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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

#291

Post by akira2501 »

masterj wrote: post #277
akira2501 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cars kill 40k+ people in the US each year Not quite. 8k of those are motorcycles. 8k are pedestrians. Half of those are drivers who had drugs or alcohol in their system. One quarter are male drivers under 25. Most fatalities happen at night. > and speed (really momentum) is a large factor in the lethality of crashes. Not quite. It's mostly lack of seatbelt usage. > Most speeding issues do not occur on highways, but…

> Not quite. 8k of those are motorcycles. 8k are pedestrians. I don't know if you know this, but if a car kills someone else not in a car, they still die. https://twitter.com/VisionZeroYVR/status/1650630980062052353 > Not quite. It's mostly lack of seatbelt usage. I said "speed (really momentum) is a large factor in the lethality of crashes." "For every 10 mph of increased speed, the risk of dying in a crash doubles.…

> but if a car kills someone else not in a car, they still die.

I don't know if you know this, but sometimes pedestrians die due to bad road design or walking on unlit highways at night. Just because a car was involved does not mean the car was the primary reason the death occurred or that speed had any hand in the fatality.

> "speed (really momentum) is a large factor in the lethality of crashes."

Except we have safety systems which are designed to ameliorate this. If you don't use them, that's when the _fatalities_ occur, as opposed to just _injuries_.

> "For every 10 mph of increased speed, the risk of dying in a crash doubles."

"Risk of dying in a crash" is a nonsense statistical statement. Crashes are not identical. "For every 10mph of increased _sudden deceleration_" you might be able to make the case for, and it highlights the exact issue with single minded focus on speed.

You could increase the safety factor by much wider margins if you just focused on the _other problems_ first.

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#292

Post by lolinder »

leephillips wrote: post #71
gruturo wrote: post #18

This is terrifying. I routinely cross a bridge with a 30ton weight limit, which my car mistakes for a 30km/h speed limit sign. I would cause an average of 2 accidents per month if I suddenly slowed from 70 to 30 and the people behind me weren't paying attention. The technology is _not_ there and this won't save lives, potentially it will cause deaths. (Yes I read the article, this is initially only "for the driver's…

This is the fallacy of the slippery slope. The regulation is not necessarily a first step. It can and might very well stop at the driver alert stage. To become an automatic speed limiter would be a new set of regulations, with a new debate and regulatory process behind it.

At some point along the way any use of a slippery slope became a fallacy on HN, and I'm at a loss to explain how.

Would it be more helpful to talk about it in terms of set points? You can change things a very small amount from the status quo without making people upset. Accepting a change in one direction makes it easier for them to later swallow what would have been more drastic changes in that direction.

Obviously this is a fallacy if change A isn't actually a step towards change B, but surely you can see that having accepted already installed speed limiters in all cars makes it dramatically more likely that they'll later be required to actually limit the speed of the car?

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#293

Post by its_ethan »

parl_match wrote: post #262
its_ethan wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If cars are required by law to have speed limiting, that means they can know when and where a car is speeding. Cars are closely tied to their owners in many ways (registration, insurance, etc.). One way this could be seen as being a step in the wrong direction is that it not only sets a precedent for collecting that information, but is forcing car manufacturers to start building up that ability. I personally think it…

> that means they can know when and where a car is speeding These systems don't require reporting data back, and there is no technical reason for them to do so. In fact, nothing in the legislation suggests this. > it not only sets a precedent for collecting that information, but is forcing car manufacturers to start building up that ability. Not only have states and cities started doing this, via ALPR, but cars are i…

I said that they can know this data, not that they will... Not requiring data reporting doesn't mean that the data won't be reported, as you seem to be already aware of.

I am also in no way in support of the things you're referencing, just because they already exist doesn't mean it's just OK to accept further erosion of privacy. ALPR, cars with cell modems - these things are part of the same "slippery slope" of privacy wrt cars. As far as I can tell, you're saying "what you're worried about is already happening, so why bother being concerned about it getting worse?". How exactly is that helpful?

So maybe you're right, this isn't a "bad first step" - because it's actually the continuation of steps along a path that was no good form the start.

