see any implementation that lacks downsides.

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