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EU Set To Mandate Speed Limiters In All New Cars (bbc.co.uk)

AmiMoJo shares a report from the BBC: Speed limiting technology looks set to become mandatory for all vehicles sold in Europe from 2022, after new rules were provisionally agreed by the EU. Road safety charity Brake called it a "landmark day," but the AA said "a little speed" helped with overtaking or joining motorways. Safety measures approved by the European Commission included intelligent speed assistance (ISA), advanced emergency braking and lane-keeping technology. The EU says the plan could help avoid 140,000 serious injuries by 2038 and aims ultimately to cut road deaths to zero by 2050. Under the ISA system, cars receive information via GPS and a digital map, telling the vehicle what the speed limit is. This can be combined with a video camera capable of recognizing road signs. The system can be overridden temporarily. If a car is overtaking a lorry on a motorway and enters a lower speed-limit area, the driver can push down hard on the accelerator to complete the maneuver. According to the report, Ford, Mercedes-Benz, Peugeot-Citroen, Renault and Volvo already have models available with some of the ISA technology fitted.

485 comments

  1. This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Once all the cars are automatically speed limited, governments can save money by reducing highway patrol cops. And once the highway patrol cars are gone, we can hack our cars to override the automatic speed limiter and pass everybody with impunity!

    MUAHAHAHAHA!

    1. Re:This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, without all that sweet money from speeding tickets, the traffic department will go bankrupt!!

    2. Re:This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Rei · · Score: 3, Informative

      This doesn't prevent speeding. All that's being talked about is adding some "no-acceleration" pedal travel around the speed limit.

      Honestly, if you could add a +- X kph to the speed limit, this is a feature I would like. Call it "speeding ticket prevention mode". ;)

      I have no issues with limitations so long as they can be overridden, with the difficulty of the override being proportional to the risk. For example, I would personally like to see a hard limit of +30mph / +50kph over the speed limit that can't even be beaten by further accelerator pedal travel... but can still be circumvented by activating an "Emergency Mode" which makes your lights flash and an external siren sound. Such a hard limit should also be activated at lower speeds if the vehicle knows that it can't cope with the situation that a user is trying to subject it to, such as a hill that will make it jump, a turn it couldn't possibly take, etc.

      Obviously, in places with no limit, such as on a track or Autobahn, a "+30mph / +50kph" over the limit scenario would never occur.

      --
      For the love of Crom, am I the only one here who wants to keep the U.S. technologically competitive?
    3. Re:This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by I75BJC · · Score: 3, Informative

      Obviously, you do not drive in Memphis, Tennessee!

      Being able to accelerate quickly and well beyond the speed limit has saved my life: Avoidance of accidents AND Avoidance of pre-planned accidents by insurance scammers and/or gang members.

      Now maybe Europe doesn't experience auto accidents or have insurance scammers or have gangs! Must be a great place to live!
      /sarc

    4. Re:This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Rei · · Score: 4, Informative

      Being able to accelerate quickly and well beyond the speed limit has saved my life

      And you can, under the EU proposal. How long does it take you to floor a pedal?

      The effect of flooring the pedal doesn't change. What changes is that there's a "zero action" point in the pedal's range around the speed limit, where the car only gives enough force to maintain speed. Push at all past that, and you're back to accelerating.

      As a separate issue, under what I'd like to see, you'd be limited to going more than 30mph / 50kph over the speed limit without activating an emergency mode. But that shouldn't pose a hindrance to you in your "pre-planned accident" scenario either.

      --
      For the love of Crom, am I the only one here who wants to keep the U.S. technologically competitive?
    5. Re:This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Obviously, you do not drive in Memphis, Tennessee!

      No, we live and drive in civilized areas. I hope you will not forget to have your gun in you glove compartment - we, in civilized areas, don't need such things; you, on the other hand...

    6. Re: This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's just that the Government can now stop all the cars in an area by setting GPS and nav signal to say Zero speed limit.

      But the honest people should not worry , as always.

    7. Re: This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Civilized areas like San Francisco? Surprise it has the highest levels of public defecation in the US.

    8. Re:This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      Joke is on you. Tampering with device will result in far harsher punishment than anything speeding related did before. And they'll have things like GPS tracking for measuring your average speed.

      Always on and server side of course. Big brother watches.

    9. Re: This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1

      Indeed. Never has it been known for any government to exploit speed limits, particularly unexpected or inappropriate ones combined with automated enforcement, to make a quick buck at the expense of motorists whose driving may or may not have actually been dangerous or inconsiderate in any way.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    10. Re: This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Speed limits would apply to gangs too.

    11. Re:This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by VMaN · · Score: 2

      > I didn't buy cars easily capable of going well over 100mph, to not occasionally 'air them out' when conditions around were safe to do so.

      And if you bothered to read the article, this would not prevent you doing this in the slightest.

      > I don't need the govt. limiting me.

      There is a not insignificant chance that seat belt and DUI legislation has saved your life without you ever realizing it. Your freedoms are weighed against the statistical chance of hurting others. Deal with it.

      > Geez, the nanny state is growing further and faster than ever....are people so scared for their lives these days that they are afraid to live a little and have some risk in their lives?

      Look into anti-vaxx. There's lots of unnecessary ways to risk your life "these days" AND the life of others if you are that particular brand of asshole.

    12. Re:This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1

      Geez, the nanny state is growing further and faster than ever....are people so scared for their lives these days that they are afraid to live a little and have some risk in their lives?

      Well, thousands of people die on the roads in my country every year, and many of them die in incidents where excessive speed was a factor, so maybe a healthy amount of caution is warranted here. These measures could be a good thing.

      However, they will only be a good thing if they're implemented sensibly. For example, if there are going to be mandatory restrictions on your vehicle's behaviour based on its interpretation of the current speed limit and these measures are to operate in conjunction with or even replace the driver following visible road signs, it should then be a defence to any charges of speeding or other speed-related offences that the system picked up the incorrect speed and the driver was just doing what it said. If the system is reliable enough to be implemented by law and potentially override or influence the driver's actions, it should be reliable enough to offer a defence in law as well.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    13. Re:This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by postbigbang · · Score: 2, Funny

      Go on, cowboy. Let that testosterone fly!

      There should never be constraints on YOU!

      Who gives a flying fuck if you splatter your guts and metal all over the highway! NOT ME!

      My insurance rates go up because of your let-the-throttle-fly attitude, no, no not me.

      Find a highway as soon as you can. Let 'er rip, dude. Use a dashcam so we can see just what kind of guts you have, bubba!

      NO ONE SHOULD LIMIT YOU! YOU ARE FREE! LIBERATED! JUST DO WHAT THE HELL YOU WANT! I WiSH I HAD YOUR BALLS!!!!

      Your nanny should've smacked you upside-the head a few more times to knock some sense into your thick, over-testosteroned skull so that you might survive, but hey, please become a Darwin Award statistic.

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    14. Re: This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Consider it a tax. You're allowed to drive around semi-freely, it's only fair.

    15. Re: This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sci Fi.

      No civilized area on planet earth exists in which a free adult citizen cannot carry a weapon.

      If you live in a location in which a grown adult cannot responsibly do as they see fit, you're not civilized, you're enslaved.

      It's not that you don't need to, it's that you're not *allowed* to, like little children, or farm animals kept around for what they produce. Or perhaps you don't understand that the safety you feel us just an illusion. It's literally the mindset of an adolescent.

    16. Re:This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1, Informative

      Being able to accelerate quickly and well beyond the speed limit has saved my life

      And you can, under the EU proposal.

      For now... If the powers-that-be decide your stretch of road is now "too congested" - too bad. It's essentially a throttle-by-wire-by-bureaucrat solution.

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    17. Re: This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Obviously you have missed that all cats sold in US model year 2018 and later have a remote engine shutoff capability. It was passed into law back in 2013 but flew under the radar

    18. Re: This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1

      Consider it a tax.

      No, I don't think I will. Taxes may be a necessarily evil in the absence of any better system to fund public interests, but they should at least be set fairly and transparently.

      You're allowed to drive around semi-freely, it's only fair.

      And in my country, we already pay highly disproportionate taxes for that privilege, in the sense that motorists contribute a lot more in tax revenues than is typically spent by the government on providing motoring-related services.

      That is very different to hiding a sign showing a newly reduced speed limit behind a tree and then setting up a concealed speed camera ten metres further down the road. That isn't taxation, it's entrapment.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    19. Re:This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Highway deaths will go away when drive automation becomes universal, not because of any governmental clampdown on speed. In today's manual drive environment, accidents are being caused by inattention, distraction, impairment, and decline in sensory capabilities with time. Speed has little to do with it.

    20. Re:This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1

      Problems like careless and inattentive driving might cause an accident to happen, but so does excessive speed sometimes, and either way the higher the speed when an accident does happen the more serious the consequences tend to be. In any case, no-one has yet demonstrated that stage 5 autonomous vehicles are viable with our current technology and understanding, so while we wait a few decades for hypothetical future technologies to cure the problem you think doesn't exist that is killing numerous people every year, maybe we could try something a little less ambitious to save some of those lives in the meantime?

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    21. Re:This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      I didn't buy cars easily capable of going well over 100mph, to not occasionally 'air them out' when conditions around were safe to do so.
      I don't need the govt. limiting me.

      It's not about you, or at least, not necessarily about you.

      If you want to get on it, you can go to a track.

      Going quickly on public roads is a hazard to others, even if nobody is around. You could go off the road and into a tree and cause a fire, or off the road and into a river and dump your crankcase lube into an ecosystem.

      I like driving quickly too, but the reality is that the vast majority of public roads aren't designed for speeds like those, and the vast majority of other drivers don't behave well enough for it to be safe to travel at those speeds even if they were. There's no corner workers, nobody is checking those roads to make sure there's no debris, nobody is doing a safety inspection before your run to make sure your vehicle is still in condition for the situation, and there's no gravel pits. Or at least, precious few.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    22. Re: This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by aliquis · · Score: 1

      Since there are no limits it doesn't matter.

    23. Re: This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Obviously you have missed that all cats sold in US model year 2018 and later have a remote engine shutoff capability.

      It's about damn time. Those cats make an awful racket all night long. How can I activate this remote shutoff?

    24. Re:This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by dryeo · · Score: 1

      Much better to have armed men with little liability hiding in the bushes ready to jump out and shoot you if accidentally scratch an itch in a suspicious manner.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    25. Re:This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

      Personally, I don't want either - but I'll take my chances with the extremely rare latter than the universal former.

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    26. Re: This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe driving isn't for you.

    27. Re:This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by GLMDesigns · · Score: 1

      And yet the examples you gave show the logical absurdity of the nanny state.

      You can't own your own body as regards sex, gambling, abortion, drugs and not have ownership over your own body for something like wearing seat belts.

      If you think that people, and not governments, can decide who to have sex with; or what substances they ingest then you ought to be opposed to the government forcing you to wear seatbelts.

      --
      If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
      Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
    28. Re: This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You don't have a gun rack in your pickup? These problems stopped once I added one.

    29. Re: This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He probably is. Nanny laws are overreach.

    30. Re:This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Topmounter · · Score: 1

      They won't go bankrupt or cease to exist, they'll start finding more pedantic and trivial traffic infractions to annoy and ticket drivers for and if that effort fails to keep the revenue flowing, then they'll demand and receive more funding.

    31. Re:This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by BoogieChile · · Score: 1

      Not wearing a seatbelt is already a perfectly cromulent way of killing someone else.

    32. Re: This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Incel male feminist nazis sure do love the nanny state.

    33. Re: This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Outside the USA it is pretty unusual.

    34. Re:This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by VMaN · · Score: 1

      I'm not dismissive of the argument that seat belt laws are overreaching - but you said my exampleS were bad and you only touched on that one, ignoring the rest.

      Drinking and driving+speeding laws are clear cut and simple. You are not allowed to engage in needless risky behavior when on public roads.

      Your rights as an individual are outweighed by the rights of everyone else not to be exposed to that risk.

    35. Re: This is going to be GRRRR-GREAT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unless, of course, you want to murder a baby mid-birth or moments after.

      That's why I vote Democrat!

  2. Not required to be on all the time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The proposal explicitly states that the system can be switched on and off in addition to temporary pauses

    1. Re:Not required to be on all the time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And you think that's going to last once they get in in place?

    2. Re:Not required to be on all the time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is only for initial public acceptance, as the EU itself wrote. Typical authoritarian bait-and-switch.

      It also does not address the lack of any moral right for the government to mandate that I pay for my own chains - always-on tracking system and pay to maintain/accept the risk for an over-complicated expensive device I'd like to maintain for years.

    3. Re:Not required to be on all the time by AHuxley · · Score: 0

      AC once installed it will always be on.
      Slow cars like in East Germany for all of the EU. No German freedom to drive fast anymore.
      Welcome back to communism :) EU style.
      Your new EU car will the fully EU regulated for speed.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    4. Re:Not required to be on all the time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Go liberate USA your own haunted place. We are quite satisfied here in EU and can solve our own problems without fingerpointing.

    5. Re:Not required to be on all the time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Speak for yourself. As a fellow citizen of a EU country, I fear that the EU is fast becoming a nanny state. Be it for our own safety or for control, our everyday things are regulated and snooped more day by day. It's politically incorrect to say this, but I think women leadership has a part in it. Women want everyone to feel secure, but they don't have the same desire for independence and territory that a man has. The development is accelerated by the interests of big money, and by those desiring for the EU to become a superstate.

    6. Re:Not required to be on all the time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is plenty to complain about the EU and some of it is serious, this is not one of those things. Copyright laws, data keeping laws, democracy, and so on, interoperability, corporate responsbility, development, consumer protections, most of the environment protections, is not. Still we don't need people considered cuckos in and from fucked up USA tell us something good is bad.

    7. Re: Not required to be on all the time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow. Even if you were correct, that doesn't make it wrong. Women are half the population.

    8. Re: Not required to be on all the time by cayenne8 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Wow. Even if you were correct, that doesn't make it wrong. Women are half the population.

      It is risk taking behavior, that has gotten the modern world to the advanced state it is in today.

      Trying to always stay safe, stifles progress and innovation.

      Not to mention, that life is boring without any risk.

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    9. Re:Not required to be on all the time by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      We are? Last I checked, dissatisfaction with EU establishment is at all time high around the Union. To the point where normally "keep calm and pretend public is irrelevant" EU bureaucrats are openly voicing concerns that next MEP elections will upend the ability of EU to pass any meaningful directives through the Parliament.

    10. Re: Not required to be on all the time by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      By this logic, suicidal people aren't wrong, because they are also a [portion of population].

      Just existing doesn't make one right in one's actions.

    11. Re: Not required to be on all the time by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      It is risk taking behavior, that has gotten the modern world to the advanced state it is in today.

      You mean the state in which climate change threatens all civilizations on the planet? Don't worry, we'll fix it in post

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    12. Re:Not required to be on all the time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm from Western Europe. It appears you're from a former communist state, and want Europe to go back in time with you.

  3. More EU rules to control transport by AHuxley · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Germany allowed for impressive fast cars so people can get all over Germany in a shorter time.
    To be at a meeting on time, to conduct business. To go on a holiday.
    Powerful and safe cars designed for German fast roads. With very advanced medical care that's ready all over Germany.

    Now the EU steps in to remove that advanced German technology and returns once advanced Germany to slow Communist East German speed limits.
    Now with slower new cars and more tax.

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    1. Re:More EU rules to control transport by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have you ever even met a german?

    2. Re:More EU rules to control transport by BoxRec · · Score: 3, Informative

      huh, they aren't introducing new speed limits, you will still be able to drive as fast as you want on the autobahns.

    3. Re:More EU rules to control transport by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The EU does a lot of shit.
      However your pot stirring, retard brain omits one crucial point here that most actual Germans who drive themselves ought to be aware of: Speed limits within Germany won't change with this.
      And since this weird technology is supposed to adhere to local speed limits, you can still drive as fast as you want on those "recommended top speed 130km/h" Autobahns.

    4. Re:More EU rules to control transport by AHuxley · · Score: 0, Troll

      AC how long to you think "recommended top speed 130km/h" Autobahns will get to stay at traditional German speeds?
      Before the EU steps in to set EU wide speed regulations on German roads?
      Once really fast cars all over Germany will get slowed down to EU set speed limits.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    5. Re:More EU rules to control transport by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Obviously you have not seen a human body spread like jam on a German autobahn.

    6. Re:More EU rules to control transport by AHuxley · · Score: 0, Troll

      Germany is considering new speed limits.
      That "you will still be able to drive as fast as you want on the autobahns." will not last in any EU nation.
      EU regulations are just the start.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    7. Re:More EU rules to control transport by AHuxley · · Score: 0

      AC West Germany and then Germany allowed for that freedom with the most advanced medical care possible.
      ie really safe German cars and having a really great rescue service.

      No new EU regulations needed.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    8. Re:More EU rules to control transport by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have you ever seen accidents in German autobahns? It's more brutal in reality than any horror movie.

      NOBODY NEEDS TO DRIVE FASTER THAN 180KM/H! Seriously.

