I suppose it never occurred to this airhead that if she left 5 min earlier, she'd get her kids to school on time. Or if she rammed another car one of her spawn might be injured.
As someone who primarily gets around town on an ebike, I appreciate this: "Other vehicles—e-scooters and e-bikes—already have speed limiters, so there is no principle that a vehicle lacking a speed limiter is a right."
I am firmly opposed to a limiter as described. Currently most US vehicles are limited to 135 mph. That is good. What is not good is a situational limiter occurring 10 mph over the speed limit. The most obvious, misgauging the distance or closure of oncoming traffic. Acceleration above 10 mph may be the only safe option. Another I see is the GPS based speed display using the speed limit of adjacent access road versus the freeway—maybe even abruptly. The tech and the infrastructure simply aren’t there. What would help is a visual and audio cue alerting the driver.
Why is 135MPH as the limit even remotely sane? Where in America can you legally drive anywhere close to that on public roads? Honestly, it should cap out at 90 or 95, at most.
I get regular police updates for my town, and you'd be surprised how many people get pulled over going 100+ on a 45MPH road. Is there any circumstance where that's acceptable?
I do agree that context-dependant GPS systems are likely too spotty to be effective, though. But a lower universal limit seems like it should be a hard requirement, full stop.
I absolutely agree that we need a reframing of traffic law that's based around the premise that the public square is for _people_ and when you operate a car within it you do so as a secondary user with obligations you must meet and if you can't or won't then you don't drive.
I don't know about the governors themselves to have an informed opinion on how well they work, but my intuition is that yes, just like requiring significant restrictions on how guns are used, we should have stringent built in processes for keeping cars accountable.
I don't have a strong sense that it needs to be manually disengagable, but I guess if we accept that it can then it should be something that has be be done manually, ideally every time you start a car, and there should probably be some external indicator that you're doing it. Plus of course some legal framework that makes the abuse of this feature an additional liability over and above any actual damages. I don't *like* relying on harsh laws for stuff like this, but I think the weightiness of the situation needs something and this is unfortunately all our society seems to listen to on stuff like this.
I see two types of speed limiters. A generic one that says a vehicle can not go more than 80 mph, or some top speed like.
The other that a lot of urbanists have in mind is one that doesn't let you speed on the road you're on. At this in point, that's fantasy. It seems simple but is incredibly complex.
Railroads Positive Train Control ( PTC ) is the latter sort of limiter. If you speed, it'll slow the train back down. Implementing this for RRs was far simpler for RRs than it would be for a complex road network.
Could it be done? Sure. Can it be done anytime soon. Nope.
I was writing about this last week and the most reasonable pushback I heard was around technical limitations. (1) Creating and maintaining a database of speed limits. And (2) the efficacy of GPS devices -- mostly in the case of being on a highway vs an adjacent feeder road with different speed limits.
From a purely technical perspective, I don't think either are barriers. But there's probably organizational problems depending on who's responsible. A million years ago I worked at Lyft and there was a project to identify and represent all toll roads everywhere the company operated (drivers are reimbursed for any tolls they go through on an active trip). That wasn't technically hard, but it relied on a data ops function to get done. I don't know that any state governments have that set of organizational competencies.
The GPS issue is probably a matter of getting manufactures to install hardware of sufficient quality. A consumer app with location access can roughly tell what floor of a building you're on from your mobile device, so I think that's doable (but not a hardware guy, so could be wrong). I'd imagine here the challenge would be getting car companies to comply with the spirit and not just the letter of the law (ie not installing something that's cheaper and doesn't work well, but that meets compliance standards).
Mr. Fong, check out the difficulties RRs had in implementing PTC, a limit for the spot in the road they're on. It turned out to be far more difficult than anticipated. And it's an easy problem compare to our road network.
Yeah, sounds like technical limitations are probably the real barrier.
AVs for vehicle for hire already function like this, so as they expand in service area and we roll out other autonomous vehicles, I think this just happens as a natural consequence.
I like your open thinking on this. Some of my thoughts as I read you:
- being able to accelerate beyond the safe limit to avoid a mishap is a good driving tool to have. So maybe a governor that inhibits surpassing a speeding threshold after ~5 seconds might address that... but that cuts against the prevention of using the car as a weapon.
- Camera- or other sensor-based speed traps, with automated fine structure? Obtaining a driver's license includes a retainer to cover fines, failure to replenish revokes the license? I mean we have tech diversity, and limited application of disable-able speed governors can be part of a larger set of constraints.
- "My freedom is worth more than other people’s lives" is kind of a general problem in contemporary culture. The original premise of civilization was that we relinquish some freedom to gain access to shared benefits. The bizarre pseudo-philosophy of freedom is anti-intellectual, since physical existence is wholly dependent on a balance of constraining factors, such as air pressure, temperature range, available breathable air, water+food+shelter, etc. Layers of technologies, many already present for decades or centuries, have created the illusion for recipients that we are independent of these things, but it's not so.
