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Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

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Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#281

Post by lolinder »

zehaeva wrote: post #266
kolinko wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have experience with such roads? I do - we used to not have real highways 10-20 years ago. And the main issue with not overtaking a car-truck that is going just 60 (in your case) is that sooner or later they will encounter someone going 40-50, and they may not be able to overtake. And because of that uou end up driving 40mph on a 70mph road for hours.

I mean, I have been driving for the last 30 years of my life, I've driven most of the north east of the US. Through highways, timber roads that are little better than muddy paths, country roads that have never been paved, and pretty much everything in between. I've driven 15 hours straight. I've driven up mountains and across (really small) rivers. Between all the vehicles I've driven in my life I've accrued, got I h…

> I've driven most of the north east of the US.

Then you have no idea what the rest of us are talking about. Western roads are huge, and travel times are long. When you're driving the ~1000 miles between Denver and Los Angeles, 10 mph difference in speed can make your trip up to 2 hours longer. That's not insignificant, especially if you're trying to do it in a single day.

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#282

Post by netsharc »

zehaeva wrote: post #226
jbritton wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m in the US. If you’re on say hwy 395 heading to Mammoth Mountain, the highway is frequently one lane in each direction. If the max speed limit is 70mph, you may come up on a semi truck doing 60mph and you will want to pass using the lane with on coming traffic. This means you need to do 85mph to pass. For this reason our max speed limit laws are woefully inadequate at accounting for real life conditions.

Why will you _want_ to pass? Is that 10mph going to get you there _that_ much faster? If you were to follow that truck for all 1300 miles of 395 you would get to your destination 3 hours later than if you were going 70mph the whole way. I would doubt that anyone would want to drive for nearly 19 hours straight, unless you're doing some sort of cannonball run like challenge. If your destination is a mere 120 miles awa…

I pass slower drivers not to save a few minutes, but because driving fast is much more fun...

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#283

Post by lolinder »

zehaeva wrote: post #215
userulluipeste wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you see, it's for the cases where not every car is going as fast as they are allowed.

If they're going so much slower than the limit that it's unsafe, wouldn't it be easy to pass at the regulated limit? If they're going just a _little_ bit slower than the limit, why pass them? Are you telling me that 3kmph, or even 10kmph, slower than the limit is slow enough to make an appreciable difference to your everyday driving?

> wouldn't it be easy to pass at the regulated limit?

No. No, it's not, not on a single land road.

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#284

Post by gambiting »

zehaeva wrote: post #264
sliken wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why will you _want_ to pass? Is that 10mph going to get you there _that_ much faster? Actually yes. That truck that's going 60 on the flats is going to be doing much less than that on the hills. Best for everyone involved to pass when it's safe. It increases safety and decreases road utilization. Keep in mind that 3 hours @ 60 mph is 3 hours with another car on the road. To compensate you'd need another lane for 18…

A lot of hills have passing lanes _specifically_ for this issue. By that logic, that the time vehicles are on the road are necessarily limiting capacity of the system, then we should be vastly increasing the speed limit! Why not 100mph? 120mph? I mean, it's only 3 times the kinetic energy (over 70mph), so any crash would be that much more dangerous/deadly. It's also very wasteful with respect to fuel, so you'd need t…

>> then we should be vastly increasing the speed limit! Why not 100mph? 120mph?

I mean, Poland has 90mph speed limit on motorways and yet it's still safer than US which generally has very low speed limits everywhere. The only reasonable conclusion is that safety isn't directly correlated to the speed limits but to the state of infrastructure, driver training and culture.

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#285

Post by netsharc »

causalmodels wrote: post #72
VyseofArcadia wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed that the general case is hard to solve. I think you could at least make a case for solving a simpler problem. What's the highest legal speed limit in the country in which the car was sold? Set a global speed limit to that.

Doesn't the autobahn have unrestricted sections with no speed limit?

There were talks for ending this last bit of "madness" to help with the climate (to go at double one's speed one needs to spend 4 times more energy).

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#286

Post by sliken »

frumper wrote: post #265
sliken wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why will you _want_ to pass? Is that 10mph going to get you there _that_ much faster? Actually yes. That truck that's going 60 on the flats is going to be doing much less than that on the hills. Best for everyone involved to pass when it's safe. It increases safety and decreases road utilization. Keep in mind that 3 hours @ 60 mph is 3 hours with another car on the road. To compensate you'd need another lane for 18…

> Best for everyone involved to pass when it's safe. It increases safety and decreases road utilization. How does it increase safety? Someone else will just catch up to him on that hill. > It's much easier and safer to predict conditions for half the time when passing at +20mph then trying to predict twice as long when passing at +10mph. If safety is your concern, then it's even easier and safer to predict conditions…

> How does it increase safety? Someone else will just catch up to him on that hill.

