• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Should cars have built-in speed limit?

Do you think cars should have built-in electronic speed limit

  • Yes, all cars ecxept "special" ones (police, swat, etc.)

    Votes: 11 11.5%
  • No

    Votes: 76 79.2%
  • I don't know

    Votes: 2 2.1%
  • Other

    Votes: 7 7.3%

  • Total voters
    96
pragmatist, adult Helix : we'd be a lot better off if cars just drove themselves and were controlled by a central travel computer. example : next time you're stuck at a stoplight, watch how inefficient it is. drivers only take their foot off of the brake when the car in front of them does. imagine how much time would be saved if every car started moving forward the second the light turned green. i think that we're heading in this direction. we also need a lot more public transportation.

summary of the double Helix :

And the NSA is in the news almost daily for snooping into peoples computers. Hackers are routinely breaking into systems and stealing data. Viruses are routine on microsoft systems and can do anything from crippling them to only monitoring them. How many denial of service attacks have there been in the last decade? etc, etc.

And people want to give control of driving to computers? Yeah, right. Not me.
 
it's almost certainly a done deal. we can't build enough roads to ease congestion right now; much less in the future. there is not enough public support for high speed rail. the solution is to run packs of cars close together, and to have a central system controlling the flow of traffic. i would be very surprised if we don't start moving towards this model.

Along with that model will require the public to buy a new car and junk the older model.

You can't have computer controlled cars on the same roads with human driven cars.

It sounds like it is still a long way off.

I remember back in the '90s it was being experimented with and we are now in 2014 and still nothing.
 
Those who drive too slow and are too dense to make sound decisions on the road, i.e. gauge traffic appropriately, worry me almost as much as those who are driving aggressively and too fast. Learning how to maneuver around both is key, always expecting the unexpected.
A very good point: slow drivers. Will these speed controllers keep the car above the minimum speed limit too? Will the car detect traffic flow and keep the car at a relative speed?
 
European cars are much better:



Are you speaking from personal experience or from what other people have told you?

How many of the cars in those videos have you owned and driven?
 
A very good point: slow drivers. Will these speed controllers keep the car above the minimum speed limit too? Will the car detect traffic flow and keep the car at a relative speed?

Many more accidents happen at low speeds than high speeds.

If the goal is to eliminate accidents, something should be done about slow drivers.
 
Are you speaking from personal experience or from what other people have told you?

How many of the cars in those videos have you owned and driven?

Well I've been to Europe and seen some of these and lost of people have those horrible muscle cars around where and they are always ugly and they sound horrible.
 
Along with that model will require the public to buy a new car and junk the older model.

You can't have computer controlled cars on the same roads with human driven cars.

It sounds like it is still a long way off.

I remember back in the '90s it was being experimented with and we are now in 2014 and still nothing.

Ironically, I saw a detailed show on this a week or so ago.

It is a long way off for total vehicle control.

Now it requires perfectly clear weather and uses the lines in the road.

Rain, fog, snow, and obscured roads will not allow the current systems to work.

Sunlight and reflections from other items can also cause issues with the current systems.
 
Ironically, I saw a detailed show on this a week or so ago.

It is a long way off for total vehicle control.

Now it requires perfectly clear weather and uses the lines in the road.

Rain, fog, snow, and obscured roads will not allow the current systems to work.

Sunlight and reflections from other items can also cause issues with the current systems.

Ok so with that in mind this system will be able to be used on the Los Angeles freeways about 300 days of the year if the constantly paint new lines on the road.

That doesn't sound feasible.
 
Are you speaking from personal experience or from what other people have told you?

How many of the cars in those videos have you owned and driven?

The brash power from 1970 muscle cars was fantastic!

They were classics, and many are in very high demand today.

I really miss the ones that I owned......
 
Well I've been to Europe and seen some of these and lost of people have those horrible muscle cars around where and they are always ugly and they sound horrible.

So you have no personal experience. That is what I thought.

I have owned hundreds of American cars and I can tell you I would never want to drive a Ferrari or a Lambo. I just don't see the point. I like the fillings in my teeth to stay where they are.
 
And the NSA is in the news almost daily for snooping into peoples computers. Hackers are routinely breaking into systems and stealing data. Viruses are routine on microsoft systems and can do anything from crippling them to only monitoring them. How many denial of service attacks have there been in the last decade? etc, etc.