Throughout civilized cultures, the individual always retains the feral option, though usually more implicitly than explicitly. Since new generations either relearn what previous ones learned or fail to learn reasoning behind the conventions instituted at any given period, there is no permanent solution possible in any case. But disengagement is dangerous at all times, and hyper-technologized automated lives are force disengagement on participants, usually without appropriate disclosure.
Sometimes I wonder if that's the great challenge of modern philosophical big-L Liberalism (i.e., post-Enlightenment ideals). In past generations, we were heavily constrained by nature, effectively in the childhood of our species. In the last couple centuries, it's like we're in college. Living free and easy, no rules, partying it up all the time with no restrictions. We're in the Adolescence of our species. And pretty soon the long hangover of Adulthood will hit us like a truck. I think much of the coming centuries will be a slow maturation process, as we learn to realize how to use our new freedoms responsibly before they get us into real trouble.
I'm increasingly leaning towards "every car on the road should have a transponder registered with the state, and that we track liberally and use for automatic traffic law enforcement."
I get that there are legitimate security concerns around this that will be hard to address, but like the status quo is letting 40k people die and many times more get maimed every year. And the small government part of my brain hates this as Big Brother, but like our autocentrism is already Big Government and we can't put that back in the box, so since we've committed I think we have to do it right.
Plus, there are plenty of positives for having a reliable system of transponders that can't be avoided like license plates are: tolls and parking could be more seamless, we could automate congestion and VMT processing that aligns costs with actual usage, and it seems like there are ways to improve our traffic enforcement to avoid the current adversarial stopping paradigm if you can reliably tag something to a specific car's record easily.
Agreed, but would add that the status quo is that we all already carry around transponders that are tracked liberally, registered with the state, and used for automated traffic updates. But we have no power over the companies doing it! I'd rather it be done by government, where there is at least (the possibility of) accountability.
Not that I break the law.. but i break the law? So weird.
It's just one of those silly fake laws, like mattress tags or usury.
Let me state up front that I’m a hypocrite.
I agree with your assessment even though I’m someone who routinely exceeds posted speed limits.
I confess that I’m not a fan of speed bumps, single lane city streets, red light or speed cameras.
Unfortunately, it’s the price we drivers will have to pay to reduce the carnage on our streets and roads.
I suppose it never occurred to this airhead that if she left 5 min earlier, she'd get her kids to school on time. Or if she rammed another car one of her spawn might be injured.
As someone who primarily gets around town on an ebike, I appreciate this: "Other vehicles—e-scooters and e-bikes—already have speed limiters, so there is no principle that a vehicle lacking a speed limiter is a right."
I am firmly opposed to a limiter as described. Currently most US vehicles are limited to 135 mph. That is good. What is not good is a situational limiter occurring 10 mph over the speed limit. The most obvious, misgauging the distance or closure of oncoming traffic. Acceleration above 10 mph may be the only safe option. Another I see is the GPS based speed display using the speed limit of adjacent access road versus the freeway—maybe even abruptly. The tech and the infrastructure simply aren’t there. What would help is a visual and audio cue alerting the driver.
Why is 135MPH as the limit even remotely sane? Where in America can you legally drive anywhere close to that on public roads? Honestly, it should cap out at 90 or 95, at most.
I get regular police updates for my town, and you'd be surprised how many people get pulled over going 100+ on a 45MPH road. Is there any circumstance where that's acceptable?
I do agree that context-dependant GPS systems are likely too spotty to be effective, though. But a lower universal limit seems like it should be a hard requirement, full stop.
I absolutely agree that we need a reframing of traffic law that's based around the premise that the public square is for _people_ and when you operate a car within it you do so as a secondary user with obligations you must meet and if you can't or won't then you don't drive.
I don't know about the governors themselves to have an informed opinion on how well they work, but my intuition is that yes, just like requiring significant restrictions on how guns are used, we should have stringent built in processes for keeping cars accountable.
I don't have a strong sense that it needs to be manually disengagable, but I guess if we accept that it can then it should be something that has be be done manually, ideally every time you start a car, and there should probably be some external indicator that you're doing it. Plus of course some legal framework that makes the abuse of this feature an additional liability over and above any actual damages. I don't *like* relying on harsh laws for stuff like this, but I think the weightiness of the situation needs something and this is unfortunately all our society seems to listen to on stuff like this.
My issue is feasibility. Does it not imply making every speed limit sign a radio transmitter?
I think speed cameras make more sense.
