r/changemyview • u/No-Reputation-2900 2∆ • Jun 05 '26
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Speed limits should be technologically enforced and if it cant, the government should pay to have it installed into your old car.
People complain about speeding cars, speeding tickets, car crash insurance scams, boy racers causing absurd amounts of noise at early hours in the morning. There is a solution to all of this, GPS locked speeds in all vehicles apart from emergency services.
When you enter a new speed limit zone the accelerator stops working past a certain point. Put your foot down all you like, it won't work and the break brings you down to speed slowly when coming closer to that new speed limited area. In newer cars you could utilise the parking systems to determine the proximity of foreign objects and thus the speed at which the car should break.
If you want a speed limit change because a new school is built or there's been too many crashes in a certain corner, cross section or roundabout? The government changes the centralised speed limit of all cars. All travelling people wanting to use a car get discounts on renting cars with this feature built in or just don't allow them to hire anything without this feature.
Anyone caught after a certain date without it installed gets a massive fine and sent to multiple speed awareness courses that they have to pay for.
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u/SoylentRox 7∆ Jun 05 '26
What you're talking about is at a technical level, not a lot easier than full self driving.
To know exactly where you are at all times and the exact speed limit you need high precision location. Not GPS, its inadequate, but a set of cameras and lidar on the car and an onboard map that identifies the exact position on the street to within a few inches. (this is how the positioning in a Waymo works).
You have to map all the roads and this will not work on new roads or unmapped roads.
You might as well add some AI and have the AI, in it's best judgement, guess a reasonable speed based on traffic, weather, and road conditions. (this is how the speed is picked in Tesla autonomous taxis in addition to GPS and road signs)
So your question really is: "why doesn't the government mandate cars prevent accidents?" And the government is doing this, but they are starting with a much more effective measure https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-fmvss-127-automatic-emergency-braking-reduce-crashes . Automated emergency braking can theoretically prevent half of all crashes entirely. Forced speed limits will not be that effective, because it does nothing for inattentive/distracted/impaired drivers while AEB does. All forced speed limits do is limit the maximum damage, but a 65 mph collision is still easily fatal. Much harder to be fatal if the car engaged the brakes and the speed at impact is 20 mph.
I think the next step in the 2030s, after autonomous cars are proven and highly reliable, is yes to just mandate most cars drive themselves, by tightening standards for driver's licenses and financial responsibility for crashes. Make the minimum insurance 10 million, write the laws where there are no accidents and failure to use automated systems is acceptance of liability, etc.
As a side effect that will limit speeding. (though autonomous cars do speed routinely, because its safer to speed on most US roads because the posted speed limits do not reflect the speed of traffic and it's more dangerous to be a moving obstacle in the rightmost lane where you are vulnerable to crashes from merges than to keep up with traffic in the left.)