Should cars have built-in speed limit?

Truckstop said:

This is what most people get wrong. Speed doesn't kill, difference in speed does.

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I can see your point of view.

DVSentinel said:

Actually, impact with solid objects moving slower causing the release of kinetic energy kills. Sudden deceleration sickness. Speed differential just determines the amount of energy there will be there if a crash occurs. Statistically, though credited a lot, speed is actually fairly rare as the actual cause of an accident.

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Okay.

TNAR said:

I am baffled. Speed does not cause accidents so why punish the act of exceeding an arbitrary number? Speeding is a victimless crime. To claim that a person who exceeds the speed limit might harm someone is akin to claiming that a person who shoots guns might harm someone. Control and intent are required for harm. Beyond that, accidents happen. But accidents happen everywhere and cannot be legislated away.

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Really? You are baffled?

Speeding, the driver behavior of exceeding the posted speed limit or driving too fast for conditions, has consistently been shown to be a contributing factor to a significant percentage of fatal and nonfatal crashes. Between 1990 and 2006, the frequency of speeding-related (SR) fatal crashes ranged from 11,000 to 13,000 each year, and the percentage of SR total fatal crashes ranged between 30 and 33 percent according to data observed in the Fatal Analysis Reporting System (FARS)

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Summary Report: Development of a Speeding-Related Crash Typology - FHWA-HRT-10-039

2. Speeding

Everything around us is centered on the lure of quick convenience. Drive-thrus, ATMs, and corner stores are just some examples of our need for speed. But on the roadway, speed is undoubtedly deadly. Speeding is one of the most prevalent causes of car accident today according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Speeding contributes to about a third of all car accidents in America. Slow down and give yourself ample time to get where you need to go. It’s not worth saving 10 minutes for the potential of losing your life or putting another person in danger.

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Drivers.com: Top 3 Causes of Car Accidents in America

Speed Kills - The faster the speed of a vehicle, the greater the risk of an accident. The forces experienced by the human body in a collision increase exponentially as the speed increases. Smart Motorist recommends that drivers observe our 3 second rule in everyday traffic, no matter what your speed. Most people agree that going 100 mph is foolhardy and will lead to disaster. The problem is that exceeding the speed limit by only 5 mph in the wrong place can be just as dangerous. Traffic engineers and local governments have determined the maximum speeds allowable for safe travel on the nation's roadways. Speeding is a deliberate and calculated behavior where the driver knows the risk but ignores the danger. Fully 90% of all licensed drivers speed at some point in their driving career; 75% admit to committing this offense regularly.

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What Causes Car Accidents?

So speeding is not a victimless crime, it leads to many more victims with more horrific injuries. And the speeding driver does not even have to be the main reason for the accident. If you drive way faster than everyone around you, you will risk causing an accident. Even if it is purely because other people do not expect someone to be a speeding a-hole and overtake someone, which they assume is safe to do because you don't expect someone to be speeding way in excess of the maximum speed limit, only to find yourself being rear ended by someone who thinks he/she is allowed to break the speed limit.

And the level of injury is also much greater at a higher speed. Being hit by a car traveling 35 miles and hour or being rammed with 55 miles an hour makes a huge difference for your chances of survival. The same with pedestrians, if you drive 10 miles too fast, you will miss people trying to pass on a pedestrian crossing. Or if you drive 50mph in a 35mph and you miss the school kid running out behind the school bus when that child is trying to get home. With 35mph you have a chance of stopping your car or slowing down sufficiently to not cause lethal injury to said kid. Drive 50mph and you will not have time to stop and your remaining speed will most likely still be enough to cripple or kill that child.

Accident investigations all over the world find that speed is a contributing factor and often even the main factor in accidents. Saying that it is a victimless crime is just totally untrue.

Canell said:

OK, fellas, here is the issue: after having a speed limit of, let's say 80 mph, why are cars made to drive up to 140-200 mph? Obviously it would be illegal to drive beyond the speed limit.

Question: Do you think cars should have built-in electronic speed limit, i.e. the computer limits the speed of the car to what is legal to drive?

No doubt this could save thousands of lives annually and will prevent criminals from escaping the police (if we presume police cars will not have that electronic speed limit).
What do you think?

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No chance in Hell. Speed limit laws are already largely unnecessary nonsense as is.

Canell said:

OK, fellas, here is the issue: after having a speed limit of, let's say 80 mph, why are cars made to drive up to 140-200 mph? Obviously it would be illegal to drive beyond the speed limit.

Question: Do you think cars should have built-in electronic speed limit, i.e. the computer limits the speed of the car to what is legal to drive?