      In Finland fastest speed limit is 120km/h at summer time (100km/h at winter time), that's more than enough. For faster transportation, use trains or planes.

    9. Re:More EU rules to control transport by Joce640k · · Score: 5, Informative

      Germany has been considering new speed limits since at least the 1970s but nothing ever happens.

      If you've ever driven in Germany you'd know how the system works. The autobahans are full of police cars. You can overtake them at any speed, no problem, but try tailgating, using your phone, changing lanes without indicating ... acting like an asshole/idiot in any way at all and they'll be down on you like a ton of bricks.

      It's not the speed that kills you when you're on a nice straight road, it's the distracted soccer moms and self-centered idiots.

      --
      No sig today...
    10. Re:More EU rules to control transport by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      About as long as it takes for guns to be generally banned in the US.
      You don't know the first thing about our cultures. So fuck off to where you came.

    11. Re: More EU rules to control transport by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes. I killed him. He was a nazi.

    12. Re:More EU rules to control transport by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the car will just bug you and maybe brake if speed is higher. That is unless you put mud on the sensor detecting traffic signs. Or just drive a plain old second hand car which are going to be available for decades.

      I guess next step is to automaticall inform the police of any violation and maybe even print the ticket.

    13. Re:More EU rules to control transport by captbollocks · · Score: 2

      It's not the speed that kills you when you're on a nice straight road, it's the distracted soccer moms and self-centered idiots.

      I have to say the first autobahn accident I saw was pretty impressive, some guy in an s class spun across 4 lanes of traffic, taking loads of other (innocent) people out.

      I know two guys killed because their one-year-old BMW literally stopped in the fast lane and they were rammed by another car 5 minutes later doing 300kmh. Somehow the driver survived.

      It is the anomalies that kill you and doing race track speeds without the associated safety systems in place, such as you have on a racetrack, you will end up with deaths of both safe and unsafe drivers.

    14. Re:More EU rules to control transport by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As long as insurance companies pick up the health bill and no third parties are harmed. It's a privilege not a right.

    15. Re:More EU rules to control transport by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It is the anomalies that kill you and doing race track speeds without the associated safety systems in place, such as you have on a racetrack, you will end up with deaths of both safe and unsafe drivers.

      Really?

      The real world called, they disagree...

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn#Safety:_international_comparison

      The Autobahns are safer than the average motorway in the world.

    16. Re:More EU rules to control transport by gnasher719 · · Score: 1

      Exactly that. Tailgating in Germany is something they take serious. If you go below a bridge on a German motorway and there are some devices on the bridge, they don't measure your speed, they measure the distance to the car ahead. Too close can mean a massive fine (say â500), and in the worst cases can be criminal.

      But also if you drive over 80mph and get involved in an accident, it's your fault unless you can prove it would have happened at lower speed as well. Doesn't matter if it was the other guy who made the mistake. If I start overtaking and don't notice you approaching at 130mph and you crash into me, it's your fault.

    17. Re:More EU rules to control transport by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let's not kid ourseves: "Very advanced medical care" mostly by dint of having a lot of practice prying people out of car wrecks and patching them up again. Which I don't actually mind much since you don't have to drive 200 km/h on the autobahn, just stay the fsck out of the fast lane if you don't.

      I do mind yet another round of eurocrat stupidity and smart-aleck meddling. They're getting more micromanage-y with every proposal and most of the time they completely fail everything at privacy. This thing is just that much more arrogance and yet one more reason why I'm seriously considering leaving the EU. And I don't even have a driver's licence. Go figure.

    18. Re:More EU rules to control transport by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While it is correct that there are some parts on the autobahn that are without explicit speed limit, a lot of the autobahn have speed limits. When there are road works the speed limit is quite drastic nowadays (often 60 km/h in my state). While this might be a good idea at some road works, it is very often not. If you drive 80 km/h in those road works that seem safe (for example because the work hasnt started and only the speed limit is put there weeks before the start) you have often a good chance to be the slowest car.

    19. Re:More EU rules to control transport by Freischutz · · Score: 1

      It is the anomalies that kill you and doing race track speeds without the associated safety systems in place, such as you have on a racetrack, you will end up with deaths of both safe and unsafe drivers.

      Really?

      The real world called, they disagree...

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn#Safety:_international_comparison

      The Autobahns are safer than the average motorway in the world.

      German Autobahns are actually every bit as blood soaked as any other motorways in the world and these Autobahn accidents tend to be as ugly as they are elsewhere in the world: https://www.google.com/search?... This is but one of the reason the German public has increasingly been polling in favour of a 130 kph speed limit.

    20. Re:More EU rules to control transport by Tomahawk · · Score: 1

      So the Autobahns have a sign on them where there is no speed limit. Speed limited cars will limit their speed to the posted speed limit, so driving on a Autobahn in areas with no speed limit will still mean you can drive as fast as you like in these updated cars.

    21. Re:More EU rules to control transport by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      It is the anomalies that kill you and doing race track speeds without the associated safety systems in place, such as you have on a racetrack, you will end up with deaths of both safe and unsafe drivers.

      Really?

      The real world called, they disagree...

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn#Safety:_international_comparison

      The Autobahns are safer than the average motorway in the world.

      That's because those statistics are gathered independently by each country, and each using their own rules. And the rules in Germany are absolutely ridiculous: you only count as a fatality of a road accident if you die at the spot. Once they load you into an ambulance, and you kick it the moment they shut the door, nope, not a car-related fatality, you don't go into the stats. In most other countries you get counted as a road accident fatality if you die within a week or so.

    22. Re: More EU rules to control transport by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes. I killed him. He was a nazi.

      Video games are not real, Junior.

    23. Re:More EU rules to control transport by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And there ARE speed limits on some sections of the Autobahn. I just drove from Karlsruhe to Frankfurt yesterday: in some sections you'll see speed limits of 120 or 100 Km/hr, and in construction zones it is lower. But aside from these sections you'll see the speed limit sign that is crossed out-- no limit.

      If you exceed the speed in the limited sections you'll get a speeding ticket via camera. System works very well.. traffic flows well, trucks and slower vehicles stay to the right. If you're in the left lane and a faster driver is approaching you WILL be forced out of the way and get dirty looks. I was doing 160 Km/hr in the middle lane and every once and a while someone would blow past me doing >200 Km/hr.

    24. Re:More EU rules to control transport by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That sounds beautiful. In the US, the police will get you for speeding and nothing else. The police themselves are regularly "tailgating, using [their] phone, changing lanes without indicating ... acting like an asshole/idiot in any way at all."

    25. Re:More EU rules to control transport by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Before the EU steps in to set EU wide speed regulations on German roads?

      If you knew anything about the EU, you would know that this would only happen *if Germany wanted it to*.
      Especially with the UK gone (assuming it actually does...) *nothing* will happen in the EU without France and Germany wanting it to. So the idea that the EU would impose local speed limits within Germany *without* Germany's agreement is ludicrous.

    26. Re:More EU rules to control transport by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Does this mean Germans may want to exit the EU?
      If that ever happened, the Euro would drop like a rock.

    27. Re: More EU rules to control transport by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm 98 years old, you shit kid.

    28. Re:More EU rules to control transport by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I am seeing a future where we are not allowed to do anything. Distopya is here. CONTROL, CONTROL, CONTROL.

      CALM DOWN CITIZEN, FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY.

      Disgusting. And it only gets better when you add Sharia law, which is the future of Europe. Civilization is no more.

    29. Re:More EU rules to control transport by bradley13 · · Score: 1

      Well, you're partly right. I've driven a fair bit in southern Germany (since I live in Switzerland), and sensible drivers are mostly safe. Mostly.

      But you still have various dangers caused by the speed. A typical Autobahn only has two lanes on a side, at least in the area I'm familiar with. So take a slow truck in the right lane, going maybe 80kph. Then take a guy in his Mercedes tooling along in the left lane, at maybe 220 kph. Joe average comes up on the truck, changes to the left lane to pass.

      Joe average is concentrating on the truck, and may not even see the Mercedes overtaking at a speed delta of 140kph - with the slightest curve in the road, the Mercedes won't even be visible when Joe changes lanes. Meanwhile, Mr. Mercedes often is an entitled asshole who will ride right up into Joe's backseat, to express his displeasure at having to brake. It's a dangerous situation in clear daylight. In twilight or with a bit of rain, well, crashes at those speeds are generally not survivable.

      --
      Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
    30. Re: More EU rules to control transport by registrations_suck · · Score: 1

      Then you shouldn't be driving at all. Get the fuck out of my way!!!

    31. Re:More EU rules to control transport by gachunt · · Score: 1

      I took a Boxster out on the Autobahn a few years back, driving a smooth 250km/h (155 mph) from Stuttgart to Günzburg, and back.

      I found the highway incredibly safe to drive, even at high speeds.

      Vehicles stayed left, except to pass, and yielded to faster-moving vehciles.

      No one was swerving in/out of their lanes. No one was distracted.

      In speed-limited zones through cities, everyone slowed down and followed the limit. When traffic slowdowns were ahead, overhead signs enforced a speed limit prior to the slowdown to warn motorists, and all vehicles would put on their 4-way flashers to alert others of the slowdown.

    32. Re:More EU rules to control transport by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 1

      And yet, those speeds should still be allowed. People who want absolute safety can take the train or the local road. Personal choice.

    33. Re:More EU rules to control transport by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      I was there when the wall came down, and the east Germans started driving their Traubies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant) on the autobahns, not following the rules of keeping right and always using your signal....it was chaos.

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    34. Re:More EU rules to control transport by dcw3 · · Score: 2

      I have driven there for six years in the 80s-early 90s, plus several week long trips in recent years. Rarely ever did I see Polizi on the autobahn. But honestly, there was little need for them because everyone typically followed the rules, except for the tailgating which I saw numerous times with people quite literally a couple feet apart at 100+ mph speeds. Of the ~50 countries I've driven in, Germany was by far the best organized, and most disciplined drivers.

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    35. Re:More EU rules to control transport by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      Since you've driven those autobahns (as have I), you know that anyone moving into the left lane checks their mirrors for traffic, and makes a judgement on how quickly they may be approaching before ever turning that wheel. That's simply being a safe driver. Now, you're always going to have some assholes who fly up and tailgate for the reasons you've given, and they should be nailed, but it's also your responsibility not to pull right in front of them if you could have easily waited a moment for them to pass, and it's your responsibility to pull back to the right as soon as it's safe for you to do so.

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    36. Re: More EU rules to control transport by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He probably killed him with his car. He did not-see him.

    37. Re:More EU rules to control transport by HornWumpus · · Score: 2

      They're thick some days. I've seen them pulling over every 10th car. There was a big soccer game and the drunks were out. It takes very little to be 'drunk' by German road standards, any measurable ethanol IIRC.

      Germans are a bunch of goddamn law abiders. A speeding ticket is cheap by American standards and can't affect your insurance rate, but Germans are afraid of being shamed.

      I'm only a German citizen on a technicality. Rules are suggestions.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    38. Re:More EU rules to control transport by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Finnish drivers are the 'gold standard'. For drunken 'think they are world rally cup' drivers.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    39. Re:More EU rules to control transport by tsa · · Score: 2

      We don’t do mph in mainland Europe.

      --

      -- Cheers!

    40. Re:More EU rules to control transport by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's why it's common practice to flash your main beams when rapidly approaching a car that you think may be about to overtake the truck/slow moving car, it's a "be aware I'm coming in hot" message - I've even been thanked by the potential overtaking car a couple of times

  4. Includes manual override and black box by hankwang · · Score: 5, Informative

    Two important bits in TFA are not mentioned in the summary:

    1. there will be a switch to disable the speed limiter until the engine is powered off.

    2. The car gets a black box that can be accessed after an accident.

    1. Re:Includes manual override and black box by AHuxley · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How long will that option be an option able to be used?
      The black box shows the speed limiter was set to off? Any insurance is not approved if the speed limiter is not always on?
      Police ask questions as to why the speed limiter was off?
      Having the ability to "disable the speed limiter" may not be allowed for everyday car use on any road.
      A fully safety inspected, upgraded and approved car for a track day can ask for permission to "disable the speed limiter" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ?

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    2. Re:Includes manual override and black box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The summary does not also mention that the EU described that as aiding initial public acceptance - i.e. temporary.

    3. Re:Includes manual override and black box by symes · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      Trucks in the EU have had, for decades, a black box recording their activity. Recordings are specific to drivers. No one seems to mind those.

      Many new cars in the .EU already have speed limiters built in. My old Mercedes did - it was great fun. They are really useful if you are driving in town and there are speed cameras/traps. They are also a lot of fun. You can accelerate hard and not risk going over the speed limit.

      So it more looks like the EU is just getting car manufacturers to make available already tested tech into all new cars.

    4. Re:Includes manual override and black box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a safety feature, so the option won't be eliminated until there is a 90%+ accurate automation of the feature with error resulting in death or injury the inverse of five sigma. Self-driving cars are not something you flip a switch to enable. They're developed much like any technology over a long series of incremental improvements including some fatal blunders.

      The positive side of things is that those future blunders leading to fatality when averaged out will be far less than the average number of deaths we see in typical conditions on roads today.

    5. Re:Includes manual override and black box by hankwang · · Score: 2

      Germany has many motorways without speed limits; a lot of drivers and car makers really love those. I don't think German insurance companies (or German politicians) will stay in business if they make unreasonable (in the eyes of German drivers) demands.

      And for the rest of Europe: insurance fees already depend on driver age, driver accident history, and power/speed/reputation of the car. This will be just one more factor to take into account to calculate the fees. I can't imagine that a road-legal car (i.e. with a working switch) will be refused.

    6. Re:Includes manual override and black box by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      3. If you press down hard on the accelerator it overrides the speed limiter temporarily.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    7. Re:Includes manual override and black box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And insurance companies won't insure your vehicle if you ever use the disable switch.

      That is what the recorder is for.

    8. Re:Includes manual override and black box by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Presumably it will be like the button that disables traction control or the one that disables ABS. You can use it but if you then have an accident that would have been averted by traction control and they find out, you are going to be held liable.

      Cars in Japan have had speed limiters since the 60s by a gentlemen's agreement between manufacturers. It's set fairly high (114 MPH) and performance cars often have a feature that disables it at race tracks.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    9. Re:Includes manual override and black box by houghi · · Score: 2

      No idea, but I can imagine you can set it to "Always Off" if you so desire.

      You know that when you drive faster in Germany than 130 KMH, the insurance will not cover you. Even if it is legal to do so in some places.

      It is not up to the police to ask that question. That is for the courts.

      Well, that is the reason they are putting it into law.

      I live in Europe and I like to drive. I also like to drive faster than legally allowed when I am alone on an empty highway. That said, when I am driving in e.g. Belgium, it is often not clear how fast I am allowed to go. The reason is that when you drive through several smaller roads that go through villages, it is not always obvious if you are in an official build up area or not and speed is set by the villages.

      So on the same identical road with the same identical buildup of buildings, it can be 30, 50, 70, 80 or 90. Missing one sign is an easy thing to happen when you are watching the rest of the traffic as well.

      I look at my GPS system more than I look at the traffic signs, just because missing one traffic sign could mean I am speeding at 50, while I was allowed to go 30.

      In Spain the speed can differ several times on very short distances. And I mean short, like 50-100m. You are allowed to go 90, then 50, then 70 and then 80.

      The fact that speed limits are different all over Europe does not make this easier.

      So I would very much be for a speed limiter that you can turn off, with all the consequences of not being insured for that period and even held liable, no matter what, when you are involved in an accident when it was turned off.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    10. Re:Includes manual override and black box by mobby_6kl · · Score: 1

      Well trucks are work vehicles, they also track and limit driving time by law and probably location(?). Of course it still causes a lot of issues when a truck doing 80.1km/h is trying to overtake another doing 80km/h.

      I agree that optional speed tracker/limiter is a great feature because sometimes you want to relax a little and not have to watch and keep track of the constantly changing signs. As long as it can be switched off easily, I'm fine with it.

      Even if it's not... oh well, this will only apply to new cars not even manufactured yet. There's a reason I drive a 15 year old Miata and not a newer or fancier car that I could afford, and lack of any nonsense is one of them. So worst case scenario I'll just buy a 2021 Mustang with gazillion horsepower and drive it until all the dino juice is sucked out of the earth.

    11. Re:Includes manual override and black box by Freischutz · · Score: 2

      How long will that option be an option able to be used? The black box shows the speed limiter was set to off? Any insurance is not approved if the speed limiter is not always on? Police ask questions as to why the speed limiter was off?

      The black box and speed limiter don't even have to be installed for them to do that. A lot of people think that you can claim insurance no matter how stupidly you behaved but insurance companies already have the right to refuse to pay out and they do it regularly. The thing is they are required to compensate you for damage resulting from reasonable behaviour, or due to random events such as forces of nature assuming you have taken reasonable precautions such as install a fire/burglar alarm or drove at a reasonable speed given the conditions. However, if you are testing out your flamethrower collection in your living room and burn your house down or drive your Porsche down an icy freeway at 200 kph they are well within their rights to refuse to pay out your insurance.