I see two types of speed limiters. A generic one that says a vehicle can not go more than 80 mph, or some top speed like.
The other that a lot of urbanists have in mind is one that doesn't let you speed on the road you're on. At this in point, that's fantasy. It seems simple but is incredibly complex.
Railroads Positive Train Control ( PTC ) is the latter sort of limiter. If you speed, it'll slow the train back down. Implementing this for RRs was far simpler for RRs than it would be for a complex road network.
Could it be done? Sure. Can it be done anytime soon. Nope.
I was writing about this last week and the most reasonable pushback I heard was around technical limitations. (1) Creating and maintaining a database of speed limits. And (2) the efficacy of GPS devices -- mostly in the case of being on a highway vs an adjacent feeder road with different speed limits.
From a purely technical perspective, I don't think either are barriers. But there's probably organizational problems depending on who's responsible. A million years ago I worked at Lyft and there was a project to identify and represent all toll roads everywhere the company operated (drivers are reimbursed for any tolls they go through on an active trip). That wasn't technically hard, but it relied on a data ops function to get done. I don't know that any state governments have that set of organizational competencies.
The GPS issue is probably a matter of getting manufactures to install hardware of sufficient quality. A consumer app with location access can roughly tell what floor of a building you're on from your mobile device, so I think that's doable (but not a hardware guy, so could be wrong). I'd imagine here the challenge would be getting car companies to comply with the spirit and not just the letter of the law (ie not installing something that's cheaper and doesn't work well, but that meets compliance standards).
Mr. Fong, check out the difficulties RRs had in implementing PTC, a limit for the spot in the road they're on. It turned out to be far more difficult than anticipated. And it's an easy problem compare to our road network.
Yeah, sounds like technical limitations are probably the real barrier.
AVs for vehicle for hire already function like this, so as they expand in service area and we roll out other autonomous vehicles, I think this just happens as a natural consequence.
I like your open thinking on this. Some of my thoughts as I read you:
- being able to accelerate beyond the safe limit to avoid a mishap is a good driving tool to have. So maybe a governor that inhibits surpassing a speeding threshold after ~5 seconds might address that... but that cuts against the prevention of using the car as a weapon.
- Camera- or other sensor-based speed traps, with automated fine structure? Obtaining a driver's license includes a retainer to cover fines, failure to replenish revokes the license? I mean we have tech diversity, and limited application of disable-able speed governors can be part of a larger set of constraints.
- "My freedom is worth more than other people’s lives" is kind of a general problem in contemporary culture. The original premise of civilization was that we relinquish some freedom to gain access to shared benefits. The bizarre pseudo-philosophy of freedom is anti-intellectual, since physical existence is wholly dependent on a balance of constraining factors, such as air pressure, temperature range, available breathable air, water+food+shelter, etc. Layers of technologies, many already present for decades or centuries, have created the illusion for recipients that we are independent of these things, but it's not so.
Throughout civilized cultures, the individual always retains the feral option, though usually more implicitly than explicitly. Since new generations either relearn what previous ones learned or fail to learn reasoning behind the conventions instituted at any given period, there is no permanent solution possible in any case. But disengagement is dangerous at all times, and hyper-technologized automated lives are force disengagement on participants, usually without appropriate disclosure.
Sometimes I wonder if that's the great challenge of modern philosophical big-L Liberalism (i.e., post-Enlightenment ideals). In past generations, we were heavily constrained by nature, effectively in the childhood of our species. In the last couple centuries, it's like we're in college. Living free and easy, no rules, partying it up all the time with no restrictions. We're in the Adolescence of our species. And pretty soon the long hangover of Adulthood will hit us like a truck. I think much of the coming centuries will be a slow maturation process, as we learn to realize how to use our new freedoms responsibly before they get us into real trouble.
I'm increasingly leaning towards "every car on the road should have a transponder registered with the state, and that we track liberally and use for automatic traffic law enforcement."
I get that there are legitimate security concerns around this that will be hard to address, but like the status quo is letting 40k people die and many times more get maimed every year. And the small government part of my brain hates this as Big Brother, but like our autocentrism is already Big Government and we can't put that back in the box, so since we've committed I think we have to do it right.
Plus, there are plenty of positives for having a reliable system of transponders that can't be avoided like license plates are: tolls and parking could be more seamless, we could automate congestion and VMT processing that aligns costs with actual usage, and it seems like there are ways to improve our traffic enforcement to avoid the current adversarial stopping paradigm if you can reliably tag something to a specific car's record easily.
Agreed, but would add that the status quo is that we all already carry around transponders that are tracked liberally, registered with the state, and used for automated traffic updates. But we have no power over the companies doing it! I'd rather it be done by government, where there is at least (the possibility of) accountability.
The state always knows where you are? That's a problem.