RubeRad

Story from NPR recently

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/06/12165...eed-assistance

I'm in favor, but I think one major reason the auto industry is not on board is, not just that nobody likes being told what to do, but if this is required, a lot of people are going to decide not to pay extra for the car with the more powerful engine that they can't even use, and go for a cheaper model -- thus decreasing sales on the most profitable models

skidder

How are they going to determine the speed limits on the road someone is driving. It could be a 25mph zone, a 65 mph highway, or a highway in open country area with an 80mph limit (Texas, I think?). Also variable areas, like a 45 mph street, but if there's a school bus stop that would temporarily make it a 25 mph zone or even require a full stop. Lots of unanswered questions.

Hondo Gravel

These days I just putt down the road.

clemsongirl 

The majority of speeding is senseless and can put mine and the life of my wife and daughter at risk. Personally I’d prefer it if intelligent speed assistance was made mandatory in th U.S.

50PlusCycling

When I moved to Japan some years ago, I was surprised at the variety of vehicles on the road. Go-carts (like the kind they used to race at Malibu Grand Prix), new custom roadster cars without bumpers, small motorcycles converted into 3-wheelers, and stuff like that. It turns out that in Japan, pretty much anything which has wheels and an engine can be licensed to drive on the roads. Not to mention the 660cc Kei Cars and trucks which are little more than beer cans with wheels.

Yet, Japan’s roads are reasonably safe. Japan understands something which America simply can’t grasp, that it is impossible to build a safe car. A vehicle is only as safe as the person who operates it. Japan does not focus on the car manufacturers making safer cars, Japan focuses on making safer drivers. Getting a drivers license in Japan is hard, and expensive. I had to take a an extremely long and difficult written test, with perhaps half the questions pertaining to safety, I had to take a separate driver safety course and get a CPR certification. I had to spend numerous hours behind the wheel with an instructor, and then take a very challenging driving test with an angry, gaijin-hating police officer. Getting a car license in Japan is harder than getting a class A license in America (and I should know, as I had a class A). The total cost was around $3000.

Japan’s laws are tough, according to the law there is no such thing as an “accident.” All collisions are the result of negligence, all collisions resulting in injury are considered criminal negligence. Any collision which results in a fatality results in a mandatory prison sentence for the negligent driver. Japan absolutely does not tolerate unlicensed/uninsured drivers, such people are not ticketed, they are jailed.

The result is that Japan’s traffic homicide rate is 2.7 per 100,000 people, while America’s rate is 13 per 100.000.

cb400bill

Thread moved from Foo to A&S.

PeteHski

My car knows the speed limit on any road based on both GPS mapping and road sign recognition. I get passive warnings when driving over the limit, which obviously I have never seen 😂

RubeRad

I've seen in new rental cars, they're very good at 'seeing' all the speed limit signs on the side of the road, and showing you the latest one on the dashboard. I'm not sure how it will work with signs obscured by trees, speed limits changed due to temporary construction, or the very rare situation where the safest choice is actually to speed to get out of a risky situation. (But the more everybody observes speed limits, the fewer of those there would be)

Bleu

So another incentive to keep an old car....

PeteHski

They pick up temporary construction speed limit signs. If they miss the odd obscured sign it isn’t going to be the end of the world. My current car reacts to any speed limit signs it actually sees and reverts to the GPS mapped limits if it hasn’t seen one.

This is not new tech. My 2014 Nissan had camera speed limit recognition and pretty much every satnav has mapped limits. At least here in the UK anyway.

PeteHski

They could perhaps allow an initial burst over the speed limit and then slow you back down. It doesn’t have to be a hard limit. It could be a soft limit approach where you get a warning and then a limiter cuts in to slow you down if you ignore it.

Troul 

Speeding is a byproduct from not being attentive while operating a vehicle.
fix the root cause. many are easily going 5 over, & are not even aware of it.

delbiker1 

I believe there is more to it than simply lack of focus. Most people are in big hurry and concerned mostly about themselves. That is a matter of misdirected focus. It seems the wellness of health and life, including one's self, is less important than shaving a few seconds, or minutes, off a trip in a vehicle. I also believe most people that are speeding are aware of that, most of the time.

PeteHski

That's the intention of passive speed warning systems. But as delbiker1 said, there are other reasons why people consciously speed, which is why active systems are under discussion.

Garthr

Hah hah .... speeding is byproduct of the artificiality constructed "speed limits". These "limits" are their own violations, their own "sin/sinners". The artificial construct itself is the very violation it claims to be capable of adjudicating, justifying. It's akin to a game of blame that sets forth the parameters and characteristics of the game(itself), the rules and regulations. The problem of course that all of these rules are limited in themselves(the games concept of itself), they can't account for every possible scenario that they could possibly be applied to. So more more rules are made up in the attempt to account for and predict all the possible flaws within its own self ruling. But there's no limits to the possibilities, every form of success is met with another failure. They go hand in hand. Duel-ing/dual-ing hands. One makes it, the other breaks it. Ahahahahaha !