    12. Re:Includes manual override and black box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Very high level indication of the new mandatory features here https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/29343

      All of these measures are being approved in nearly all countries - introduction dates vary (or still being discussed) expect 2023 latest for most

      Note: nowhere does it mandate the installation of a digital map (with speed limits) often these are out of date and only cover a limited geographic area i.e. the usual in car infotainment. Other measures in this package intended to protect vulnerable road users require a forward and rearward facing camera. This means as per the current systems on the market the camera is the primary sensor for the speed limits. expect to see quick improvements in quality of "reading" road signs, incl temporary / road works

      The detail of the requirements around ISA is to provide indication of the current speed limit, not to actively limit the vehicle. The development and component cost difference of the two (indicate vs limit) is at least an order of magnitude different.

      The system will display what it thinks the current speed limit is, it may warn you're over speed, it won't correct it.

      The point is the driver is in the loop all the time and responsible all the time as these are assistance functions _NOT_ autonomous / automatic

      The reason these features are being introduced now and so quickly is because the technology has matured to the point that most of the components are already on the vehicle. For large OEMs the on cost is low ~130 EUR I recall from the detail, harder for smaller OEMs. Offset that against the estimate of saving 13,000 lives. Even with the doubling dice an extra 260 EUR is not that much against the cost of a new car.

      The reference article (bbcnew.com) is misguided and incorrect in many ways - the European reference documents are all available online

    13. Re:Includes manual override and black box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Looking at the article it seems to differ from the existing tech in one respect - it'll use GPS to automatically detect the speed limit.

    14. Re: Includes manual override and black box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry I fell asleep. Why don't you put up a short summary with a chance you'll get a real reply

    15. Re:Includes manual override and black box by dunkelfalke · · Score: 2

      While there are motorways without speed limits here, there is also the recommended speed of 130kph on them. Driving faster means an automatical partial fault in an accident unless the driver can clearly prove that the higher than recommended speed made no difference on the outcome.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    16. Re:Includes manual override and black box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What happens if there is no GPS signal? Does it disable speed limiting or limit to the lowest legal speed?
         

    17. Re:Includes manual override and black box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Presumably it will be like the button that disables traction control or the one that disables ABS. You can use it but if you then have an accident that would have been averted by traction control and they find out, you are going to be held liable.

      If you have an accident that would have been averted by a speed limiter, you were speeding.

    18. Re:Includes manual override and black box by vlad30 · · Score: 1

      Interesting as I asked for this in a previous comment and it works as expected however governments I know make a lot of money from speeding tickets. https://au.finance.yahoo.com/n... so I do not expect them to make it permanent any time soon at least until they can wean themselves off the revenue cameras

      --
      Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
    19. Re:Includes manual override and black box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cars already have black boxes that record the last 10 seconds before an impact. That's been mandatory since airbags were required.

    20. Re:Includes manual override and black box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > How long will that option be an option able to be used?

      Hopefully nor for long, since cars are out. Cars are inefficient, dirty, dangerous, and they eat gobs of the most precious (and yes, valuable) real estate.

      Cars are so 1990.

    21. Re:Includes manual override and black box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Also, if you simply press down on the accelerator the car will continue to increase in speed. This is an alert system, not a hard speed limiter. You wish to do 55 in a 40 zone? no worries. The indicator light will show. If you are very slowly approaching the speed limit, the car will initially resist the speed increase, much like the lane assist function. if you continue to push for more speed, the car will let you.
       
      the bigger 'threat' will be the black boxes. Your driving habits will be recorded by your car. speed, rate of acceleration, rate of braking, etc. can and will be recorded. Many folks consider what law enforcement may say, but the biggest worry for everyone will be your insurance company. You may find that they may place restrictions on your coverage, i.e. if you a habitual speeder, you may find higher premiums, not based on your accident profile, but on your style of driving profile. You may be an extremely safe driver, but with a heavier foot. Be prepared for higher rates, even though your claim history doesn't support it.

    22. Re:Includes manual override and black box by dasunt · · Score: 1

      The black box and speed limiter don't even have to be installed for them to do that. A lot of people think that you can claim insurance no matter how stupidly you behaved but insurance companies already have the right to refuse to pay out and they do it regularly. The thing is they are required to compensate you for damage resulting from reasonable behaviour, or due to random events such as forces of nature assuming you have taken reasonable precautions such as install a fire/burglar alarm or drove at a reasonable speed given the conditions. However, if you are testing out your flamethrower collection in your living room and burn your house down or drive your Porsche down an icy freeway at 200 kph they are well within their rights to refuse to pay out your insurance.

      In the US, especially in my state, driving your Porsche down an icy freeway at 200 kph (125 mph), wiping out, and injuring yourself, is still covered, AFAICT.

      Interestingly, you can get dead drunk, drive, hit another vehicle, kill one of the occupants, seriously injuring the rest, get charged (DUI, vehicular homicide, etc), be found guilty, and your insurance will still cover you for your illegal act (and your insurance rates will spike, but you only have to worry about that after your prison sentence).

    23. Re:Includes manual override and black box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A governor is not the same thing. A governor is not dynamic, this is. Governors exist on most cars that are sold, with the ceiling set at a limit defined by the manufacturer.

    24. Re:Includes manual override and black box by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      2. The car gets a black box that can be accessed after an accident.

      It's already got one. OBD-II vehicles store at least a minute of logging data, 30 seconds before and 30 seconds after a critical event occurs. That includes emissions failures, engine faults, or airbag deployment. It records the state of all sensors. It knows the throttle position and the state of the brake light switch, and in modern vehicles it also knows the position of the steering wheel.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    25. Re:Includes manual override and black box by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      3. If you press down hard on the accelerator it overrides the speed limiter temporarily.

      Mercedes will never go for that. It would interfere with their control scheme. Since the seventies or so, Mercedes has had a perceptible kick-down switch. Back then (certainly in my 1982 300SD) it was a physical momentary switch located literally under the accelerator pedal. These days, it's integrated into the accelerator pedal assembly, since it's all throttle-by-wire and there's no benefit to breaking it out into a separate unit. MBZ would favor a console switch.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    26. Re:Includes manual override and black box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "No idea, but I can imagine you can set it to "Always Off" if you so desire."

      My wife's Lincoln has a feature where it partially turns off the engine when idling. You can disable it, but that has to be done every single time you start the car. Ford gets to claim the fuel efficiency rating with this feature on (it's better than when it's off, obviously), but could not do so if there was a permanent switch to set it off. She can't stand this behavior and turns it off every time she starts the car.

      Based on that, I suspect any turn-off option for this feature would probably be something you have to do every time you get behind the wheel, and there would be no "Always Off" available.

    27. Re:Includes manual override and black box by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 1

      An Arduino (or even 555 timer) and reed relay would fix that. Replace the button with a reed relay's contacts. Pulse the coil once 10 seconds after power is applied to the rest of the car...

    28. Re:Includes manual override and black box by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 1

      Press hard = override. Press even harder = kickdown switch. Of course that assumes that all Mercedes won't be electric in 10-15 years (no kickdown needed since the gearbox will be one-speed).

    29. Re:Includes manual override and black box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have you ever driven in Germany? Due to constant construction, there are always speed limit sections on all autobahns I drove on every 20-25kms. There is no point to speed up unlucky to brake like mad 5km down the road to quickly get below 120km/h.

      As in many areas, the freedom motorists in Germany have is a myth. It’s a hellhole full of speed cameras and arbitrary speed limit changes only a local knows how to avoid.

    30. Re:Includes manual override and black box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      These speed limiters seem to be based on the actual speed limits of the roads.. So if the speed limit is 60kph, you can't go 61kph unless you mash the accelerator / disable the limiter.

    31. Re:Includes manual override and black box by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      They already modified the little Mercedes emblem so that it doesn't stick up for safety reasons.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    32. Re:Includes manual override and black box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      An Arduino (or even 555 timer) and reed relay would fix that. Replace the button with a reed relay's contacts. Pulse the coil once 10 seconds after power is applied to the rest of the car...

      You offer a self engineered solution to disable a "feature" that nobody asked for, wants or can get rid of. It is a feature that complicates the desired normal expected operation of their vehicle. It is another potential point of failure over time. It is the kind of feature that requires Apple's brand of courage to adopt.

      I have three friends who all purchased new vehicles over the past year. All of them have complained of the "feature" overreach and unnecessary complexity of the systems. When you have to cycle through screen after screen of useless junk on your car's displays to do the simplest of tasks or change settings, the designers should be taken out back and executed.

    33. Re:Includes manual override and black box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      NTSB studies have failed to show any benefit to driver safety from traction control and/or ABS. The primary cause of accidents is driver error, which isn't something either of these devices fix.

    34. Re:Includes manual override and black box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't set the speed limiter to "off". Instead, show the camera a fake roadsign with a very high limit. Or better, replace the camera feed with a video recording of such a sign.

      This is so weird, the cops won't be looking for such equipment after the crash.

    35. Re:Includes manual override and black box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      BeauHD left out those important details in order to "stir the pot" and as a result it would increase engagement which generates more buzz, which generates more clicks, which generates more revenue.

  5. yeah, right.. by thesupraman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And of course lets not forget exemptions for 'special' people, you know, those with urgent high level government work, like being rich and driving their uber-toys..
    Of course it will create a nice little black market in bypass systems...
    Of course they say it would have an on-off switch (for a compulsory system? unique), and I am sure that wont be logged and/or reported..

    Lets for a moment ignore the fact that speed is not THE cause of most road fatalities (that honor falls to drunk driving, exhaustion, and distracted driving in about that order).

    I wonder when they will mandate riders licenses for road use of pushbikes, along with warrants for safety, road taxes, and license plates so that red lights cameras can work on them..

    Sigh.

    1. Re:yeah, right.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It will be logged, in the damn black box. Did you research the subject i.e. read the article before spreading your trumpian FUD?

    2. Re:yeah, right.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lets for a moment ignore the fact that speed is not THE cause of most road fatalities (that honor falls to drunk driving, exhaustion, and distracted driving in about that order).

      Fatalities? Pretty hard to die in a fender bender with someone drunk, exhausted, or distracted.

      People claimed they wanted self-driving cars to save lives. That opens the door to all life-saving efforts- ones that we can do today.

      Expect the speed limit to be dramatically reduced as the next step.

    3. Re:yeah, right.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Speed is often the difference between surviving or dying, especially in collisions with pedestrians. A drunk, distracted or exhausted driver is less lethal at lower speeds.

      A drunk, distracted or exhausted driver is exactly who this will help. The others will disable it and yes, will be caught and punished. You want to take unnecessary risks, find somewhere with consenting adults to do it, not on our shared streets.

    4. Re: yeah, right.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's okay to drive drunk. Hide behind the steering wheel

    5. Re:yeah, right.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Of course. I can't have some silly little Prius be just as fast as my Huracán Performante.

    6. Re:yeah, right.. by GoingDown · · Score: 1

      Lets for a moment ignore the fact that speed is not THE cause of most road fatalities (that honor falls to drunk driving, exhaustion, and distracted driving in about that order).>

      According to this (https://www.strongtieinsurance.com/common-reasons-road-accidents/) it is number second. If is still quite a lot.

    7. Re:yeah, right.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why are you against creation of JOBS? Just think of the many business opportunities this opens. How successful government works:

      1. create problems
      2. ???
      3. solve problems & profit.

      You can live very good as a politician with donations from 'manufacturers of products'. Plus don't you just feel better after buying our new 'bypass', just look at all those losers who can't even afford to buy it, doesn't that just make you feel so great?

      Why sigh, whats not to like about this? :D

  6. Re:Driving a vehicle is not a right, fucking moron by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You just do not get it. I'm not a libertarian, I live in Europe under a government which has suspended at various times in recent history [a] the right to trial [b] the right to due process [c] free-speech rights and [d] the right to life. That is the UK.

    Rather than cheerleading for anything that sounds good, you, as a responsible voter, should take an instinctive distrust to increases in government power, forcing debate in which a correctly-weighed case for the benefits and negatives is constructed.

    I do not believe that a government should have power to track everyone at all times when driving, nor coerce me into paying for expensive fragile technology that I don't want to maintain.

  7. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not everyone lives in a city. Even those that live in metro areas, often have no point to point transportation options beyond cars. It's great when people are so self centered, that they project their own needs on everyone else and then demand the government dictate those limitations on everyone.

  8. Re:Another crybaby Libertarian moron, sigh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No, it's not. Get run over by a truck going as slowly as you like.

  9. Re:Driving a vehicle is not a right, fucking moron by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nothing speaks of moral authority and superiority like name calling and all caps.

  10. UN measures, adopted by EU by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Theses measures come from the UN, the EU just adopted them. You disable the speed limiter by pushing hard on the accelerator, or you can also disable it permanently. It is the mandatory black box installed that is worrying. If you crash and it can be shown that you were speeding and regularly do so, your insurance company might screw you. It will also record where ever you go with the car, who will have access to that data?

    1. Re:UN measures, adopted by EU by pahles · · Score: 3, Informative

      How is the insurance company screwing you if you willingly don't comply with the speed limit? Speed limits are there for a reason.

      --
      Sig?
    2. Re: UN measures, adopted by EU by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's not the insurance company screwing you, that's you screwing the insurance company.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    3. Re:UN measures, adopted by EU by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Of course that is the problem here. You can easily defend the improved safety such a system brings. But my local politician who is a defender of the new regulation already promised the government will never abuse the information they gather from these black boxes. And there you have it. They already know about the ability to track all and everyone, but their intentions are good so we do not need to worry.
       
      It might be true we do not need to worry now. But is this still true in the future? Imagine a radical green party comes to power (in many countries they are a reincarnation of the old Communist party, the 'communism was never really tried' kind of people). Will they not abuse the information they can gather? Will they never try to impose their personal, self-inflicted limitations on everyone and use the information to punish everyone who 'polutes' too much?
        Imagine the politicians keep on alienating themselves from the voters and a populist leader comes to power, a so called alt-right leader. Will that person not abuse that information? For example, will an anti illegal immigration politician not abuse the information to track down everyone who works with illegal immigrants?

    4. Re:UN measures, adopted by EU by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To make municipalities money. If the limits were actually set based on what the real safe speed for a road was I'd probably already be driving near that speed.

    5. Re:UN measures, adopted by EU by radja · · Score: 1

      if a politician illegally obtained the info (and it would be illegal under the new privacy law), they'd be digging their own grave.

      --

      No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
      --Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
    6. Re: UN measures, adopted by EU by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What if...what if... what if....aliens invade and we have to run away fast....a maniac puts a bus on a bomb that will explode if it goes under the speed limit...the moon turns into cheese...what if we do something and my imaginary scenario happens

    7. Re:UN measures, adopted by EU by xenobyte · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How is the insurance company screwing you if you willingly don't comply with the speed limit? Speed limits are there for a reason.

      Yeah, usually populist politics.

      Sure, there are obviously sensible limits (residential areas, near schools etc.) but a lot of the speed limits outside the cities are more or less random, guided only by politics. There are areas where a lot of people are affected by accidents and yet the speed limit stay high, and then there are areas where nobody really lives but where lower speed limits suddenly appear. This lack of sense undermines the belief in them and then people tend to drive as they please.

      --
      "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
    8. Re:UN measures, adopted by EU by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      but a lot of the speed limits outside the cities are more or less random, guided only by politics.

      Huh? Are you talking about America or Europe?

      Have you driven on roads outside the cities in Europe? Try driving in Corsica sometime, where the speed limit is 70 and for the love of god don't drive that fast and stay to the shoulder because stupid fucking local teenagers will try and do it.

      Try driving on country roads at 80 in France. Some of them, fine, but others? You'll vibrate your car to bits. But again, beware locals trying to go 150 because fuck it.

      Sure some places could have a 10-20km/h increase but most here have a higher limit than is actually safe. its the intercity/country highways at 90/120/130km/h that could stand tweaks. Why should a four lane broad divided under utilised high way be stuck at 100km/h? (I'm looking at you France)

    9. Re:UN measures, adopted by EU by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 2
      If you crash and it can be shown that you were speeding and regularly do so, your insurance company might screw you

      And why shouldn't they? What gives you the right to drive recklessly and endanger my life?

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    10. Re:UN measures, adopted by EU by DRJlaw · · Score: 1

      Theses measures come from the UN, the EU just adopted them. You disable the speed limiter by pushing hard on the accelerator, or you can also disable it permanently. It is the mandatory black box installed that is worrying. If you crash and it can be shown that you were speeding and regularly do so, your insurance company might screw you. It will also record where ever you go with the car, who will have access to that data?

      The lizard people flying the black helicopters and on their way to examine your colon, of course.

    11. Re:UN measures, adopted by EU by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just because you yourself don't understand why does not mean that there is no rationale. Belief is irrelevant; only compliance is required.

    12. Re:UN measures, adopted by EU by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, what if the roads I drive on regularly everybody regularly speeds? The safest speed to drive is the speed of traffic after all. Or are you going to disagree with that?

  11. Re: Another crybaby Libertarian moron, sigh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What's up with all the name-calling? Does that make you think people will take your argument more seriously?