No doubt this could save thousands of lives annually and will prevent criminals from escaping the police (if we presume police cars will not have that electronic speed limit).
What do you think?

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It sounds reasonable. Although there will be safety issues to arise on the other side of the equation. These incidents would be very rare but would be blown out of proportion. Vehicle fatalities would be reduced as a result. I think it's a wonderful idea.

DA60 said:

Federal? No.

State? Only if the people vote for it.

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It probably isn't practical but it would be beneficial if a state could try it out first. Most federal laws result from successful state laws. For example the Affordable Care Act was successful in Massachusetts under the leadership of Governor Mitt Romney. If it wouldn't have been successful in Massachusetts first, it would have never been attempted by the federal government.

Jerry said:

You slow down, pull off the road, stop, and take aim.

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What if they have guns?

Where on earth do people get the idea that computers are infallible or even smarter than people ? Anyone running Windows knows exactly what happens when a computer or an application encounters a situation it's not programmed for : it crashes; i.e. it gives up, it doesn't know what to do, it's clueless. That is because contrary to humans it has no intelligence. No software is infallible and it has been mathematically proven that any non-trivial software necessarily has bugs. A road control system would be no exception to this rule. And anyone who's on the road a lot knows that cars can make the most bizarre moves in case of unusual circumstances or accidents. A computer system that controls cars would have to have a rule for each and every one of these possibilities. What would your computer controlled car do when another car comes sliding towards you from an angle of 60° at 60mph ? Most likely nothing at all because it would have no rule covering that occurrence (if only for economical reason because a system that would cover every possibility would be prohibitively expensive). A single accident might thus cascade in a general carnage. Yes, there are a lot of bad drivers out there but computers would be even worse at the job.

Other than that, any system that is network connected is hackable, simple as that. It's just a matter of how much time, effort and resources a would-be hacker is prepared to put into it. I can imagine that in this day and age certain groups, organizations and even countries would be more than motivated to gain access to this system in order to create havoc.

Even apart from the political implications it's just plain stupid to give more and more control of our lives to computers. It's we who are homo sapiens sapiens, computers are no more intelligent than a washing machine. Before anyone accuses me of being a Luddite, I have four computers in front of me with 5 different OS'es in total; two Linux boxes, a Vista and a dual boot Windows 7/8. It's because I know how shabbily software is designed these days that I wouldn't entrust them with anything really important such as driving a car.

anyone that would vote for this enjoys being treated like cattle

Canell said:

OK, fellas, here is the issue: after having a speed limit of, let's say 80 mph, why are cars made to drive up to 140-200 mph? Obviously it would be illegal to drive beyond the speed limit.

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Because the speed limit of the road has nothing to do with the desires of the car company to build a car that goes faster than 80 mph or their customers that wants a car that goes faster than 80 mph.

TNAR said:

I am baffled. Speed does not cause accidents...

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If speed doesn't cause accidents why not remove speed limit altogether?

Canell said:

If speed doesn't cause accidents why not remove speed limit altogether?

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Outside of city limits - fine with me.

Much of the German autobahn's have no speed limits and their death per mile driven is much lower then American highway's.

Speed does not kill - bad driving does.

You can kill someone walking through a crosswalk at 10-20 miles an hour.

Woi said:

Where on earth do people get the idea that computers are infallible or even smarter than people ?

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Europe. :lol: Welcome to the forum.

Woi said:

Other than that, any system that is network connected is hackable, simple as that.

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No, the idea is about autonomous speed limit, not some centralized control over your vehicle. You try to go faster than (let's say) 80 mph and the car says "Oh, no, you are not doing that, no matter how hard you punch it to the metal!". That's about it.

I think a dent to the problem would be made by creating cars that would decelerate the vehicle once it enters something like a school zone. GPS would detect a vehicle entering a low speed zone and simultaneously slow the vehicle down to the correct speed. It's a start that doesn't require tinkering with laws or zoning changes and would still leave room for drivers to drive as fast they want on highways etc. I don't think it would be too much of a hassle to link the GPS to the car's accelerator with more and more functions in cars becoming computerized. It would be avoidable by buying an older car, but that's more than unlikely. If cars have taught us anything is that people will buy them regardless of how much safety is stuffed into them.

No of course not. Sometimes I want to get home and take a dump and the speed limit shouldn't stand in the way of that. Who on Earth would vote yes except some liberals who can't control their behavior.

I vote no. If the apocalypse happens and I need to outrun it, 200mph might be necessary.