PeteHski

Motorway speed limits may fall into this category, but urban limits are definitely required.

Trakhak

The passage you responded to reads as if it had been cribbed from a textbook for an undergraduate course in contemporary European literary criticism. I once wrote a paper for such a course, parodying some labyrinthine Foucault article, complete with punitively obscurantist prose style.

Pretty easy to do, actually, assuming you're motivated to write as incomprehensibly as possible. (One of those priests of literary criticism once boasted "There are possibly four men in the world who will understand my writing.")

Coincidentally, the argument in my paper turned on the difference (or, per Derrida, the "différance") between a given posted speed limit and the unknowable, always fluid, actual speed limit. (Which I cribbed from a Dave Barry comic piece.)

PeteHski

Yeah I noted the same, but overlooked the parody.

Chistophe516

There is something worse than not paying attention to the speedometer. All the technology in cars meant to curtail speeding. Can not control a person who either insists on, being able to talk on phone, or write things while driving.

My father(82) n' step-mother(75) have vehicles that have the ability to answer a cellphone call. They both know I detest when they call me from their respective car.

My mother(83) knows I don't like her talking on the phone while driving. So, She does something equally as egregious. She will write notes to herself, on a Post-It pad attached to the dashboard while driving 30mph+

RubeRad

Hands-free calling is a lot better than actually operating the phone directly; but most people assume there is no risk at all which is not true. Studies have shown that people talking to somebody on a hands-free call are measurably more distracted/dangerous than talking to somebody in the car.

PeteHski

Alien technology?

PeteHski

What I find amazing is the number of people who still use a cell phone in the car without a hands free connection. Even in modern cars with BT etc.

Chistophe516

Car manufacturers don't think so. They just perpetuate the problem.

Bald Paul

Exactly. It's going to be hard justifying laying out $70K or so for a Hellcat, Shelby, or SS - let alone the supercars - just so you can drive alongside Soccer Mom in her minivan. Money may allow you to buy something outrageously fast, but it doesn't get you the common sense or driving skill to handle it responsibly. If you don't believe me, just look at the number of YT videos of idiots putting innocent people's lives in danger while "roll racing" on the highways.
If they do somehow manage to restrict speed in cars, it's my hope that these same morons will turn to crotch-rockets (sport bikes). There's a much better chance of them removing themselves from the gene pool.

Alan K

Yes, aliens gave this technology to the Germans and the Japanese about 20 years ago.

I can’t remember the year with certainty when we had this in our car but I’m sure that by 2007 and later, all of them had this ability.

All alien controls are on the steering wheel (front and back) where they can be activated by a single push. We do have some numbers included in favorites that live on the hard drive of cars and they work like the speed dial, touching one button on the screen calls the number. If we get a call, depending on who it is, we might answer by a quick response saying that we are driving now and will call you when we get home. Of course, if it’s my wife asking to pick up milk or something on my way back home, I do answer, usually affirmatively.
Getting distracted for any reason while driving is not a good idea. Majority of the time, one gets away with it - lucky coincidence - but then one can’t rely on being lucky.

[Some older cars in US have included cruise control system that do more than maintain speed. If the driver in front of us slows down, the car automatically reduces the speed to maintain a certain gap (programmable by us), or if someone changes the lane and gets in front of us, alien technology does its thing. Relatively newer cars also include active accident avoidance system, pedestrian collision avoidance (and I’d assume, it will not let you run over a bicyclist - I’m not going to try and test it!). So in theory, even 10 years ago, I set the cruise control at the speed limit of the road (highway or street) with all the safety systems on, car would force me to do the right thing, despite myself. There is one really great piece of alien technology that I really like for safety - VSC (vehicle stability control). This has helped me avoid an accident a decade ago on a highway where everyone was going relatively fast (around 70-75 MPH). Apparently, there was patch of black ice and all of a sudden I started loosing control.. Fortunately, the VSC took over and kept me in my lane. Just barely made through the rough spot and saw a three car accident in the rear view mirror. Evidently, the alien technology determines that if your wheels are at 0 degree (not turned) but your car is not going straight, there is a problem with differential traction on one or more wheels, and it uses all 4 of wheels to control the car by differentially applying brakes and transfer of torque to each of the 4 wheels. The car was back in my control in no more than a second or two. I was more than adequately impressed by this technology and have never bought another car without it.]

Ultimately, it is always the lack of responsibility in one shape or another, on the part of a driver that causes accidents.