  12. OK where the speed limits are reasonable by jasonharrop · · Score: 1
    in Germany, for example.

    Won't work so well in nanny states like Australia, where the max speed is 110 km/h on divided carriage ways, 100 for highways, but mostly 80, and increasingly 50.

    It'll be interesting to see how the Aussie state goverments react (particularly Victoria), as a major source of revenue declines.

    Or should we expect new car sales to fall off a cliff, as people who want to retain control hang on to their older cars?

    Many people fall asleep driving on deserted roads at 100 km/h, helped no doubt by the road signs which subliminally suggest you sleep ("feeling tired?", "fatigue kills" etc). But this tech package seems to have an answer for that as well, with fatigue monitoring.

    And what happens when you have a truck up your arse, sitting on your tail because your car is obeying the speed limit? Will the car speed up automatically, or not allow itself to be intimidated (with whatever consequences that may entail for the occupants)?

    1. Re:OK where the speed limits are reasonable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      good thing australia isn't in europe then, huh?

    2. Re:OK where the speed limits are reasonable by pahles · · Score: 2

      Last time I looked Australia was not in Europe. Also, trucks also have to obey the speed limit too. Heck, in a number of countries in the EU trucks have speed limiters.

      --
      Sig?
    3. Re:OK where the speed limits are reasonable by dwywit · · Score: 1

      I'm happy to keep Australian speed limits where they are, thank you.

      Commuted in Brisbane from suburbs to city for 20 years, in car and on motorcycle, then commuted from hills to beach for another 9 years in car and on motorcycle - the shit I've seen and personally experienced makes me glad for speed limits. Maybe the govt should focus more on police presence on the roads instead of "safety cameras" and we'd see better results. Nothing makes motorists behave better than a highly-visible police car. Driver training has been improving lately, but I wouldn't be sorry to see some of the German systems implemented here.

      MAYBE, just maybe on some dual-carriage highway stretches the limit could go up a bit, but the state of the roads would have to be inmproved first.

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
    4. Re:OK where the speed limits are reasonable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Read the article.

    5. Re:OK where the speed limits are reasonable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem in Australia is that it follows what others are doing around the world and then copies or implements the worst on to everyone.

    6. Re:OK where the speed limits are reasonable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      110 km/h is pitiful, Should be 130 km/h and fast lanes from at least 160 km/h.

    7. Re:OK where the speed limits are reasonable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If Australia had speed limits like Germany, then most limits would be lowered. Only on the intercity freeways would they be increased. If you want to see the difference, here is a link to a map showing speed limits in Berlin. The green lines are generally 30km/h. (Berlin speed limits) - note that this page can take some time to load. Here is Melbourne at the same zoom level (Melbourne speed limits). And here is Hamburg to show that it is not unique to Berlin (Hamburg speed limits).

      By all means, advocate for German speed limits, just be prepared to drive slower most of the time.

    8. Re:OK where the speed limits are reasonable by jasonharrop · · Score: 1
      Aussie drivers buy German cars

      Trucks often seem to go a little faster than their speed-limiter might allow.

    9. Re:OK where the speed limits are reasonable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Luxury. In Ontario and Quebec, where 2/3 of Canadians live, the limit is 100 or lower on divided, controlled access highways. This, despite the minimum design of 120 and newer designs up to 140.

    10. Re:OK where the speed limits are reasonable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The law applies to vehicles sold in Europe, so this won't affect Australia in that regard. German cars made to be sold in Australia follow different guidelines than the ones made to be sold in Europe (for example, they also have steering wheels on the right side of the car, while the EU cars have the steering wheel on the left).

    11. Re:OK where the speed limits are reasonable by Per+Wigren · · Score: 1

      Why are they competing in the Eurovision Song Contest then, huh?

      --
      My other account has a 3-digit UID.
    12. Re:OK where the speed limits are reasonable by demonlapin · · Score: 1

      110 on a divided road is pretty much in line with the US east of the Mississippi, where the limit is usually 65-70 mph. I agree that it’s too low. 130/80 is a better number. Austria manages 120 through the Alps, FFS. Colorado has 75 through the Continental Divide. Texas has 70 on almost every rural two-lane highway (but they have much better construction than most states, with paved shoulders), and 75+ on divided highways. Like in most of Europe, there is no need to speed. The limits are reasonable for the road. 90 kph/55 mph is a joke when you’re in the middle of nowhere with good sight lines for suicidal deer.

    13. Re:OK where the speed limits are reasonable by jasonharrop · · Score: 1

      Yes, because you are a commuter in a capital city. Just like our law makers... I'm advocating for higher speeds on straight rural roads where you might not see another car for 5 mins, and where you can see them kms ahead. Of course there are kangaroos - especially at certain times - so don't go fast in bad light.

    14. Re:OK where the speed limits are reasonable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      'Stralia, never change mate.

  13. 5 seconds after you show some common sense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ie never.

  14. Autobahn..... by wolfheart111 · · Score: 1

    ???...... I love that thing :|

    --
    [($)]
  15. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Man, how selfish little prick can one be? Learn to fucking think outside your own little mind.

  16. As a Practice Matter... by rally2xs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...How do you pass a car doing 45 mph on a road limited at 55 mph? The answer is, you don't, and are delayed and consigned to do 45 as long as the bozo in front of you decides to do 45, because it would take too long to pass, and some oncoming car would come out of *somewhere* to give you an exciting ride.

    And then of course there is the emergency aspects of this - you're being chased, or you're attempting to get the H out of the woods before it burns down entirely, or you're just keeping in front of the mile-wide tornado, etc. etc.

    You're doing the 70 mph limit on an Interstate highway, and want to get into the right lane to exit, and need to sprint ahead just a little to increase clearance with the car behind so you can get in the right lane to access the exit, and... you can't do it. And its FAR more difficult to attempt that by slowing and dropping into a space behind that car, as there may not be such a space, some pinhead without a speed limited car may come racing up just to keep you from being able to do that (every other person on the road is a prick, in case you haven't noticed), and on, and on... 1000's of reasons why this is a bad idea.

    The ultimate reason that this is a bad idea is that I would never, ever, ever buy a new car again, and know a lot of people that would feel the same way. I belong to the Sports Car Club of America, about 55,000 people, so there's 55,000 "no sale"s right there. And being how this is the USA, and we are a bit 'round the bend about the freedom thing, one of the biggest reasons we have 350 million privately owned firearms in a country with about 320 million people including the kids, such a car would not make a lot of money being sold here, I think.

    1. Re:As a Practice Matter... by rally2xs · · Score: 1

      Rats... should have been, "As a Practical Matter..."

    2. Re: As a Practice Matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That is nothing. You should see how you misused consigned, as if it meant condemned and resigned.

      I do not think it means what you think it means.

    3. Re:As a Practice Matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Come to Switzerland. Both lanes locked to the same speed exactly at the speed limit (cameras every 5 km on some inter city highways). Have to change lane to get out? You need to push people out of the road literally. Great example of how strict enforcement and draconian fines make traffic unbearable and not safer, either.

    4. Re: As a Practice Matter... by rally2xs · · Score: 1

      From net search: "assign; commit decisively or permanently."

      I think it fits.

    5. Re:As a Practice Matter... by rally2xs · · Score: 1

      Aw, I don't have to go to Switzerland to get annoyed by traffic laws, there's lots of traffic laws right here to do that to me...

    6. Re:As a Practice Matter... by Phillip2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "How do you pass a car doing 45 mph on a road limited at 55 mph?"

      You wait. Safety compromising convenience seems reasonable to me.

      "And then of course there is the emergency aspects of this - you're being chased, or you're attempting to get the H out of the woods before it burns down entirely, or you're just keeping in front of the mile-wide tornado, etc. etc."

      That's more complicated. You make the mistake, I think, of assuming that this will keep your more safe, but of course, people die in road accidents when there is wildfire or a tornado also.

      "And its FAR more difficult to attempt that by slowing and dropping into a space behind that car, as there may not be such a space"

      There may not be a space in front either. Slowing down, speeding up, both have the same effect of changing your speed relative to the car which is in your way, and both of them leave you going at a different speed relatively to the bulk of cars on the road. So both have a risk. The advantage of slowing down is that if there is a collision, you'll be going slightly slower, so more more likely to survive.

      "one of the biggest reasons we have 350 million privately owned firearms in a country"

      Yes, indeed, and you are prepare to accept the extraordinary numbers of gun related deaths that this causes. It's your country, all up to you. I am pleased to see that Europe is moving in a more positive direction.

    7. Re:As a Practice Matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > ...How do you pass a car doing 45 mph on a road limited at 55 mph?

      Easy - you simply RTFA :-)

      If you'd thought to do that before you got into your little car rant, you'd have seen that you can simply apply additional pressure to a special foot operated lever which will allow you to exceed the limiters speed. If that's still not enough for you, you can completely disable the limiter until you next switch the engine on.

      As for sales - if you can't buy any cars except limited ones because it's illegal to sell them, if you want a car, you'll buy one.

    8. Re:As a Practice Matter... by tmoerel · · Score: 1

      You won't have to overtake a car doing 45 mph. This is the EU and that is a metric zone (yes I know, the british are not but by the time this law goes into action they will be long (Br)Exit). So you might have to overtake a car doing 60 km/h

    9. Re:As a Practice Matter... by JasterBobaMereel · · Score: 1

      ...Every reason you describe that you think excuses speeding is already illegal

      The ONLY reason to speed that is accepted by the courts is the one that this system allows - you are already overtaking and circumstances change and to avoid an accident you need to briefly speed

      --
      Puteulanus fenestra mortis
    10. Re:As a Practice Matter... by rally2xs · · Score: 1

      "The advantage of slowing down is that if there is a collision, you'll be going slightly slower, so more more likely to survive."

      The disadvantage of slowing down is that you have to be looking over your right shoulder to look for a way to merge. Lots of cars you can't see for squat, plus you need to look over your shoulder and you also need to use the right outside mirror. While you're doing all this, some bozo in front of you decides to slow down or merge in front of you, you don't see that because you're looking where you've been instead of where you're going. The likelihood of having an accident is waaaaaay higher than sprinting ahead a bit and merging into a hole that's big enough and you can know exactly where everyone is, without taking your eyes off where you're going.

      And again, who are they going to sell these cars to? I predict a huge slump in sales as buyers keep their more-capable cars until the wheels fall off.

    11. Re:As a Practice Matter... by rally2xs · · Score: 1

      "If you'd thought to do that before you got into your little car rant, you'd have seen that you can simply apply additional pressure to a special foot operated lever which will allow you to exceed the limiters speed. If that's still not enough for you, you can completely disable the limiter until you next switch the engine on."

      Either it's a limiter or its not. If you can switch it off, it's not a limiter. So the summary of the article is inconsistent with the facts.

      "As for sales - if you can't buy any cars except limited ones because it's illegal to sell them, if you want a car, you'll buy one."

      "If." The point is, I wouldn't want one of those cars, and neither would a whale of a lot of people that I know. Virtually no one, in fact. We like controlling all aspects of our ride, and being able to do what we need to do when we need to do it, without the gov't getting into the way of dynamic physical interactions of multiple instances of 2 tons of moving metal. Its as dumb as these computers controlling, and crashing, airplanes, only mass produced cars would have nowhere near the testing that commercial airliners get, and _still_ screw up the task of keeping everyone safe.

    12. Re:As a Practice Matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah - your reasons are addressed immediately in the summary.

      Well - I for one have always been an old man on the roads - and I think most of you reckless cunts should be shot in the face.

      I have fucked with people doing 30 over, because, fuck them. (Pulling in front of them, or pseudo pulling in front of them)

      Your reasons are garbage - if you want to exit a freeway, think ahead and exit safely. You shouldn't last minute exit and even worse, SPEED UP to last minute exit. Merge properly before the exit. It's actually extremely easy and if you're having trouble doing it, I definitely don't want you driving, or speeding up to do it.

      The proposed rules let you break the speed limit. In fact, all the time. So, relax, and stop driving like a maniac on public roads. On your race tracks - go nuts.

    13. Re: As a Practice Matter... by oobayly · · Score: 1

      Pedant alert...
      The UK Highway Code Rule 163 explicitly states "Overtake only when it is safe and legal to do so", so if you have to speed to overtake somebody then it's not meeting that requirement, and you shouldn't overtaking.

      https://www.gov.uk/guidance/th...

    14. Re:As a Practice Matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are the exact type of driver that makes me excited about these laws.... overtake to exit/right turn, speed limit automatically means minimum. You are hilarious.

    15. Re:As a Practice Matter... by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 1
      I have fucked with people doing 30 over, because, fuck them. (Pulling in front of them, or pseudo pulling in front of them)

      I hope you don't do that in Florida -- that would seem like a good way to induce some armed road rage...

    16. Re:As a Practice Matter... by PPH · · Score: 1

      ...How do you pass a car doing 45 mph on a road limited at 55 mph?

      The same way trucks do today. Sometimes with a lot less than a 10 mph margin.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    17. Re: As a Practice Matter... by rally2xs · · Score: 1

      Yeah, that's just going "by the book." In the real world, this law is broken more often than sunshine. They want to write me a ticket for passing someone going 45 by me going 70 to get my ass out of the oncoming lane, they can go ahead and do it. But of course they have to catch me first, and they're mostly not around on these 2-lane roads. Trying to pass someone going 45 without going over 55 will take... lessee, from a (safe) position 30 feet behind the car, to a position 30 ft in front of the car, and assuming the car is about 12 feet long, and my car is also 12 feet long, that's 84 feet. 10 mph difference in speed is 22 X 10 / 15 = 220 / 15 = approx. 14 ft / sec. 84 feet / 14 ft. / sec = 6 seconds. 6 seconds at 55 mph is 484 feet to do the pass, just shy of 1/10th mile. That's a lot. It gives fate time to provide someone to pop over a hill you didn't know was there, carelessly turn out of a driveway or sideroad into your path because they're looking left for cars coming in their lane and don't see you coming from their right (all based on USA drive-on-the-right) (and I've actually had this happen to me), so the shorter distance and time they you are in the left lane passing some bozo picking his nose and doing 45, the better. That's done by doing mayhem to the speed limit. Overall... its safer. Its just not "by the book."

    18. Re:As a Practice Matter... by rally2xs · · Score: 1

      And that means that they mostly don't pass unless that road is really, really deserted of traffic. Yeah, I could pass in Death Valley, that road is straight and you can see for about 50 miles to the next set of mountains, but around here, and most everywhere else I've been, they don't pass, they can't pass, and it takes them a LOT longer to get where they're going.

    19. Re:As a Practice Matter... by PPH · · Score: 1

      they mostly don't pass unless that road is really, really deserted of traffic

      I take it you've never seen trucks. I'm thinking of 4 lane roads here. They'll pull out to pass and two dozen cars can just f*king wait. On two land roads where they can't see oncoming, they won't. But they'll queue up behind the slow one, so nobody else can pass either.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    20. Re:As a Practice Matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The most likely scenario is a malfunction: GPS lost, speed information is incorrect.
      What happens if one is doing 80 (EU) and the system says, abruptly, no the max speed for this zone is zero!
      Losing the ability to accelerate is dangerous! Who accepts the liability when this occurs?

    21. Re:As a Practice Matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ""How do you pass a car doing 45 mph on a road limited at 55 mph?""

      "You wait. Safety compromising convenience seems reasonable to me."

      Where I live the vast majority of my driving is on 2 lane 50 or 55 MPH rural roads. Passing zones are mostly 1/4 mile and less. If you can't use the loud pedal to get around you limit road speed to those driving around at 45, 40 even less. This leads to road rage etc as lines of cars queue instead of simply passing.

      ""And its FAR more difficult to attempt that by slowing and dropping into a space behind that car, as there may not be such a space""

      "There may not be a space in front either. Slowing down, speeding up, both have the same effect of changing your speed relative to the car which is in your way, and both of them leave you going at a different speed relatively to the bulk of cars on the road. So both have a risk. The advantage of slowing down is that if there is a collision, you'll be going slightly slower, so more more likely to survive."

      The advantage of speeding UP is that I am looking out for the cars ahead of me and picking a gap I can see. If I slow down everyone else has to look out for ME. And if every car is going my speed I could slow down a ton of 'em. (Example: watch any NASCAR restart where the guy in front spins his tires. Mayhem ensues!) If every car is stuck at the speed limit the chances of finding that gap are also reduced as we end up with big long strings of cars all going the limit and probably many frustrated because of it.

    22. Re:As a Practice Matter... by rally2xs · · Score: 1

      " I'm thinking of 4 lane roads here."