The point still stands that having the government get involved, making it a legal requirement for new cars to develop these bad systems, is a bad thing for individual privacy. It's not independent of requiring speed alerting, because the government is effectively saying "not only do we not care that this is happening, we're now requiring it".

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#294

Post by whazor »

jbritton wrote: post #210
zehaeva wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if every car is following the speed limit, that is going as fast as they are allowed, why would any one person be passing someone else?

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.

But now cars can drive 150 to 200mph. Putting the max speed at 85mph would already increase safety.

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#295

Post by zehaeva »

lolinder wrote: post #281
zehaeva wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm sorry, did you want an exhaustive list of the roads I've driven? How many times I have driven out west? Which routes? For how long? That's a ridiculous thing to expect from a random on a forum. Should I list out all of the 10+ hour trips I've driven to satisfy you? What level of experience would cause you to retract your simplistic dismissal of my option?

Also, you did not read my post. I specifically said that over the course of those long miles 10mph will cost you 2-3 hours. I literally said that in my post.

You also missed the part where I suggested that no one should be driving for 21 hours, let alone 18.

Let me be clear, trying to drive 1000miles in one day is unsafe.

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#296

Post by emporas »

Ancapistani wrote: post #290
emporas wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 imme…

> I don't think true full self-driving would cause a reduction in emissions.

I was referring to the total cars owned by people and produced by factories as "car consumption". Cars bought by consumers.

By owning less cars individually and one car serving many people, emissions from driving might increase, but assembling and constructing the cars has emissions too.

There is a difference in cities and rural areas of how important car ownership is, but there is also another technology coming which decreases the need to transport humans, and that's blazing fast drones.

If you want to buy let's say an ethernet cable of 5 meters or a coffee, instead of transporting the human, it is much easier and faster for small items to be transported by drone. Drones alone, might decrease the need for car ownership by 5 or 10 times.

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#297

Post by parl_match »

its_ethan wrote: post #293
parl_match wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that means they can know when and where a car is speeding These systems don't require reporting data back, and there is no technical reason for them to do so. In fact, nothing in the legislation suggests this. > it not only sets a precedent for collecting that information, but is forcing car manufacturers to start building up that ability. Not only have states and cities started doing this, via ALPR, but cars are i…

I said that they can know this data, not that they will ... Not requiring data reporting doesn't mean that the data won't be reported, as you seem to be already aware of. I am also in no way in support of the things you're referencing, just because they already exist doesn't mean it's just OK to accept further erosion of privacy. ALPR, cars with cell modems - these things are part of the same "slippery slope" of priv…

> As far as I can tell, you're saying "what you're worried about is already happening, so why bother being concerned about it getting worse?".

I called them "serious problems". I don't know how you extrapolated "why bother being concerned" from "serious problems".

And my point still stands that the situation you described, is, incredibly, not only not based in reality, but also simultaneously exists through other means.

There are, of course, reasons to oppose something like this - but, the reasons you're choosing to oppose this are moot, in every feasible way.

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#298

Post by sliken »

frumper wrote: post #289
sliken wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Sure. But now you have to spend more money on adding lanes for the same traffic capacity because the average speed drops.

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#299

Post by zehaeva »

randerson wrote: post #261
zehaeva wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How close do you find yourself to the truck in front of you? Safe follow distances are, At 65MPH, I'm assuming you're in the US, is approximately 300 feet. I'd be kind of shocked that you're getting stones hitting you and detectable fumes 300 feet away.

My Adaptive Cruise Control has 4 distance settings and I use the 3rd, further than most people's following distance, and I've had stones kicked up by truck tires that hit my windscreen from that distance.

I do the same in my Subaru, even at the furthest, the safe distance is choose is no where near the 300feet(approximately 20 car lengths). It's closer to 8 car lengths.

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#300

Post by novagameco »

Vicinity9635 wrote: post #231
novagameco wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - AI guns that won't shoot at other people, only authorized in-season animals. That sounds like a legitimately good idea, why would you need a gun that shoots people

Because bad people exist and there are imminent dangers? There are legitimately good uses of people shooting people all the time. Hostage situations being the painfully obvious example. What even is this question?

Well obviously the police would have access to other kinds of guns, but if civilian guns were only capable of shooting deer then that would be a definite plus
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