Hatuey said:

I think a dent to the problem would be made by creating cars that would decelerate the vehicle once it enters something like a school zone. GPS would detect a vehicle entering a low speed zone and simultaneously slow the vehicle down to the correct speed. It's a start that doesn't require tinkering with laws or zoning changes and would still leave room for drivers to drive as fast they want on highways etc. I don't think it would be too much of a hassle to link the GPS to the car's accelerator with more and more functions in cars becoming computerized. It would be avoidable by buying an older car, but that's more than unlikely. If cars have taught us anything is that people will buy them regardless of how much safety is stuffed into them.

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What you are talking about is the top of a probably very slippery slope.

So they force you to slow down for school zones? What's next? Hospitals, parks, retirement homes, residential neighbourhoods, etc..

One nationally advertised death at any of these other areas of someone helpless and the call will go out for mandating cars to slow down in these zones.

And what about time of day?

So every time at 11 p.m. I pass a school zone I have to slow down?

And what if there is a malfunction and the car does not slow down BUT the driver assumes it does because it always has before and goes plowing into some kids?


Just put a speed bump in those areas.

They have them where I live and - trust me - you slow down going through those areas.

DA60 said:

What you are talking about is the top of a probably very slippery slope.

So they force you to slow down for school zones? What's next? Hospitals, parks, retirement homes, residential neighbourhoods, etc..

One nationally advertised death at any of these other areas of someone helpless and the call will go out for mandating cars to slow down in these zones.

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I fail to see a reason why cars shouldn't be forced to slow down in those zones...

And what about time of day?

So every time at 11 p.m. I pass a school zone I have to slow down?

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I don't see why time wouldn't be included as a factor for speed in such a system. It's not as if GPS systems can't handle time right.

And what if there is a malfunction and the car does not slow down BUT the driver assumes it does because it always has before and goes plowing into some kids?

Just put a speed bump in those areas.

They have them where I live and - trust me - you slow down going through those areas.

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I'm guessing you don't have GPS in your vehicle or any sort of computerized system. However, I can assure you that if a motorized vehicle with some sort of computerized system has a failure, the system will give you a warning.

Hatuey said:

I fail to see a reason why cars shouldn't be forced to slow down in those zones...



I don't see why time wouldn't be included as a factor for speed in such a system. It's not as if GPS systems can't handle time right.



I'm guessing you don't have GPS in your vehicle or any sort of computerized system. However, I can assure you that if a motorized vehicle with some sort of computerized system has a failure, the system will give you a warning.

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True about the time feature.

Not a car failure - a failure in the signal sent to the car at the location. The car would not warn you - it would just keep on going.


And tell me why a speed bump would not work at least as well?

It works every, single time...guaranteed.

And all it requires is a few lumps of concrete bolted to the pavement.

Cheap and simple for as long as you want.

DA60 said:

Outside of city limits - fine with me.

Much of the German autobahn's have no speed limits and their death per mile driven is much lower then American highway's.

Speed does not kill - bad driving does.

You can kill someone walking through a crosswalk at 10-20 miles an hour.

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The problem is that higher speed demands ever more qualified drivers.

And at least here in the US, I don't think the driver standards are anywhere near that high.

humbolt said:

Okay.

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The way I put it, I guess it does sound a bit flippant, but actually, it is not. Once that very concept was understood, vehicles became safer through the use of flex materials, crumple zones, break-away parts, etc.

Take and punch a wall/something solid with your fist. This is how cars used to be. The same energy at the bumper at impact was imparted to the passengers.

Now put on a boxing/sparring glove or put a piece of foam on the object and then punch it again. This is how cars are designed today. The speed is the same. The energy at the point of impact is the same. But, the energy of the impact at the bumper is not the energy felt by the passengers.

So I only read the first 3 pages so far.

Road rage is a big...dangerous...problem. What do people think would happen when 2 idiots got into it and got to the 'state/fed' maximum speed and couldnt pass each other or were going head to head down road? I think it would be more infuriating and cause more conflicts and once in road-rage mode....possibly get even more innocent drivers killed.

Or not.

Lursa said:

Or not.

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Nope. If idiot number one drives at 80 mph and idiot number two is behind him driving 80 mph how could idiot number two ever reach idiot number one? They will just drive one after the other ad infinitum.

Not if both idiots start out next to each other pissing each other off or attempting to pass and then going head to head down the road. Recipe for disaster.

Lursa said:

Not if both idiots start out next to each other pissing each other off or attempting to pass and then going head to head down the road. Recipe for disaster.

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Following the same logic, they could eventually race against each other (if cars don't have built-in speed limit) to 100+mph, than slam into the next traffic light killing a dozen of people. What's the chance of having two muscle cars with the same power?

Thus, in your case, the one that has more torque will be first when reaching 80 mph and the other will have to follow, as already described. Case solved.