      I'm thinking of 2 lanes of road here, that wander all over the freakin' USA. You're driving 600 miles in a day, and the shortcut between the interestates is 90 miles of driving on 2-lane roads, you're going to be doing that at the speed of the slowest traffic you encounter. If that's some bozo, or series of bozos doing 45 or maybe even less, you're going to be taking 2 hours for that 90 miles, instead of 1 hour and 41 minutes at 55, and real-world, everone adds 7 - 8 mph to the SL, for 62 mph and 87 minutes. So, difference of 33 minutes wasted on screwing around some 2-lane roads at 45 mph. Of course I don't often choose 2-lane roads, and will drive an extra 40 miles to drive it at interstate highway speeds, but if Google Maps say that the interestates are backed up with traffic, then yeah, 2-lane roads. But I'll pass where my 335 hp and 380 ft-lbs of torque let me at a speed that works for the pass. Getting to where there is more 2-lane road travel again, such as, for instance, the Ohio Turnpike, where they seem to have adopted the Pennsylvania Turnpike model - a road I stopped driving about 5 years ago because of this - but they create ridiculously long "work zones" where there's orange barrels for maybe 40 - 90 miles (in Pennsylvania, not quite that long in Ohio) the road may or may not be narrowed from 3 lanes in one direction to 2, but of course there's a work zone speed limit that is egregiously low, while the work zone itself has these 90 miles of orange barrels and maybe 3 guys working somewhere in the entire zone. The obvious ruse here is to lower the speed limit to create a highway piracy zone for the cops to write speeding tickets, so I drive Interstate 68 to get to the same areas, through Maryland which seems to have done much better and doesn't have to have work zones ALWAYS set up to lower speed limits. Will now also use Interstate 70 for the westward component of my trip in May, and probably wend my way up to Sandusky, Ohio on 2-lane roads. Probably another 90 miles. Feds want to raise gas taxes 26.4 cents a gallon, to actually "do infrastructure", and if they can do it without taking years of construction zones, but get it done in a few weeks like should be done, I'm then all for it.

    23. Re:As a Practice Matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's been shows time and time again that speed does not cause accidents. There's a lot of data on this, which is summarily ignored just like gun fatality statistics ("assault weapons" are a rounding error, regulate handguns) and nuclear power statistics (they're safe, built more). It can make accidents more deadly, but above 25mph you're already in risky territory. At 55mph there's an enormous chance that you're toast. At 80mph you're simply done. So just limit everything to 55! Nope, because that's the risk if you hit a wall. If you hit oncoming traffic at 55mph then the collision is at a whopping 110mph. Even on a lax 40mph road hitting an oncoming car deals 1d80 of damage.
      This is why highways are safer even if quicker. If you're going 70 and get hit by someone going 80 then the damage dealt is only between 10mph. Cars can generally take such an abuse without rapid loss of control, but even so losing control and doing a pirouette into a section of guard rail is way less deadly than hitting a solid object, as the energy gets bled off much more slowly.

      The best solution to the road fatality problem is better road designs, not car gadgets. If lots of people go faster than the speed limit on a road then put in center rumble strips, add the occasional real two lane passing segment (oncoming lane passing is absurdly unsafe), and raise the limit to match what people usually want to go. This raises the real safety and lowers driver frustration.

    24. Re:As a Practice Matter... by skaralic · · Score: 1

      "How do you pass a car doing 45 mph on a road limited at 55 mph?"

      You wait. Safety compromising convenience seems reasonable to me.

      People drive the safest when they are at a speed that they feel comfortable at. That means not too slow and not too fast. Going too fast for your comfort is obviously dangerous but going too slow means that the drive stops paying attention or starts getting aggravated and does something stupid. If you have a lineup of cars behind you wanting to pass you then you are not going fast enough and need to move over or speed up. Driving is a social activity.

    25. Re:As a Practice Matter... by rally2xs · · Score: 1

      Roger that. As the 1st state that has allowed concealed carry of weapons, the density of people carrying handguns is one of the highest there is. That said, those people are the most law-abiding, and least likely to resort to such violence. Of course, there's a bad apple in most every barrel, so you screw with people on the road, the Floridians have the means to do something about it if they decide they want to.

    26. Re:As a Practice Matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I belong to the Sports Car Club of America

      --there it is right there.
      You're afraid they will break your toys and so you're making up excuses unrelated to the fact that you just like to own fast cars and drive fast 'cause it's fun.
      The same as the gun owners who bemoan any control based on self defense reasons, when really they just like owning big guns and shooting them off 'cause it's fun.

    27. Re:As a Practice Matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How about we take your freedom of speech away too?

      I know you are all for that.

    28. Re:As a Practice Matter... by rally2xs · · Score: 1

      "...Every reason you describe that you think excuses speeding is already illegal"

      Don't care. They have to catch me first. If they do, I'll pay the ticket and drive off into the sunset. Have done this about 40 times or so (I'm 71) and will continue to do it. Its just a big money scam anyway.

      "accepted by the courts"

      Don't care about that either. I know better than the numbers on a sign what is safe, and after 55 years of driving with only 1 bent metal accident as a result of some anomalous vision issues after cataract surgery, and where nobody bled at all, I think I can back that up with real-world experience. I drive to minimize my chances of having my hair, teeth, and eyes getting scraped up off the highway by the emergency services people, as well as getting where I'm going before I get dangerously tired from driving anyway, and can do it quite well without the gov't getting involved. Any time the highway robbery traffic-ticket flim-flam gets conflicts with this... well, they're going to have to catch me first!

    29. Re:As a Practice Matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, indeed, and you are prepare to accept the extraordinary numbers of gun related deaths that this causes. It's your country, all up to you. I am pleased to see that Europe is moving in a more positive direction.

      4x the number of people are killed by hammers and knifes. We are also prepared to accept the number of crimes prevented by self defense our guns allow. We all here in the USA hope you prefer cowering in corners.

      I am pleased to see that the USA is moving in a more positive direction.

    30. Re:As a Practice Matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "How do you pass a car doing 45 mph on a road limited at 55 mph?"

      You wait. Safety compromising convenience seems reasonable to me.

      "And then of course there is the emergency aspects of this - you're being chased, or you're attempting to get the H out of the woods before it burns down entirely, or you're just keeping in front of the mile-wide tornado, etc. etc."

      That's more complicated. You make the mistake, I think, of assuming that this will keep your more safe, but of course, people die in road accidents when there is wildfire or a tornado also.

      "And its FAR more difficult to attempt that by slowing and dropping into a space behind that car, as there may not be such a space"

      There may not be a space in front either. Slowing down, speeding up, both have the same effect of changing your speed relative to the car which is in your way, and both of them leave you going at a different speed relatively to the bulk of cars on the road. So both have a risk. The advantage of slowing down is that if there is a collision, you'll be going slightly slower, so more more likely to survive.

      "one of the biggest reasons we have 350 million privately owned firearms in a country"

      Yes, indeed, and you are prepare to accept the extraordinary numbers of gun related deaths that this causes. It's your country, all up to you. I am pleased to see that Europe is moving in a more positive direction.

      I work with a guy that routinely drives 55mph in 70mph and tries to block the traffic behind him because "people drive too fast and need to slow down".

    31. Re:As a Practice Matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is there any way to slow down pedantic answers?

    32. Re:As a Practice Matter... by Jahoda · · Score: 1

      I think it's adorable that you somehow tie your sports car into firearms and freedom. Ok chief. Good for you.

    33. Re:As a Practice Matter... by nnull · · Score: 1

      I got a ticket mailed to me for going 122km/h in 120km/h lane in Switzerland. Great logic there.

    34. Re:As a Practice Matter... by nnull · · Score: 1

      If this is to be enforced, then start enforcing truck traffic to be limited to certain lanes on certain roads. They cause much of the traffic in cities and cause people undue stress because they usually drive way below the speed limit almost anywhere.

    35. Re: As a Practice Matter... by nnull · · Score: 1

      Common sense no longer rules anymore anywhere. It's now strict adherence to code and law, or we execute you.

    36. Re:As a Practice Matter... by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Come to Boston. All lanes full of massholes driving like a Mad Max villain.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    37. Re:As a Practice Matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Europe is Goose-stepping in a more positive direction.

      FTFY

      This is not about speed limits. It's about an economic block that has decided to homogenize social order across an entire continent. That always ends in blood and tears.

    38. Re:As a Practice Matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "You wait. Safety compromising convenience seems reasonable to me."

      You obviously live in an urban area. Passing is constant and commonplace outside cities.

      ""And its FAR more difficult to attempt that by slowing and dropping into a space behind that car, as there may not be such a space""
      "There may not be a space in front either."

      Uh.. no kidding. So it's nice to be able to adjust to the situation.

      " moving in a more positive direction."

      With resounding applause.

    39. Re:As a Practice Matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "How do you pass a car doing 45 mph on a road limited at 55 mph?"

      You wait. Safety compromising convenience seems reasonable to me.

      And we'd all be safer staying at home wrapped in bubble wrap. But that doesn't happen either.

      Sounds like you don't drive much. Many drivers are idiots / impaired / inconsiderate pricks. I've driven enough winding back country roads to know. There's always some asshole / tractor / commercial truck going 35 in a 55 zone. Everyone piles up behind him waiting for one of the few passing spots, where a few cars can zoom past the asshat.

      Telling everyone to just go 35 is NOT a solution. You'll cause more accidents as more people try to make a passing maneuver and misjudge the time required. If they can't tramp down the gas pedal to zoom through in time, there will be more head on collisions.

      Stay safe in your fucking horse and buggy. The rest of the world accepts that there's risk every time they step out of the house.

    40. Re:As a Practice Matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I work with a guy that routinely drives 55mph in 70mph and tries to block the traffic behind him because "people drive too fast and need to slow down".

      I'm sure he's the asshole that flashes his high beams when I legally pass him too. People are fucking stupid, self righteous and arrogant.

    41. Re:As a Practice Matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There may not be a space in front either. Slowing down, speeding up, both have the same effect of changing your speed relative to the car which is in your way, and both of them leave you going at a different speed relatively to the bulk of cars on the road.

      There have many instances where I have tried to move to the lane to the right (to get to an off-ramp) where I accelerated and the guy beside me also has decided to accelerate (because he didn't want to be passed?). I accelerated more and so did he.

      So I checked my mirrors, braked hard, and slid in behind him (and made the exit safely).

      I personally didn't care if I was in front or behind the people in question, I just wanted to get over. They seemed to have a problem with being overtaken. Whatever.

    42. Re:As a Practice Matter... by Phillip2 · · Score: 1

      "People drive the safest when they are at a speed that they feel comfortable at. "

      I think that you have very little evidence for this. The slower cars drive, the safer they are. It's works better if all the cars in the vicinity drive at about the same speed, and if there are limitations of lane swapping. The literature and support for this is extensive; it is the basis for the "smart motorway" developments in the UK.

      Curiously, by reducing the speed limits on motorways, you actually increase the throughput as well; this is because people drive more smoothly, there is less jumping on the breaks. This is before you factor in the additional time taken by people when there is crash which can involve extremely long delays for many people. As well as dead people.

    43. Re:As a Practice Matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The whole argument depends on where you live. in the U.K. the highways are built and controlled different than the US.
      And there is there is evidence that you are safest at the speed you are comfortable at, it's how speed limits are submitted to local governments, who often set them below those numbers. Not for safety, but for ticket money. Engineers who design roads and advise speed limits have even lobbied local governments to increase speeds for this reason in some places. Many are even advocating the national limits be raised by 5-10mph.

      How many times did you get stuck behind someone slow and immediately reach for the radio, or worse the cell phone. Don't believe it? Next time it happens to you, pay attention to what you do. This is also why you can be driving along and realize you don't remember the last 5 miles, or worse you get highway hypnosis, where you completely zone out. Modern cars make this far too easy to do because they all but drive themselves on the highway.

      If you live on the west coast it's not as bad, but try visiting the midwest or east coast sometime, there are entire towns were the speed limit is 20mph with cops sitting at the entrances just waiting for you. Why are you doing 20 down a street wide enough for 5 lanes yet only has two with no parking? Because money. I live 50 feet from a road just like this and any time the town needs money you will find several cops camped out there pulling over every other car that comes by going 3-5mph over.

      By the way, your idea of everyone driving the same speed is great, but that doesn't happen in most of the US, that is mostly a West Coast thing. Much of the rest of the country has a max and minimum with a left lane that is for passing only (which they ignore). So you end up with a person doing 80, passing the guy doing 70, who is passing the truck doing 65 who is trying to avoid the car trying to merge onto the highway at 30. It's pure madness. If you ignore the congestion, driving in California is actually pleasant by comparison to midwest driving, especially Missouri, wtf happened there I have no idea but they cannot drive. In the Midwest, if you want to maintain some semblance of anything close to the speed limit you're going to be fighting the entire way and this includes passing on the right because you end up with people doing 10 under in the far left lane being passed on the right by people doing 10 over trying to get around them after being boxed in for the last 10 miles while they tried passing a big rig by going 0.5mph faster. Basically, if they're not in a hurry, you're not in a hurry and they really don't care if they have 45 cars lined up behind them trying to pass for the last 15 miles or more.

      Reducing speeds won't help either.
      In some states, breaking the limit carries massive fines (east coast) so people from there will avoid even getting close to it, in the midwest there are people who drive 5-10 under all the time (why are you in such a hurry?!). So if you reduce the speeds, these people just slow down more. What we need is better training and stricter licensing, something that is VERY, VERY different in the US compared to the UK. You also need to break local governments of relying on ticket fees, and that won't happen easily.

    44. Re:As a Practice Matter... by whodunit · · Score: 1

      “Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” Henry David Thoreau

      I will never understand the pride Europeans seem to take in their craven boot-licking impulses. Sometimes I wonder if this had something to do with the rise of fascism in Italy, Germany and Spain, and the rise of equally authoritarian-trending socialism elsewhere, including Greece (where fascists and communists are still having their punch-ups and occasionally trading grenades.) But I suppose that's the gulf one observes between cultures. Many Americans tend to view Europeans as essentially similar to Americans - we're all first-world citizens working desk jobs and driving cars, after all - but the differences run much deeper than most of us seem to realize.

    45. Re:As a Practice Matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's why I do NOT wear safety belts: it's quicker to get out of the car

  17. Won't safe lifes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hitting a brick wall at 100km/h isn't any safer than hitting a brick wall at 200km/h.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn#Safety

  18. Re: Another crybaby Libertarian moron, sigh... by rally2xs · · Score: 0

    Prolly one of our USA liberals, they're way into namecalling.

  19. This is what happens when you give up your guns. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Next theyâ(TM)re going to pass a law to require all men to wear dresses.

  20. Will this apply to motorbikes ? by dargaud · · Score: 1

    And if not, why not, they are the ones who _constantly_ and _noisily_ ride way above the speed limit. I don't care about the car driver who's going 57 instead of 55. I care about the biker going 60 in a 20mph zone, or 120 on a mountain road.

    --
    Non-Linux Penguins ?
    1. Re:Will this apply to motorbikes ? by Ryn · · Score: 1

      As long as I assume the risk of sand on the road, herd of elk crossing the road or deer jumping out infront of me, I reserve the right to speed on mountain roads on my bike. I have the skill, why do you care?

    2. Re:Will this apply to motorbikes ? by avandesande · · Score: 1

      Why do you care? Has there been a rash of people injured or killed by motorcyclists?

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
    3. Re:Will this apply to motorbikes ? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      And if not, why not, they are the ones who _constantly_ and _noisily_ ride way above the speed limit.

      IME, the Motorcycles are rarely the fastest thing on the road, except when traffic is substantially slowed — and that only because California permits lane splitting, and that's where I live.

      I care about the biker going 60 in a 20mph zone, or 120 on a mountain road.

      I care more about the biker going 45 in a 55 on a mountain road because he's afraid to lean over, in case there's a bunch of crap on the road and he loses traction, since there's oncoming traffic and no gravel pit. Motorcycles are stupid on public roads. I'm forever getting held up behind them, even in ungainly vehicles like a cargo Sprinter.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re:Will this apply to motorbikes ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Odd, because I have more problems with the car going 57 in a 55 who's staring at their cellphone over the biker going 60 in a 20 and actually paying attention to where they're going.

  21. Re:This is what happens when you give up your guns by rally2xs · · Score: 1

    And sleep in onsies...

  22. hmm by anonieuweling · · Score: 2

    This 'feature' really makes me want to buy a new car...

    1. Re:hmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree with you whole heartedly! Finally, I can just put a brick on the accelerator and not worry about those pesky pedals ever again!

  23. Another condition for speed limiting by flightmaker · · Score: 2

    Rear fog lamps.

    I guess other countries have similar rules to the UK which is they are only to be used if visibility is less than 100 metres.

    If we're talking about mandatory speed limiters on cars, let's also have the speed limited to 40mph whenever the high intensity rear fog lamps are switched on to put a stop to the idiots in over powered cars doing 85mph in the third lane in torrential rain with the fog lamps on.

    1. Re:Another condition for speed limiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They will just be speeding with with their fog lamps turned off.

    2. Re:Another condition for speed limiting by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 1

      How is that going to stop them? All that would happen is that they would do 85mph in the third lane in torrential rain with the fog lamps off.

    3. Re:Another condition for speed limiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good idea - it would also mean fewer people dazzling other drivers by using foglights while travelling full speed in clear visibility. Being dazzled by inappropriate lights is the single most hazardous situation that occurs regularly while driving.

