Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

autoweek.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 401 posts

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#321

Post by croes »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #176
croes wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>or a speed control function in which the speed of the vehicle will be gradually reduced. Not suddenly, gradually.

It still turns you into a road hazard and puts you in a dangerous situation How about we don't take control away from the people in the driver seat If we can't trust them to operate the vehicle then we should not be letting them operate the vehicle We cannot solve the problem of terrible driver training with tech

>It still turns you into a road hazard and puts you in a dangerous situation

How do you know? You make assumptions about a system, that doesn't even is put in place. No car manufacture will use the forth way and risks getting sued if it doesn't work good enough.

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#322

Post by croes »

kbolino wrote: post #59
croes wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardly because they didn't exist widespread before. Speed limits on the other hand are proven to reduce accidents.

> Speed limits on the other hand are proven to reduce accidents. There have been speed limits on every road in the US for over half a century; how did they conduct a controlled study?

Because there are other states in the world without those limits.

Good example is the highway A24 in Brandenburg Germany. The accident numbers were too high so the local government was forced by law to impose a speed limit.

The accident numbers dropped. So what did the local government? They repealed the speed limit because after all, the limit is only necessary for high accident rates.

Guess what happened next? More accidents.

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#323

Post by lolinder »

novagameco wrote: post #147
isatty wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what state is that? I do know that some states are over zealous about this but two vehicles driving next to each other slowing gaining on another to overtake is also creating a dangerous road situation. This is taught when you take your written test in CA. Trucks don’t really have a choice which is why it’s normal for them to do so even on a two lane highway.

Virginia > two vehicles driving next to each other slowing gaining on another to overtake is also creating a dangerous road situation Then perhaps you shouldn't pass if it's not safe to do so. My problem with everyone in this thread and who is against speed limiters is: the subtext is that they want to go faster than the speed limit so they can arrive faster. It's simply the fact that people are willing to engage is…

FWIW, Virginia is infamous for strict enforcement of traffic laws—I've never even driven there but have been warned to pay extra close attention when crossing its borders.

Most US states aren't anything like Virginia. I just did a road trip across ~20 states and in none of them did people in cars (as opposed to semis) actually follow the speed limit on the highway. Most states had ~8 over as the normal speed, none were less than 5 over.

> The idea that people should have the right to go dangerously fast because it's simply more convenient

No one is saying anything about dangerously fast driving. In most US states speed limits are set with the understanding that a significant portion of drivers will drive 5 to 10 mph faster than the speed limit and not get pulled over even if a cop sees them. In those states driving at or below the speed limit is actually more dangerous because you're creating an obstruction that other drivers who are following the expected driving patterns have to adapt to.

(Again, from what I understand that doesn't apply to Virginia, which would be why your experience differs from most here.)

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#324

Post by wavemode »

kerkeslager wrote: post #317
wavemode wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The limit of freedom is generally agreed to be "one person's freedom ends when it begins to infringe the freedom of others". Speeding definitely crosses that line. The reason I'm not free to assault others is because I'm directly causing them to lose their right to life and/or well-being. Whereas speeding merely creates a risk of harm, not harm itself. Almost anything could be argued to create a risk of harm to oth…

> The reason I'm not free to assault others is because I'm directly causing them to lose their right to life and/or well-being. Whereas speeding merely creates a risk of harm, not harm itself. And speeding is illegal. So it seems we as a society have agreed this is not a violation of personal freedoms. Your argument here is really "speeding is okay and speeding creates risk to others, therefore I should be able to cr…

> And speeding is illegal. So it seems we as a society have agreed this is not a violation of personal freedoms.

Correct. And nobody in this thread is arguing that speeding should not be illegal.

> Your argument here is really "speeding is okay and speeding creates risk to others, therefore I should be able to create risk to others"?

Nope. Never said anything of the sort. You're again straying from the actual topic at hand, which is, specifically, my car automatically forcing me to drive a certain speed.

> This isn't an honest argument. Obviously there's some tradeoffs involved, which you know.

It wasn't an argument at all. It was a statement, taken out of context. The context being that you can't dismiss the argument of personal freedom purely on the basis that someone is creating risk for others.

The concept that a driver would sometimes be given the freedom to surpass the speed limit, when they judge it necessary, is not even particularly controversial. Police use broad discretion to not enforce speed limits to the letter of the law. In fact many states have laws that crack down on police departments staging "speed traps" to generate speeding ticket revenue. Which is society's way of saying that, yes, speeding is illegal, but that illegality isn't meant to be a lever for government oppression.

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#325

Post by adrianN »

robertlagrant wrote: post #132
adrianN wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars mingle with pedestrians and cyclists every day.