Instead of having an ever growing queue of cars that try to pass on the hill, they pass before hand on the flats. So there's not mass chaos when 100 cars who have been trying at 10 mph under the speed limit for an hour all try to pass on the uphill, while the truck is slowing from 60-40.

> If safety is your concern, then it's even easier and safer to predict conditions without passing until a passing lane opens up, or a turn out is reached for him.

Sure, some do that, it's the drivers choice. Personally if passing is allowed, I like to pass slower vehicles. My car accelerates quickly, so I like to pass quickly and spend the minimum amount of time in the oncoming traffic lane.

Just seems natural to let the cars get ahead whenever they can, after all the cars usually have a different speed limit than the trucks. Thus the carefully engineered lane markers, truck specific speed signs, and often passing lanes on the hills.

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#288

Post by grujicd »

zehaeva wrote: post #264
sliken wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why will you _want_ to pass? Is that 10mph going to get you there _that_ much faster? Actually yes. That truck that's going 60 on the flats is going to be doing much less than that on the hills. Best for everyone involved to pass when it's safe. It increases safety and decreases road utilization. Keep in mind that 3 hours @ 60 mph is 3 hours with another car on the road. To compensate you'd need another lane for 18…

A lot of hills have passing lanes _specifically_ for this issue. By that logic, that the time vehicles are on the road are necessarily limiting capacity of the system, then we should be vastly increasing the speed limit! Why not 100mph? 120mph? I mean, it's only 3 times the kinetic energy (over 70mph), so any crash would be that much more dangerous/deadly. It's also very wasteful with respect to fuel, so you'd need t…

> A lot of hills have passing lanes _specifically_ for this issue.

You'll often see heavy truck that's not only slow uphill but also slow downhill, in some cases even more so - because it can't afford to build up speed above what its breaks can handle.

And these passing lanes are _never_ in downhill direction.

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#289

Post by frumper »

sliken wrote: post #286
frumper wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Best for everyone involved to pass when it's safe. It increases safety and decreases road utilization. How does it increase safety? Someone else will just catch up to him on that hill. > It's much easier and safer to predict conditions for half the time when passing at +20mph then trying to predict twice as long when passing at +10mph. If safety is your concern, then it's even easier and safer to predict conditions…

> How does it increase safety? Someone else will just catch up to him on that hill. Instead of having an ever growing queue of cars that try to pass on the hill, they pass before hand on the flats. So there's not mass chaos when 100 cars who have been trying at 10 mph under the speed limit for an hour all try to pass on the uphill, while the truck is slowing from 60-40. > If safety is your concern, then it's even eas…

The minimum amount of time in the oncoming lane is 0

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#290

Post by Ancapistani »

emporas wrote: post #276
gambiting wrote: post #9

This is one example of legislation that mandates fantasy tech that doesn't exist. You'd think that something as simple as speed limiter should be very easy to implement, and it couldn't be further from the truth - watch any review of a car with this tech and every reviewer will complain that it's not the presence of the system that's the problem, it's the fact that it constantly gets the speed limit wrong. Either rea…

> This is one example of legislation that mandates fantasy tech that doesn't exist. If the goal is to increase the minimal cost of any vehicle which drives on a road then the worse the legislation is, the better it serves the purpose. Incumbents gain a lot by obstructing any newcomer from capturing market share. Also, if cars are moving towards the direction of driving themselves, it goes without saying that an accur…

> Given that cars 95% of the time are not moving anywhere, then self driving cars could reduce the car consumption by 10 times, an order of magnitude less.

I question this assertion.

Granted, I'm coming at this from a semi-rural American perspective, but I don't think true full self-driving would cause a reduction in emissions. If anything, I think it might increase them.

Urban areas are where emissions are most immediately an issue. Those areas also have limited parking. If vehicles were capable of autonomous operation, I would expect more people to drive, exit the vehicle at their destination, then allow the vehicle to park itself. This would incentivize companies to add additional offsite parking, which in turn would mean that vehicles would drive themselves to and from those parking areas - a net increase in distance driven, and therefore emissions.

That's not even considering things like vacations. My family and I drive 10+ hours about once each month. About half of those trips are for pleasure, and the only reason we take one vehicle is because it doesn't make sense for both my wife and I to drive separately. Otherwise, if I'm spending a week at the beach, I'd prefer to be able to drive my Jeep around while we're there. My Jeep doesn't fit my family and our luggage comfortably, so we don't take it right now. If it could drive itself, the only reason not to have it come along would be the cost of fuel and wear.

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