    4. Re:Another condition for speed limiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      At least they're not likely to need the rear fog lights wt 85MPH. Who's going to rear end them?

    5. Re:Another condition for speed limiting by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 1

      The even bigger idiot driving at 95 mph? If it weren't for the danger to other drivers you could almost take the long term view and let evolution take care of it.

    6. Re:Another condition for speed limiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Rear fog lamps.

      If those bother you, turn on the hi beams. Leave them on (or blink them) until the clown turns off his fog lamps.

      Don't complain on the internet about problems so easily solved by being unpleasant.

  24. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by stealth_finger · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Real freedom is not needing to own a car (and not have it affect you in the slightest). The best cities are car-free.

    No, it's being able to go where and when you want. If you're stuck on foot or relying on others you're not going to get far.

    --
    Wanna buy a shirt?
    https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
  25. So? Anormalities are not excuses. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, thousands of things *could* happen. But nearly always, they *don't*!
    Why is this generation such a bunch of massive pussies, that they would give away literally any freedom they sti have left, for the slightest of tiniest of possible risks?
    Ever heard of "Worth it"? Ever heard of taking a (in this case ridiculously tiny) risk, to get something valuable?
    Especially for cases, like those you mentioned, that will not happen twice anyway if people have the slightest bit of brains: Why did the car 'suddenly stop?" It's not magic! Fix that problem! Instead of banning the entirety of fast cars, pubishing everyone for the failue of one. Fix the car. Fix drivers of that life history!

    Anything that is worth *anything*, comes at a risk, even of life.
    *You* can choose to abandon being alive altogether to "live" forever. (What a logic!) But you cannot "kill" others to "save" their lives!

    Go cure your anxiety disorder! At your level, it's a mental illness!

    1. Re:So? Anormalities are not excuses. by captbollocks · · Score: 1

      That must be the dumbest reasoning I have ever seen.

      What you are saying is that it is ok to put other people's lives at risk without their permission because you want to risk your life and drive at the limits 50 metres away from someone ferrying their children to school.

      By the way, I did half a season in the Porsche Cup (a recurring elbow injury forced me to stop), and have risked my life in many other pursuits, so no one really calls me a pussy.

    2. Re:So? Anormalities are not excuses. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The way you fix drivers that plow into stationary obstacles is by imposing a speed limit. Where there is no speed limit, the Autobahn is built for 130km/h. If and only if you can control all other risks are you allowed to go faster. Going faster automatically puts the blame on you if there is an accident. The other driver can swerve into your lane without looking while being on the phone and getting a blowjob, and you will still be assigned blame if you barrel into his car at 250km/h. The Autobahn is not a race track. Being mindful of risks you pose to other people is not "being a pussy."

    3. Re: So? Anormalities are not excuses. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's 2019 and people think speed limits from 50 years ago are still valid? Like we've reached the pinnacle of safety or something?

      What does childrens safety have to do with someone driving over an arbitrary speed?

      Why does it seem like so many 'adults' these days are trapped in an arrested development of the mind?

    4. Re: So? Anormalities are not excuses. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Kinetic energy still increases with the square of the velocity and linearly with the mass. 50 years of physics haven't changed that, but cars are much heavier now. Look, buddy, nobody but your mom cares if you wrap yourself around a tree, but other people do care that you probably take someone else with you when you go. Race tracks are for racing, not the public roads.

    5. Re:So? Anormalities are not excuses. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "so no one really calls me a pussy."

      pussy

    6. Re:So? Anormalities are not excuses. by captbollocks · · Score: 1

      "so no one really calls me a pussy."

      pussy

      Says the anonymous coward.....

    7. Re: So? Anormalities are not excuses. by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      The most important part of a car (the tires) are MUCH better. The physics haven't changed, but the Engineering has.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    8. Re: So? Anormalities are not excuses. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The tires don't change the kinetic energy (except that there's more angular momentum because the tires are heavier too). Speed limits aren't just about preventing crashes. They're also about reducing the severity of crashes. Anyway, high speed differences are a major cause of crashes. Even if some drivers were able to drive much faster on their own without losing control of the car, they're on the road with many other people who really shouldn't drive faster, and this mixture is dangerous. Speed freaks should just go racing on race tracks.

    9. Re: So? Anormalities are not excuses. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > They're also about reducing the severity of crashes
      What is your lower bound?

      If you don't have one you don't have an argument. There can never be a speed below which you can vomit the same drivel.

    10. Re: So? Anormalities are not excuses. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So what you're saying is that we could stop all traffic deaths if we stopped all traffic, but that's absurd, hence everybody should be allowed to drive as fast as possible. Also known as reductio ad absurdum. More rational people look at the data and find that at some speeds, the risk reduction is great and the travel time increase is small, and further lowering the speed limit doesn't decrease the risk much but further increases travel time. The world is not black and white.

    11. Re: So? Anormalities are not excuses. by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      You really don't know what you are talking about.

      Tires are much better, to the point that you can damage an old car by putting modern tires on it. The loads generated can break the old suspension.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    12. Re: So? Anormalities are not excuses. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you ever need to appear in traffic court for speeding, please do us all a favor and be true to yourself: Tell the judge that it was quite OK because you have great tires.

    13. Re: So? Anormalities are not excuses. by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Your not my lawyer. Fuckoff.

      FYI my last 'ticket' was decades ago. My lawyer got it dismissed as a 'defective speedometer' fix it ticket. 110 in a 25. You should have seen the cops face.

      It was expensive, DAs aren't cheap.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  26. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    He is a Euroweenie. These are people who thought giving up all sovereignty without losing a war was a great idea.

    Just ignore them. History will solve the Euroweenie problem.

  27. This should get fun.. by Mascot · · Score: 2

    Considering my car's sign recognition camera routinely misinterprets and claims e.g. the speed limit is 140 in a 50 zone, this should get fun.

    If it's on by default, I predict the sales of GPS jammers will skyrocket if this becomes the norm. Not to mention duct tape to cover the sign reading camera. Yes, even if you can actually turn it off in settings, a lot of people simply won't read the damn manual.

    1. Re:This should get fun.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can just imagine the pranking with speed limit signs. Go low. Like 15 mph on interstates. That would be so funny.

    2. Re:This should get fun.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree that a lot of this seems to depend on technology that has problems in some situations or is decidedly less than mature. But I would point out that my GPS usually shows the correct speed limit -- when it shows anything at all. As long as the automated systems can be overridden when they are misbehaving -- as with ABS and ECS in snow, this should save some lives and avoid some serious injuries. That'd be a good thing. And maybe it'll keep the intellectually impaired from tailgating me.

      Count me as a qualified Yes vote.

    3. Re:This should get fun.. by rbgnr111 · · Score: 1

      This sounds about like what I would do. you don't buy a fast car without actually planning to try to get it up to speed every now and then.
      I can see this being a selling point on a lot of the economy cars, but on a 500+ hp car, something like this isn't a selling point, it's more of a detractor, unless it can be disabled.

      the other thing I saw was bringing road deaths to 0? I think this is a bit naive, there are plenty of deaths that occur due to animals crossing the roadway, and as long as people are involved in the equation of driving there will always be stupid mistakes that cause accidents.

    4. Re:This should get fun.. by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      Yes, the system would work on geo-fencing.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    5. Re:This should get fun.. by swillden · · Score: 1

      This sounds about like what I would do. you don't buy a fast car without actually planning to try to get it up to speed every now and then.

      Speak for yourself. I have a Tesla Model S that has never been over 85 mph (speed limit is 80 mph), and likely never will. The smooth, rapid and instantly-responsive acceleration are a big part of the reasons I like the car, so the car's power is important to me, but the top speed is not. I could see buying a Porsche or similar mid to high-five figures sports car and never taking it more than five over the speed limit.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    6. Re:This should get fun.. by djinn6 · · Score: 1

      I could see buying a Porsche or similar mid to high-five figures sports car and never taking it more than five over the speed limit.

      That's like buying a video game and only playing through the tutorial.

    7. Re:This should get fun.. by swillden · · Score: 1

      I could see buying a Porsche or similar mid to high-five figures sports car and never taking it more than five over the speed limit.

      That's like buying a video game and only playing through the tutorial.

      Nonsense. Different people have different goals, and many people buy fast cars without intending to drive fast, but no one buys video games intending to play only the tutorial.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  28. Reduce road deaths to zero? by Wizardess · · Score: 1

    Um, what about the poor sod driving a car who has a heart attack? Technically that is a road death.

    Of course, they can end ALL road deaths by ripping up all the roads and outlawing vehicles other than horse drawn wagons on paths rather than roads. Or they could simply rename the roads as streets and have no more road deaths. But that's a big cheat, too.

    {^_-}

  29. Re:9-11 was a Jew job by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I figure you'll off yourself soon enough.

  30. Re: Driving a vehicle is not a right, fucking moro by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Their leaders suckered them into it with the usual lies and multiple votes until what the elite wanted finally happened.

    So now go back and read the nonsense you wrote. You equated people who want to self determine and be free of foreign control with fascists and racists.

    You are REALLY dumb. Even for /.

  31. Name calling *and* partisanship then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    INB4 somebody calling you a "conservative" name caller.

    Ho the hell do supposedly grown-up "people" in the US "think" in such obvious divide-and-control propaganda caricatures? And only binary rigid one-dimensional ones too!

    1. Re:Name calling *and* partisanship then? by rally2xs · · Score: 1

      We practice, practice, practice!

  32. What happens when by anarcobra · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Someone puts up a 0 km/h sign in the middle of a 120 km/h stretch of road?
    Will the car just come to a sudden stop with all the cars behind it crashing into it?

    1. Re:What happens when by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cyclists carrying 5mph signs would be funnier...

    2. Re:What happens when by Phillip2 · · Score: 1

      5mph is a (fast) walking pace. 8-9 is a slow walking pace. Cyclists travel at about 12 on average. Fit cyclists can maintain 18-20 for elongated periods of time.

      For comparison, 12mph is around about the average speed of a car in a city, and 3mph is about the length of an average journey.

    3. Re:What happens when by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      It won't slam on the brakes, it will just reduce power until the car gently slows down.

      A bigger danger is that GPS speed databases won't be updated. A road might be widened and the limit increased, for example. Or it might get momentarily confused by two roads that cross over each other at different elevations, as sat-navs sometimes are.

      That's why for safety the driver can override the system if they need to, both by pressing the accelerator hard for a temporary override and by turning it off until next drive with a switch.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    4. Re:What happens when by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

      A even bigger danger is that GPS speed databases list the road you are on as not even being there = speed limit 0

    5. Re:What happens when by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was waiting for self driving cars to come out so I could get out the diversion signs and get all the cars into hyper-shit loop.

    6. Re:What happens when by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 1

      Probably not since 0 km/h is not a real speed limit. What is far more likely though is someone putting a 30 km/h School zone sign next to a motorway just "for a laugh" and then those cars with limiters will rapidly slow down while those without them will not likely causing serious accidents.

    7. Re:What happens when by tmoerel · · Score: 1

      ....or the GPS has a bad fix and suddenly puts you on the little rural road just off the highway. This happens all the time in mountainous areas!

    8. Re:What happens when by CriticalYetLazy · · Score: 1

      My friends BMW speed warning system often errors when he's on the motorway and drives under a flyover, indicating he's driving way too fast. Imagine the possibilities if this system would be enforced as of now. If anything it will take many, many years before this is actually implemented, perfected and required.

    9. Re:What happens when by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 1

      5 mph sign when biking uphill. None shall pass :)

    10. Re: What happens when by oobayly · · Score: 1

      In many places in the UK that'd be a bonus as most local roads are national speed limit (60mph) but A&B roads may be 50mph. Although I can think of one place where the northbound M40 runs parallel to a 60 zone, but the distance between the two is 20 metres which nowadays is a big GPS error.

    11. Re:What happens when by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      5mph is a (fast) walking pace. 8-9 is a slow walking pace.

      Does not compute.

      and 3mph is about the length of an average journey.

      Since when is "length" measured in a "speed unit"?

    12. Re:What happens when by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Temporary reduced speeds for road construction... more dead DOT workers if this hits the US

  33. It's a step in the right direction. by dam.capsule.org · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem is not that it is the cause of accidents. The problem is that it increases the risk of fatalities for all user: https://ec.europa.eu/transport.... Hitting a pedestrian at 32km/h kills the pedestrian 5 times out of 100. Hitting a pedestrian at 64km/h kills the pedestrian 85 times out of 100.

    My son enjoy taking is bike to go ride with is friend. I sure hope it doesn't get involve in an accident but if it ever happens, I'd prefer that the car was forcing the driver to respect that 30km/h limit in the village. And if he bypassed the system then he would have to take the responsabilities for it. And by the way, I don't understand people speeding in densely populated area. Most of the time you're doing small distances in those areas. Here in Belgium the 30km/h zones are at most 2km long I'd say. It takes 4 minutes at 30km/h, why would you risk lives of people for earning at most 3 minutes. The speed limits are not there to annoy people, they are there to limit the inertia of your car when you'll hit that wall, people, what else, the day you have a problem. And we all make mistakes and accidents. And also for those "pilots", king of the roads, even if it's not you the problem, if you are speeding on the highway and I overtake someone forgetting to look in my mirror and you hit me, it will be my fault indeed, but we will both die, if you'd respect the speed limit, we'd still be alive so that you would be able to receive the money from my insurance.

    This move is a step in the right direction.

    --
    What sig ?
    1. Re:It's a step in the right direction. by Halueth · · Score: 1

      Here in The Netherlands, the pedestrian zones and residential zones are the only zones which are NOT controlled for speeding etc. Only the highway and outside-city roads are controlled. So that doesn't solve your issue.

    2. Re:It's a step in the right direction. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I live in the Netherlands and in residential areas it's basically impossible to even drive at the speed limit because of all the speed bumps. Speed bumps which almost all Dutch people really want to get rid off by the way, but which are accepted as a necessary evil. Pretty much everyone hates them, especially cyclists, but if they're removed motorists will happily go 100 km/h in residential zones with playing kids around. We know this from experience, from before the bumps were there. The police don't even have the funds to properly enforce the speed limits as it is, so trying to extend their necessary area of coverage by an order of magnitude is a non-starter. The nation simply cannot pay for it.
      If the limiter system can be made to work properly, maybe finally some of those back-breaking speed bumps can go away.

    3. Re:It's a step in the right direction. by Malc · · Score: 5, Informative

      Speed is always a factor. Remember that kinetic energy is related to the square of velocity: KE = 0.5 * m * v^2.

      That energy has to be disipated in an emergency, either through tyres and brakes (and to a degree, the engine) or through friction/impact.

      Remember also the rate of energy disipation is normally linear. There's a point where the tyres lose traction and cause the wheels to lock up and the vehicle to skid, which is the limit to how many watts can be disipated. Because energy disipation is linear but KE is the square of the velocity, stopping is faster at lower speeds.

    4. Re:It's a step in the right direction. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not entirely true. Some 30 km/h zones aren't checked, because the road it's designed for 50 km/h, and just marking the speed limit is not enough, you need to change the road design for lower speeds as well. But other 30 km/h zones that are properly designed are checked, as are many 50 km/h zones - you can get fines within a city for driving too fast, and they can be pretty high fines as well.

    5. Re:It's a step in the right direction. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Dissipating energy only becomes a limiting factor to stopping if your brakes overheat. Remember tires skid because lose traction with the road, and this depends solely on the coefficient of friction between the tire and the road. Remember the coefficient of friction (for static and kinetic friction) is not dependent on speed or energy or even mass of the vehicle. Remember it takes further to stop at higher speed, because while slowing at a constant rate, you have to slow longer period of time, and are moving quicker while slowing thus covering more ground. Remember that while this makes stopping distance the square of initial velocity, which coincides nicely with kinetic energy at a velocity, it does not mean these two concepts are tied together. A constant rate of slowing, means energy dissipation from braking will be higher, at higher speeds. This dissipation will be in the brakes (if rolling) or in the tires (if skidding). How friction works is counterintuitive. Still this is physics 101 or 201 material.

      Cars moving together at similar speeds, the accident rate is not strongly tied to the speed. Remember that increases speed increases the *severity* of accidents, not the frequency.

      Protip: If you drop the remember from your post you won't sound condescending.

    6. Re:It's a step in the right direction. by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 1

      This solution is still better than the US solution of no speed bumps (mostly) and cops with anger issues pulling people over all of the time. Police should be undermanned and underfunded, and speed enforcement should be left to things like speed bumps and cameras.

    7. Re:It's a step in the right direction. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem is not that it is the cause of accidents. The problem is that it increases the risk of fatalities for all user: https://ec.europa.eu/transport.... Hitting a pedestrian at 32km/h kills the pedestrian 5 times out of 100. Hitting a pedestrian at 64km/h kills the pedestrian 85 times out of 100.

      Then get the pedestrians the fuck off the autobahn. Driving long distance ain't like driving in cities. Speed limiters won't help pedestrians or cars would be useless for long distance travel. Wrong problem. GTFO.

    8. Re:It's a step in the right direction. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes speed is always a factor. If all cars were not moving there would be no accidents!

