Will Speed Limits Inhibit Autonomous Car Adoption?

Maximum Prophet writes "Here's a thought: at the start, only rich people will be able to pay for a completely autonomous car. Auto-autos will only go the speed limit. Rich people don't like to go slow. Ergo, there won't be any market for automatic cars. Wait, I hear you say. The rich guy will just modify his car to go faster. But, if you go over the limit it's a fine, but to mess with the safety systems of even your own vehicle is probably a felony. Much more likely: the rich will get new laws passed to make it legal for automatic cars to go much, much faster than human-driven vehicles."

Comments

Boy, this gets absurd quickly

[whitroth]

a) Of course the rich will arrange for the laws to be written to their benefit. None of you are out in the streets, or in your rep's office complaining. We did *that* in the sixties and seventies, and it worked.
b) Ten years later, everyone will. Direct example: GPS
c) You might make better time *anyway*, since i) autodriving cars will move the fuck over out of the passing lane except to
              pass, so that the idiot driving 5 mph *under* the speed limit in the left lane won't be there, and ii) they'll all be doing
              the speed limit
d) Politics: Obama, a bolshevik? ROTFLMAO!!!!! Sorry, had to pick myself up off the floor. Try "Eisenhower Republican".
            And, of course, anyone who thinks he's a bolshevik is *obviously* a fascist, and since you probably want "illegal
            aliens"* to be rounded up and put in internment camps, along with all Muslims and gays, your attitudes and opinions
            are literally indistinguishable from Nazism.
e) The political yelling may now end, thanks to Godwin's Law, and you may go back to discussing self-driving cars.

                        mark, actual leftist, and proud of it

* You'd send Mr. Spock to the camp, too, until Scotty beamed him out.