And people want to give control of driving to computers? Yeah, right. Not me.

yep, that's a real risk, as is having pretty much everything connected to a network. i mean, ****, we destroyed an Iranian nuclear facility from across the world, and actually let them have the virus. our entire financial system is online. our voting is electronic. pretty much everything is hackable.

still, the cars will eventually be centrally controlled, at least on the big highways that have a lot of problems. probably the way it will work is that we will manually drive on surface streets to freeway entry points, where the cars will be lined up and sent onto the roads in groups of five. overall speed will be adjusted to match road conditions. the big problem will be legal; can you imagine the lawsuit when someone dies in an accident that they had no control over? that's probably the biggest reason it hasn't happened yet. Car and Driver has been predicting this system since i was a teenager.
 
Many more accidents happen at low speeds than high speeds.

If the goal is to eliminate accidents, something should be done about slow drivers.
Toyota-Supra-dual-NOS-Nitrous-system.jpg

Problem = solved.
 
So you have no personal experience. That is what I thought.

I have owned hundreds of American cars and I can tell you I would never want to drive a Ferrari or a Lambo. I just don't see the point. I like the fillings in my teeth to stay where they are.

I have been a passenger in one never driven one mainly because I don't drive currently and don't plan to for a long time. American cars are not nice to look at or be around really.
 
Um, you know that there is a set top speed in most production cars, right? And that there are programmers available to alter or disable it? It's just a function within the engine controller.

The speed to which such limiters are set is not based on legal speed limits, but on the designer's opinions about how fast that car is designed to be safely drivable. It's not unreasonable to suppose that the engineers who design a car are capable of judging how fast that car can safely go, and to build in safety features to prevent it from exceeding that limit.

It's an entirely different thing to suppose that these engineers are qualified or have a duty to function as law enforcement officers.
 
The brash power from 1970 muscle cars was fantastic!

They were classics, and many are in very high demand today.

I really miss the ones that I owned......

I still have my first car which is very much like the one in my avatar.

I would rather buy a 1970 Mustang or even a Falcon over a Fiat or any car made in Europe from the last century.

Here in Mexico I just saw a 1975 Fiat X-19 for sale and the guy wants like $15,000 dollars for it. I just laughed. What a horrible car that was, and I had a few.

As for the new cars, I don't really care. The are disposable and made to take you to work.

There is nothing exciting out there and my cars will be on the road long after all the new cars are in the junk yard.

There is no incentive to fix or restore a newer car as the cost is prohibitive with all the computer systems, so they will be junked.
 
It is the same thing.

The governor shuts down the engine at a certain speed.
I would guess a controller would do the same.




Wrong.

Governors control the flow of fuel to an engine for the purpose of regulating the engines speed.

The speed controllers that we are talking about would control the speed of motor vehicles with some type of linkage to the accelerator.
 
Ok so with that in mind this system will be able to be used on the Los Angeles freeways about 300 days of the year if the constantly paint new lines on the road.

That doesn't sound feasible.

The technology is still in infancy.

Nissan did have a neat package where the car would find a spot in a parking lot and park itself.

It also requires a 4G connection:

 
yep, that's a real risk, as is having pretty much everything connected to a network. i mean, ****, we destroyed an Iranian nuclear facility from across the world, and actually let them have the virus. our entire financial system is online. our voting is electronic. pretty much everything is hackable.

still, the cars will eventually be centrally controlled, at least on the big highways that have a lot of problems. probably the way it will work is that we will manually drive on surface streets to freeway entry points, where the cars will be lined up and sent onto the roads in groups of five. overall speed will be adjusted to match road conditions. the big problem will be legal; can you imagine the lawsuit when someone dies in an accident that they had no control over? that's probably the biggest reason it hasn't happened yet. Car and Driver has been predicting this system since i was a teenager.

What happens at 3 in the morning when there are not 5 cars to put together?

Will the car be smart enough to drive itself?

There are so many questions to be answered.
 
probably the way it will work is that we will manually drive on surface streets to freeway entry points, where the cars will be lined up and sent onto the roads in groups of five.
We're not all from the big city...I might be siting there for a while waiting for 4 other people to show up.
 
Aside from a car parking itself, driving long distance quite more than I like to, I often wish cars would be programmable so that you could just sit, relax and arrive at your destination refreshed and ready to go, instead of red eyed, tense and exhausted.
 
Wrong.

Governors control the flow of fuel to an engine for the purpose of regulating the engines speed.

The speed controllers that we are talking about would control the speed of motor vehicles with some type of linkage to the accelerator.

Why wouldn't they control it the same way?

Controlling the linkage, which doesn't exist anymore, wouldn't control speed. Too many factors would have to be taken into account like hills or downgrades.
 
Back
Top Bottom