    9. Re:It's a step in the right direction. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My son enjoy taking is bike to go ride with is friend. I sure hope it doesn't get involve in an accident but if it ever happens, I'd prefer that the car was forcing the driver to respect that 30km/h limit in the village.

      ...

      This move is a step in the right direction.

      On the same vein - I hope you don't suffer a heart attack in a residential area. But if you do, the neighbours who volunteer to rush you to the hospital, will be limited to 30km/h through the village, 50km/h on the access road, then 80km/h when they eventually reach the main road. Getting closer to the hospital, they'll be limited to 30 km/h again.

      The ambulance will have an override, but your neighbour's car won't. I have seen a child with allergy survive a wasp sting on the throat - because the driver did 3x the posted speed limit most of the way to a distant hospital. Another minute and he'd be choked by a swollen throat.

    10. Re:It's a step in the right direction. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think we can both agree that cops with anger issues are a bad thing, but the police being underfunded is bad by definition, otherwise the funding would be at the acceptable level. If you're claiming that the Dutch traffic police is at present adequately funded and able to do its job properly you aren't living here, and if you're claiming that increased funding causes cops to get anger issues, or causes PDs to preferentially hire people with anger issues, I think most will disagree with you.
      Putting limiters in cars will lower the amount of police funding that can be deemed acceptable, will probably make it possible to flatten most speed bumps, will improve road safety and will even reduce the number of fines that motorists will have to pay. I think it'd be a better situation all round.

    11. Re:It's a step in the right direction. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Drag force is proportional to speed squared too. Fd ~= 0.5*rho*CdA*v**2

      Stopping force = Sum Tire Force + Drag Force + others (rolling resistance, etc.), at higher speeds drag force can slow the car more than the tires.

      Not saying speed isn't a factor, just pointing out a large factor you missed in your analysis.

  34. uhhh, not gonna happen by SuperDre · · Score: 5, Insightful

    aims ultimately to cut road deaths to zero by 2050

    You can aim all you want, but cutting road deaths to zero by 2050 is a very naive goal..
    Unless we won't have roads anymore....

    1. Re:uhhh, not gonna happen by Phillip2 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's the point of a goal -- something to aim toward. I think it is a goal we should have, rather than the current situation where we consider the deaths of many people an acceptable compromise.

    2. Re:uhhh, not gonna happen by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 1

      Maybe that's the goal, considering the unrational violent hatred some people (including politicians who ought to know better) have for cars. Just look at the first post under this article.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    3. Re:uhhh, not gonna happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Realistic program goals are fine. Unrealistic goals are pointless. This is basic public administration.

    4. Re:uhhh, not gonna happen by havana9 · · Score: 1

      Ex voto are full of paintigs of people that exited alive from accident with horses and oxen, sign that road accidents with fatal consequnces happened when the traction systems were equipped with a natural intelligence driving system, so to speak. An I don't think that in the near future a computer could be smarter than a horse or an ox.

    5. Re:uhhh, not gonna happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Were we going, we don't need roads!

    6. Re:uhhh, not gonna happen by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      They said that about submarines too. They were very dangerous, lots of crews lost. I think it was after the loss of the USS Scorpion that they decided to have aim for no more losses, and they actually managed to do it.

      Also note that it's not zero accidents, just zero deaths from accidents.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    7. Re:uhhh, not gonna happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      100% reduction is naive? Probably. But even If it only produces a modest reduction in road deaths/injuries, it's probably worth doing.

    8. Re:uhhh, not gonna happen by vlad30 · · Score: 1

      The reality is there will always be idiots that will find a way to kill themselves and possibly someone else in the process no amount of safety equipment will stop stupidity

      --
      Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
    9. Re:uhhh, not gonna happen by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1
      There is one guy who constantly tweets about cars and stuff who claims it is possible, once we stop making people drive cars and force all cars to use Full Self Driving (tm), to be released next year[*].

      [*] Current year is whenever you are reading the statement.

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    10. Re:uhhh, not gonna happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      aims ultimately to cut road deaths to zero by 2050

      You can aim all you want, but cutting road deaths to zero by 2050 is a very naive goal..
      Unless we won't have roads anymore....

      No, but roads may be irrelevant by then when motivation to leave the house dies.

      I can't imagine VR technology not getting vastly better in the next 30 years, and once it does, virtual communities will sprout up, and people will find less reason to interact with that shitty real world. You'll probably be able to have damn near anything you want delivered by drone to your doorstep in less than an hour by then as well.

    11. Re:uhhh, not gonna happen by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Unless we won't have roads anymore...

      We could have a lot less vehicles on roads, and the vehicles which are on roads could all be required to be self-driving. And those vehicles will be cautious, and slow down when a human driver typically won't, so that if they do get into an accident it won't be fatal. It's very possible that non-automated vehicles will be banned from freeways completely. There are multiple reasons for a government to desire such a state of affairs, only one of which is safety.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    12. Re:uhhh, not gonna happen by PPH · · Score: 1

      once we stop making people drive cars

      I wonder if an autonomous bus would have just stopped and waited patiently for that guy standing in the middle of the road in Seattle yesterday.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    13. Re:uhhh, not gonna happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."
      -- John F. Kennedy - September of 1962.

      Goal completed July 1969.

      Amazing things can happen in short periods of time.

    14. Re:uhhh, not gonna happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not just unrealistic, but naive and an outright lie to have a goal that is 100% unattainable. It may sound good, but that more often than not leads to poor reasoning and decisions. Anytime a stated goal is so far outside reality, then the rest of the rational, reasoning, of concerns should be dismissed.

    15. Re:uhhh, not gonna happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, but roads may be irrelevant by then when motivation to leave the house dies.

      How is VR going to make me that flexible?

    16. Re:uhhh, not gonna happen by avandesande · · Score: 1

      diminishing returns

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
    17. Re:uhhh, not gonna happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It sounds so good and wholesome. I wonder why places that live in the real world with real restrictions and consequences don't just all have a goal of utopia? Why don't all businesses set their sales goals to 1000% increase next FY?

      Because they aren't as dumb as you.

      Goals are good. Unrealistic goals are stupid and can actually do more harm that good.

      "acceptable compromise"... spoken like someone that's never had to actually make a hard decision.

    18. Re:uhhh, not gonna happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are right! Look into Asia! They even does not have traffic lights and they drive in full mess over engaged street cross. AND no accidents! Despite Europe where some nerds are just thinking of how to limit others. Believe! If people get more safety on roads they become more unsafe themselves! That will grow whole generation of idiots who are not capable of drive themselves, because of self driving cars are not available at some point. And also bunch of idiots, who cannot safely cross the road without traffic lights or zebra. Just because of all those limitations and procedures. People will become more and more vulnerable themselves.

  35. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Evtim · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Don't be so hasty in pointing fingers.

    I live in NL, in the so-called "Randstad" area, which is several of their biggest cities situated so close to each other that they form almost uninterrupted metropolitan area along the west coast. I have never owned a car, even my license expired few years ago (and I would not dare use ti without refreshment course anyway). Commuting with bicycles and trains. 300 000 km in the train, about 40 000 km on a bicycle in 17 years.

    Such efficient, fast, clean train system is expensive. Really expensive. I work 65 km from home. If I purchase monthly train subscription for this trajectory only it comes to 300 Euro per month (if you subscribe for a full year; month by month it is 350). I use "always free" subscription (travel everywhere at all hours) that costs 342/400 Euros per month. So far every company I worked for covered those expenses in full. If I'd use a car they'd give me 80 Euro per month and that's that.

    So, you see that a combination of living and working in the busiest metropolitan areas (I guess substantial portion of the population is concentrated there) plus the generous companies (who do this because they get some tax kick-backs to encourage people to switch to public transport) allows me to use this option. So I can work or read or just doze off during my commute which is great. Also, the women are nice to look at (major users of that transport are the middle and worker classes plus all students at all levels). Do they have plenty of issues with the system? Sure! But the cars also get stuck in jams regularly.
    Did I mention I have no children? That's a big one even though helicopter parenting is not as wide spread here as in the USA.

    However, once you are out in the countryside it becomes a bit difficult. Transport is available but you have to wait quite a bit. And suddenly traveling with a car is twice as fast as public transport, whereas in the metro area the trains do 140 km/hr (or 160km/hr on one specific and very busy trajectory Amsterdam-Schiphol-Rotterdam) and are as frequent as 4-6 times per hour. And thus, contrary to what some might imagine it is the rural inhabitants and those is small towns that do not use trains and buses so much but make do with cars and motorcycles.

    I am not an expert but in my opinion a train system with such efficiency cannot be supported to connect everyone, everywhere for an affordable price. At least for now. But many smart hybrid-like solutions are probably available if we care to implement them. For example, I would love to have properly automated car. Very small, cheap, electric. If I can go in and say "bring me to work" and then read my books....bring it on! No traffic jams, much more efficient use of the roads, improved safety...what's not to like?

    In USA I think the cities can do so much more to improve the transport and reduce the car usage. I guess you can build some high speed lines to connect the really big cities....but will it be convenient enough and affordable enough? I don't know but I have the feeling that you can win bigly there ;) And yes, I agree that the car lobby has had too much influence. Still, public transport as it is is not the answer to everything...

    I guess the whole point of my ramblings is "It is complicated. Don't be hasty! Think rationally instead of ideologically"

  36. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Phillip2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think that argument cuts both ways to be honest. People who want to commute long distances tend to pretty vocal about societies providing them with good roads, about having parking spaces in the other end, and asking the people in between to put up with the pollution, the noise and the risk of death that they cause.

    I think that this argument has held too much credence for a long time, and it is time we should stop. It not an argument about liberty but about what we want our cities to be for.

  37. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Phillip2 · · Score: 1

    "No, it's being able to go where and when you want. If you're stuck on foot or relying on others you're not going to get far."

    Your freedom to go where and when you want, unfortunately, contradicts my freedom to go how I want. I'd like to have a quiet, peaceful, unpolluted city, with high quality pavements and good bike routes for long distances.

  38. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Or maybe the problem isn't cars, but cities.

  39. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 1

    Think rationally instead of ideologically

    I wish Dutch politicians would take that and tape it to their bathroom mirrors.

    --
    If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  40. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Not on our system you're not

  41. Enforcement? by Halueth · · Score: 1

    Rules be nice, but no way that the governments are going to lose that big fat cash cow of speeding tickets, so this system will be there, but won't be enforced. The moment they do, the government loses so much money that the ruling will be overturned almost immediately.

    1. Re: Enforcement? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh well

    2. Re:Enforcement? by swilver · · Score: 1

      Governments have other sources of income, which can be increased on a whim if needed to fill the coffers.

    3. Re:Enforcement? by Halueth · · Score: 1

      Here, not so much. If you include vat and all other forms of taxes, we're on a 79% tax rate of our income. Raising more taxes will trigger all sorts of benefits for the people that the net gain is practically zero.

    4. Re:Enforcement? by PPH · · Score: 1

      so this system will be there, but won't be enforced

      Once it's in cars, it enforces itself. No need for cops hiding behind bushes.

      the ruling will be overturned almost immediately

      That would need a politician to go before the public and argue in favor of more traffic deaths and police corruption. Not going to happen.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    5. Re: Enforcement? by oobayly · · Score: 1

      The duty on fuel in the UK 57.95 pence per litre and we pay 20% VAT on top of that. So the 1.226 GBP we pay for a litre of petrol includes 0.784 GBP tax.

      The government is also pushing electric cars and are set to loose a vast amount of revenue. Tax regimes will have to change to deal with that, similarly speed fine revenue will have to be supplemented with a new stream when this comes in.

    6. Re:Enforcement? by zlives · · Score: 1

      welcome to UBI

    7. Re:Enforcement? by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      I've been repeatedly told by /. commies that the Laffer curve does not exist. You must be wrong.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  42. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by goose-incarnated · · Score: 1, Insightful

    "No, it's being able to go where and when you want. If you're stuck on foot or relying on others you're not going to get far."

    Your freedom to go where and when you want, unfortunately, contradicts my freedom to go how I want. I'd like to have a quiet, peaceful, unpolluted city, with high quality pavements and good bike routes for long distances.

    Likewise, your freedom to quiet, peaceful, unpolluted cities with high-quality pavements and good bike routes contradicts my freedom to a hustle-bustle, high-GDP, high-income and high-tech economic powerhouse city.

    How about you stop trying to spin your selfish desires as "MUH FREE-DUMBS"? You want all of that, then move to the damn countryside.

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  43. Re:9-11 was a Jew job by xenobyte · · Score: 1

    Anyone who thinks Muslins did it from a cave in Afghanistan should do the human race a favor and just kill themselves.

    Anyone who thinks some Jews were able to manipulate a bunch of fanatical Muslims (including their leader sitting in a cave in Afghanistan) to execute the complex plan that ended in 9/11 should check his/her tinfoil hat carefully as it seem to be frying the brain.

    --
    "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
  44. The erosion of freedom continues... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Little by the little Europeans are losing their freedom. What's next? You can only eat certain foods? Can't listen to loud music? Your'e not allowed to complain when outsiders grope or rape your daughters?

    1. Re:The erosion of freedom continues... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can't listen to loud music?

      How about the right of not having to endure your fucking loud music? Buy headphones, asshole.

    2. Re:The erosion of freedom continues... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Asshole? How about the government not letting you put the volume ON YOUR HEADPHONES too high? Dickwad.

  45. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by MitchDev · · Score: 0

    So you are a professional idiot....

  46. MCAS for Cars! by PhotoGuy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sounds a wee bit like the ill-fated 737 Max 8's MCAS system, which overrode the pilot's climb ability when they needed it most.
    Not having power when you need it to safely avoid an accident will cost lives.
    But, just as with self-driving cars, more lives will probably be saved, overall, by the system. Because humans, on average, aren't great drivers; computers can, or soon will be able to, outperform them.

    --
    Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
    1. Re:MCAS for Cars! by SixMinutes · · Score: 1

      Exactly this.

      It's fundamental to user interface design that the interface not lie to the user and that it put them in control, rather than the other way around. Whenever a system takes that power away the results vary from irritating (inability to control Windows updates) to enraging (inability to disable location tracking in newer versions of Android, cell network locking) to dangerous (the MCAS system). The system is transformed from a trustworthy tool to something unpredictable and harmful.

      I'm all for a 30 km/h speed limit on residential roads, the stats cited by other posters are absolutely true, it would save a lot of lives in pedestrian collisions. But an automated system enforcing a hard limit is the wrong way to achieve this.

      To say nothing of the potential carnage if a system like this fails. What if your speed regulator has a problem, decides that your limit is 30 km/h on a highway where everyone else is doing 110, and slams on the brakes for you?

  47. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Phillip2 · · Score: 1

    "Likewise, your freedom to quiet, peaceful, unpolluted cities with high-quality pavements and good bike routes contradicts my freedom to a hustle-bustle, high-GDP, high-income and high-tech economic powerhouse city."

    Yes, indeed. I was in Amsterdam a couple of weeks, and I was really struck by the poverty, by the total lack of development, and complete lack of technology. Lets not head in that direction.

    Of course, none of that is true. Having a high-quality pavements and good bike routes help to enable high-income, high quality of living environments, rather than contradict it. Cities have become noisy, polluted, unpleasant environments because we chose to make them that way, not because it is a necessary part of their function.

    "How about you stop trying to spin your selfish desires as "MUH FREE-DUMBS"?"

    Indeed, I was just responding to the idea that speed limiters are "anti-freedom". This is not a question about freedom, it's a question about what sort of place we want to live in. We've followed an urbanisation model for many years that more cars makes better cities. That was wrong and it is time that we changed it.

  48. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Such efficient, fast, clean train system is expensive. Really expensive.

    Just like an aeroplane is really expensive, but they still sell individual tickets for individual flights at sometimes ludicrously low prices.

    The high prices and the general sardine can experience within the randstad I blame on the idiots running the shitshow that started with "privatisation". First thing the brass did was triple their own salaries (but no-one else's, of course) because "we're in a free market now". Nevermind that the government still owns the entire thing, it just pretends not to. Corruption and incompetence built right into the fabric of government. It was quite the ironic thing to do, since the national railways (still called that) were formed by taking all the private rail companies and nationalising them into one entity, in 1938. We've had this "free market" for 14 years now and all they've done is "forget" to do maintenance and make the service go to pot.

    I work 65 km from home. [...] If I'd use a car they'd give me 80 Euro per month and that's that.

    Then you're getting shafted. You usually get 19 ct/km, so that's 24.7 euros per commute, or about 494 euros per month.

    And thus, contrary to what some might imagine it is the rural inhabitants and those is small towns that do not use trains and buses so much but make do with cars and motorcycles.

    They pretty much have to. An important factor is the "ov-chipkaart" ticketing system. It's so expensive it drives the companies running it into legalised theft ("forgetting" to return wrongfully taken fees and making asking for your own money back deliberately hard, runs into the tens of millions of euros and they just take it as extra revenue "because the system is really expensive for us, too!" -- yeah well WE didn't ask for that abortion, in fact told you to fuck off with it, assholes), and caused something like a 25% drop in patronage in at least the rural area of Zeeland. But hey, it cut down on fare dodging in busses with a whopping 0.5%!

