Slashdot Mirror
EU Proposes To Fit Cars With Speed Limiters
schwit1 points out a new EU road safety measure to fit cars with devices that would stop them going over 70mph. "Under the proposals new cars would be fitted with cameras that could read road speed limit signs and automatically apply the brakes when this is exceeded. Patrick McLoughlin, the Transport Secretary, is said to be opposed to the plans, which could also mean existing cars are sent to garages to be fitted with the speed limiters, preventing them from going over 70mph. The new measures have been announced by the European Commission's Mobility and Transport Department as a measure to reduce the 30,000 people who die on the roads in Europe every year. A Government source told the Mail on Sunday Mr McLoughlin had instructed officials to block the move because they 'violated' motorists' freedom. They said: 'This has Big Brother written all over it and is exactly the sort of thing that gets people's backs up about Brussels.'"
My Navigator knows the speed limit and gongs if I pass it, why not just link it with the maximum speed of the cruise control in the same fucking computer?
I'd pay for that, since it would save me many tickets.
. . . a different one than the one where Germany is a member . . . ? Because that EU isn't going to put any speed limits on the German Autobahns. Actually, nobody else is either.
That is about as likely as the NRA leading a campaign to repeal the Second Amendment to the US Constitution (the right to bear arms).
Germans like their cars, like Americans like their weapons. That's an actual SAT analogy question.
And they like to drive them very fast.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
That is the wrong kind of thinking. My point is that rigidly enforcing speed limits (which in itself may indeed constitute some local optimum value) does not necessarily improve road safety. While it may be good to set a speed limit of 100km/h on a certain road, it might make little sense to ding people for doing 104 (the current threshold here in NL) or even 114. I recently had the opportunity to observe the difference between a loosely interpreted and tightly interpreted speed limit, thanks to the police doing daily and highly visible speed checks on a road I drive over for my daily commute. Before the checks, a few people might do 90 on that road, most more or less stuck to the limit of 100, while a few did 110 in the fast lane, with a very small minority doing over 120. In this case, traffic flows smoothly, merging and overtaking was easy as well. But when the cops started their speed trap, people kept to the limit of 100kmh religiously. In busy traffic the result was that changing lanes became much more difficult, traffic flowed much less smoothly, and with everyone closely matching each other's speed, they had a tendency to drive too close together as well. In this case, rigidly keeping to the speed limit actually decreases traffic safety.
Making a speed limiter mandatory has the following downsides:
- It imposes a cost on vehicle owners
- It removes our freedom to exceed the speed limit if conditions and circumstances allow (and as I have argued, that speed limit is a means (and a crappy one at that), not an end.
- It introduces an additional point of failure into vehicles, and a potentially dangerous one at that.
The burden of proof is on the state in this case: proof that the upside (increased traffic safety, not adherence to the law) outweighs the downsides. Given the current statistics on traffic fatalities, I have serious doubts about the effectiveness of this proposal. Even the best case scenario does not merit a trial.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...