I don't see the point in arguing in bad faith. Bikes are allowed on cycle paths or even the same path as pedestrians for long stretches. It's not the same. Obviously.

I don't think many people want to limit cars to 20mph. It's obviously not the same.

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#326

Post by gwbas1c »

akira2501 wrote: post #148
gwbas1c wrote: post #93

Honestly, I think it makes more sense to start with limiting cars somewhere around 90-110MPH; IE, the fastest that anyone would ever drive on a public road. Where I live, speed limits are routinely set artificially low due to a cultural belief that rules are meant to be broken. IE, if the safest speed is 75MPH, then the speed limit is set to 55MPH because everyone will break the rule. If the limit was really 75MPH, t…

> then the speed limit is set to 55MPH The speed limit is set to 55MPH because the road services vehicles that weigh 600lbs all the way up to 80,000lbs. "Safe speed" is not a single universal number for a given stretch of road. The laws even acknowledge this, as if the weather is extremely unfavorable, you can be pulled over for driving _at_ the speed limit as it will be declared "unsafe speed under given conditions.…

> because the road services vehicles that weigh 600lbs all the way up to 80,000lbs

The laws recognize that those vehicles are different. Where I live those vehicles are only allowed to drive in the right two lanes.

There's already a federal push to have speed limiters in vehicles like that and it is getting a lot of pushback: https://www.freightwaves.com/news/fmcsa-delays-speed-limiter...

Again, That's why I said it's important to have a frank discussion about the general public's tolerance for risk. Otherwise, whatever authority is pushing for speed limiters under the claim of "safety" is just unintentionally taking an authoritarian approach.

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#327

Post by CalRobert »

comprev wrote: post #278
josephcsible wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> roads where the legal limit is way above the practical limit Can you give an example of such a road? At least in the US, I've never seen one.

Here in rural Ireland there are plenty of roads with 80km/h speed limit where even the rally stages (on closed roads) can't reach it - hence the racing!

Unfortunately rural Ireland is also a pretty dangerous place to walk due to some pretty high speeds on some pretty small roads :-/ . Too often the council "upgrades" a road and in the process takes it away from people walking or biking.

I made a video about some of these roads at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ba7xHUdeew if you're curious.

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#328

Post by CalRobert »

gambiting wrote: post #16
CalRobert wrote: post #5

While it can be overridden, hopefully this saves many lives. We limit speeds on scooters and e bikes so cars are only fair

We don't limit the speed of ebikes - we limit the point at which the electric motor cuts off, but there's nothing stopping you from just pedalling faster.

Isn't stopping the powered propulsion the same mechanism? I suppose you are free to put pedals on your car as well if you like.

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#329

Post by CalRobert »

akira2501 wrote: post #130
CalRobert wrote: post #5

While it can be overridden, hopefully this saves many lives. We limit speeds on scooters and e bikes so cars are only fair

> hopefully this saves many lives. That's very unlikely. More than half of roadway fatalities in the USA involve drugs or alcohol. You'd have much better luck putting a brethalyzer ignition interlock on all vehicles. One minute of thinking should make it obvious how easily that would be defeated as well.

This is not in the USA.

Also, I'm particularly interested in the effects on pedestrian and cyclist deaths, and it should be large. The relationship between speed and severe injury is nonlinear.

https://aaafoundation.org/impact-speed-pedestrians-risk-seve...

Results show that the average risk of severe injury for a pedestrian struck by a vehicle reaches 10% at an impact speed of 16 mph, 25% at 23 mph, 50% at 31 mph, 75% at 39 mph, and 90% at 46 mph

Re: Speed limiters now mandatory in all new EU cars

#330

Post by croes »

kbolino wrote: post #318
mikeyouse wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a pretty silly line of thought.. there’s absolutely no need for a “no speed limit” control when speed limits already are just chopping off the higher end of the bell curve of speed distributions. And clearly there are other causes of accidents and other ways to reduce fatalities (antilock brakes and seatbelts for the period you mentioned) but it’s actually pretty straightforward to assess speed’s influence on…

The Autobahn has lower accident and fatality rates than U.S. interstates with similar levels of traffic and yet portions of it have no set speed limit at all. The question is not of speed but speed-related policies and their effect in practice, not in deductively reasoned theory.

Apples and oranges, Germany also have stricter requirements for a driving license and your car needs regularly check-ups at the TÜV.

The A24 is a better example:

1st too many accidents so they needed a speed limit by law

2nd less accidents

3rd because of the less accidents the speed limited wasn't needed by law anymore and was dropped

4th more accidents

Post reply on HN