    The claims of success in reducing fare dodging by 4 or 5 percent are true for the big cities (Rotterdam and Amsterdam, respectively). Using the card is entirely premeditated on giving them carte blanche to your bank account, which is nice for salariman commuters, but not so much for anyone else. Most glaringly the occasional user gets shafted, hard.

    I am not an expert but in my opinion a train system with such efficiency cannot be supported to connect everyone, everywhere for an affordable price. At least for now.

    Start with firing the idiots in charge. Yes, serious suggestion.

    You can't fix your infrastructure in a day so fixing the current abortion is going to take a goodly while. But look at the market: Lots of people already use the service despite the best efforts of the incompetents in charge to drive patronage down. For a starker comparison: Look at the New York metro. It's not profitable because the thing is going to pieces. Fix that, and it can be profitable again. Of course, they've let it go to pot so much that fixing it is going to be painfully costly. But that's what you get for having idiots in charge.

    I guess the whole point of my ramblings is "It is complicated. Don't be hasty! Think rationally instead of ideologically"

    Now add some more ratio and some thinking and you too might be getting somewhere.

  49. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Have you ever been to the U.S. there are locations here where farmers live over 80 kilometers from the nearest city this is very common is states like North and South Dakota , Montana and Wyoming

    in the big cities and even come of the smaller ones public transportation is viable (if it is safe I would not get on a Chicago el train if you payed me by body does not need extra holes) but for many in rural areas the household car or the farm truck is a necessity. because public transport will never get close to them no matter how well it is developed.

  50. based on? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is this based on the 1963 limits ?

  51. As smart as rocks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Cover the camera, snip the GPS, fixed

    1. Re:As smart as rocks by rally2xs · · Score: 1

      And then the car won't even start, and gives you a message to have it towed to your nearest dealer to get these things fixed.

  52. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by goose-incarnated · · Score: 0

    "Likewise, your freedom to quiet, peaceful, unpolluted cities with high-quality pavements and good bike routes contradicts my freedom to a hustle-bustle, high-GDP, high-income and high-tech economic powerhouse city."

    Yes, indeed. I was in Amsterdam

    You think that's an economic powerhouse? Just how small is your world?

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  53. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by registrations_suck · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think that argument cuts both ways to be honest. People who want to commute long distances tend to pretty vocal about societies providing them with good roads, about having parking spaces in the other end, and asking the people in between to put up with the pollution, the noise and the risk of death that they cause.

    It is also important to remember that people don't always have great choices here either.

    When I bought my house, I bought one on the bus line (as shitty as it is), only a 15 minute (or so) bus ride to work downtown. Great, right? My wife's employer is ALSO only a 15 minute (or so) bus ride to work downtown. Even better, right?

    Fast forward two years. That employer now tells me that I am working out of an office 30 minutes away (best case) by car, way out in the sticks somewhere, and I can like it or lump it.

    So, what, I'm just going to quit my fucking job? Or maybe my can sell one house, buy another house close to the new office, and my wife can quit HER fucking job, since she still works downtown! Or maybe I can just keep the job long enough to find a new job downtown - however long that takes. But in the meantime, I still have to get to work!

    Hey, and you want to guess why the employer moved the office out of downtown and way out into the sticks somewhere? Because rents in the city are a lot more expensive. Who'd a thunked it??

    As a side note, I routinely find myself going 80 mph+ on the highway with a posted limit of 55 mph. Fuck speed limiter devices.

  54. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by registrations_suck · · Score: 1

    I'd like to have a quiet, peaceful, unpolluted city...

    Name ONE, anywhere on planet Earth.

    Be sure to include your definitions of "city", "quiet" and "peaceful".

  55. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by stealth_finger · · Score: 1

    "No, it's being able to go where and when you want. If you're stuck on foot or relying on others you're not going to get far."

    Your freedom to go where and when you want, unfortunately, contradicts my freedom to go how I want. I'd like to have a quiet, peaceful, unpolluted city, with high quality pavements and good bike routes for long distances.

    My car and your bike are not mutually exclusive. Maybe they are if you want to ride around without any consideration for what everyone wants to do, but if you are only concerned with what you want and not anyone else then you can go fuck yourself really,

    --
    Wanna buy a shirt?
    https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
  56. Yeah, that's gonna fly SO well in Germany by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    Remember Germany? The country that pretty much dictates what goes in the EU?

    The country (and as far as I know the only one in the EU, if not the world) that has no speed limit because even 130km/h (about 90mph) isn't fast enough? And where the mere suggestion of a speed limit is irresponsible and against sanity and reason,even for their politicians?

    Yeah. That's gonna work out. I can see that. Uhhuh.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re:Yeah, that's gonna fly SO well in Germany by WCMI92 · · Score: 0

      The Germans are sitzpinklers now. They will give up speed like they have given up their jobs to muzzies.

      --
      Corporatism != Free Market
    2. Re:Yeah, that's gonna fly SO well in Germany by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Remember Germany? The country that pretty much dictates what goes in the EU?

      The country (and as far as I know the only one in the EU, if not the world) that has no speed limit because even 130km/h (about 90mph) isn't fast enough? And where the mere suggestion of a speed limit is irresponsible and against sanity and reason,even for their politicians?

      Yeah. That's gonna work out. I can see that. Uhhuh.

      Germany can hold that stance.

      They can also end up being that country in the EU leading the highway death toll when every other country holds themselves to a gentlemen's agreement, which has worked very well in the past.

      Eventually there will be a different mentality against those who are "irresponsible and against sanity and reason"

    3. Re:Yeah, that's gonna fly SO well in Germany by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      German government is known to use the EU to get laws passed that they couldn't pass in Germany.

      Which means all European ID cards will soon have fingerprints in them, not just German ones.

    4. Re:Yeah, that's gonna fly SO well in Germany by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Luckily if there is no speed limit the car will not be speed limitted.

      Unlike your brain limit.

  57. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Then move to one.

  58. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by fluffernutter · · Score: 1

    Excuse me? You're saying rural people are more polluting than cities?

    --
    Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
  59. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by goose-incarnated · · Score: 0

    "No, it's being able to go where and when you want. If you're stuck on foot or relying on others you're not going to get far."

    Your freedom to go where and when you want, unfortunately, contradicts my freedom to go how I want. I'd like to have a quiet, peaceful, unpolluted city, with high quality pavements and good bike routes for long distances.

    My car and your bike are not mutually exclusive. Maybe they are if you want to ride around without any consideration for what everyone wants to do, but if you are only concerned with what you want and not anyone else then you can go fuck yourself really,

    You're the snowflake who opined rather self-importantly that your FREE-DUMBS are more important than other peoples freedoms.

    If your freedom from city life is so fucking important to you, move out of the damn city. Your freedom to swing your fist end where everyone else's nose begins.

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  60. public transit by fluffernutter · · Score: 0

    We would be far better off putting EV subsidies into electric public transit. If a person wants an EV they can buy one at full price. Electric public transit will do far more for the environment.

    --
    Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
  61. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The granolas will tell you to just quit your job and leach off of the public. Thatâ(TM)s what my friends here in Seattle told me to do after my company moved three hours each way away by bus. When I bought a car, my best friend busted the windshield and hasnâ(TM)t talked to me since. Another friend said he hoped I died on a car crash. Those pro-transit people are nuts.

  62. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by CGordy · · Score: 1

    If you've been to Australia there are farms hundreds of kilometres from the nearest city. We just don't assume that their needs should dictate the transport infrastructure of the entire nation.

  63. Accidents waiting to happen by kbg · · Score: 1

    If a car is overtaking a lorry on a motorway and enters a lower speed-limit area, the driver can push down hard on the accelerator to complete the maneuver.

    So the car suddenly slows down if it enters speed limit area? That means if you are switching lanes for example you could accidently ram into the next car because of this. This is just a disaster waiting to happen. Any computer controlled movements that can take place at random times are just dangerous.

    Secondly if you have an emergency then this means you can't drive over the speed limit and someone could possibly die before reaching the hospital.

    This is bad.

  64. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's the kind of stupid prattle you get from single students who live in a big city. The kind of people who have nobody else to care for but themselves, and even that gets taken care of by their parents if push comes to shove. The kind that has all the time in the world.

    Meanwhile in the grown-up world you have to go shopping for a family which you can't do with public transportation. Whether it's because it's too heavy or your perishables will be spoiled by the time you get home.

    Or you need to go places that have no nearby connection to public transport.

    Or you're not that young 20year old anymore who can walk a kilometer from one station to another and stand around at crowded stations with a total of 5 seats for long periods of time.

    Or you simply don't have hours of free time to waste on waiting for connections or walking from and to stations.

  65. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by stealth_finger · · Score: 1

    "No, it's being able to go where and when you want. If you're stuck on foot or relying on others you're not going to get far."

    Your freedom to go where and when you want, unfortunately, contradicts my freedom to go how I want. I'd like to have a quiet, peaceful, unpolluted city, with high quality pavements and good bike routes for long distances.

    My car and your bike are not mutually exclusive. Maybe they are if you want to ride around without any consideration for what everyone wants to do, but if you are only concerned with what you want and not anyone else then you can go fuck yourself really,

    You're the snowflake who opined rather self-importantly that your FREE-DUMBS are more important than other peoples freedoms.

    If your freedom from city life is so fucking important to you, move out of the damn city. Your freedom to swing your fist end where everyone else's nose begins.

    What do cities have to do with anything? Seeing as you don't seem to be willing to share, why don't you move to the countryside where no one can bother you and you can keep your impotent rage going forever.

    --
    Wanna buy a shirt?
    https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
  66. foreced to buy the map service or is it free? by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    foreced to buy the map service or is it free?

    1. Re:foreced to buy the map service or is it free? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      On existing cars with auto-speed map updates are included in the first X (3 or 5) years of maintenance but only if do it completely with the manufacturer. Afterwards it gets pretty expensive up to "no longer supported". Maps are usually digitally signed to prevent sideloading so you can't just upload raw maps. Have fun with that...

  67. I Can't Drive 55 by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    One foot on the brake and one on the gas, hey!
    Well, there's too much traffic, I can't pass, no!
    So I tried my best illegal move
    Well, baby, black and white come and touched my groove again!
    Gonna write me up a 125
    Post my face wanted dead or alive
    Take my license, all that jive
    I can't drive 55! Oh No!
    Uh!
    So I signed my name on number 24, hey!
    Yeah the judge said, "Boy, just one more...
    We're gonna throw your ass in the city joint"
    Looked me in the eye, said, "You get my point?"
    I said Yea!, Oh yea!
    Write me up a 125
    Post my face wanted dead or alive
    Take my license, all that jive
    I can't drive 55!
    Oh, yea!
    I can't drive 55!
    I can't drive 55!
    I can't drive 55!
    I can't drive 55!
    Uh!
    When I drive that slow, you know it's hard to steer.
    And I can't get get my care out of second gear.
    What used to take two hours now takes all day. Huh!
    It took me 16 hours to get to L.A.
    Gonna write me up a 125
    Post my face wanted dead or alive
    Take my license, all that jive
    I can't drive 55!
    No, no no,
    I can't drive...
    (I can't drive 55!)
    I can't drive...
    (I can't drive 55!)
    I can't drive 55!

  68. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by goose-incarnated · · Score: 1

    "No, it's being able to go where and when you want. If you're stuck on foot or relying on others you're not going to get far."

    Your freedom to go where and when you want, unfortunately, contradicts my freedom to go how I want. I'd like to have a quiet, peaceful, unpolluted city, with high quality pavements and good bike routes for long distances.

    My car and your bike are not mutually exclusive. Maybe they are if you want to ride around without any consideration for what everyone wants to do, but if you are only concerned with what you want and not anyone else then you can go fuck yourself really,

    You're the snowflake who opined rather self-importantly that your FREE-DUMBS are more important than other peoples freedoms.

    If your freedom from city life is so fucking important to you, move out of the damn city. Your freedom to swing your fist end where everyone else's nose begins.

    What do cities have to do with anything? Seeing as you don't seem to be willing to share, why don't you move to the countryside where no one can bother you and you can keep your impotent rage going forever.

    Why? I'm not the one bothered by what other people are doing. You are, so how about you get out of their faces instead of insisting that their currently legal behaviour must be made illegal.

    If you can't live iwth other people without telling them how to live, perhaps you shouldn't live with them then.

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  69. You can override it by stamping the pedal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So it's not really comparable at all.

  70. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by stealth_finger · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm sorry have I posted a bunch of rants about how people with cars should leave cities to be a utopia for bike pricks? You seem to be very bothered that people have the audacity to drive around in cities. All I said was the ability to travel is a a good metric for freedom as it lets you go further, quicker and gives you more options. I never said you can't ride your bike or suggested the be excluded from anywhere or told anyone to do/not do anything. You go ask any kid itching to get their first car and ask them what it means to them then offer them a bike instead and see how that goes.

    --
    Wanna buy a shirt?
    https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
  71. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The carbon footprint of those living in cities is, in general, lower in western nations.

  72. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Holland is a shithole. Those fucking entitled cyclists are despicable. They are rude while running over you, and everybody looks a little crazy. Biking is a religion there. A nightmare of political correctness.

  73. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Eh? The thirteen colonies in the USA won a war (well, were joint victors with France) and gave up state sovereignty to form a federated body.

  74. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Then you're getting shafted."

    He already stated he takes the train for 400 euros/month and is fully reimbursed by his employer. He doesn't drive; therefore is not getting shafted. Your reading comprehension sucks. I stopped reading your reply at "shafted".

  75. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Relative to population (it's relatively small on a global scale), Amsterdam is indeed an economic powerhouse.

  76. Just when electric cars beat them .... by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1
    As long as the ICE cars dominated the market and Germany had the reputation for making high performance engines, nothing like this happens... They have speed limit less autobahns..

    Now the BEV cars are beating the pants off the ICE cars in acceleration. It won't be long before they beat them in every category. With such low center of gravity, BEVs will be impossible to beat. Right now Tesla is plagued with production hell, delivery hell, service hell and self induced shoot-my-feet-with-tweets hell... But the other super car makers are on hot pursuit. Already there are 4000 HP cars with 4 motors, one for each wheel, each with 1000 HP are being casually talked about.

    Strong suspension, and souped up brakes are available for on the market. Easily added to BEVs. Torque being controlled to each wheel electronically, and with instant response from the motors to those electronic controls, BEVs using torque vectoring, there are things the ICEV can never do.

    The BMWs and Porches cried uncle, and the government concern trolls about safety and calls off the game...

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  77. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    80 euros sounds great. In the UK you get 0 and then have to pay for parking.

  78. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I get food and most other things delivered. You don't need a car for that. I HAVE a car and still find it more convenient, for $10 a month, have as many deliveries of groceries as I like, provided each is of at least $50. There are stores close enough for the odd slice of bread, etc. when required. I live in Europe but it could be offered in many parts of the USA, and indeed it is in some.

      I've been shopping this way pretty much exclusively for a decade, and partially for two.

  79. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by goose-incarnated · · Score: 1

    I'm sorry have I posted a bunch of rants about how people with cars should leave cities to be a utopia for bike pricks? You seem to be very bothered that people have the audacity to drive around in cities. All I said was the ability to travel is a a good metric for freedom as it lets you go further, quicker and gives you more options. I never said you can't ride your bike or suggested the be excluded from anywhere or told anyone to do/not do anything. You go ask any kid itching to get their first car and ask them what it means to them then offer them a bike instead and see how that goes.

    We appear to be in violent agreement.

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  80. The goal will be mostly met. by bussdriver · · Score: 0

    Human driven cars NEED more limitations; too many stupid people (who should only be allowed to remove themselves from the gene pool.)

    Self-driving cars #1 problem is the humans. By 2050 they'll probably be discussing more limitations if not passing future bans on human drivers. Limit humans to half the speed and double the robots speed because they can handle it...

    If you obsess over perfecting the rounding error at the end to get 100% you'll be fine; it's that last bit that always ends up creating problems.

  81. Time to start importing from the US by Higaran · · Score: 1

    Looks like it's time to start buying cars in the US to import and sell in Europe. I'm guessing that you could get a nice premium for an unlocked american car as long as it meets all the other EU standards, such as stop/tail light colors.

    1. Re:Time to start importing from the US by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Looks like it's time to start buying cars in the US to import and sell in Europe. I'm guessing that you could get a nice premium for an unlocked american car as long as it meets all the other EU standards, such as stop/tail light colors.

      They'll just make it illegal to import such vehicles until they're 25+ years old, if they haven't already. That's how it works in the USA. Some nations are right dicks about it, too, like Australia. You can't import a vehicle with asbestos gaskets into Oz, let alone brake pads.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:Time to start importing from the US by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Homologation is more than just turn signal colors.

  82. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    you must hate yourself

  83. I think I'll wait by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

    Safety measures approved by the European Commission included intelligent speed assistance (ISA), advanced emergency braking and lane-keeping technology.

    I think I'll wait for the next models, I've heard they will have Personal Commuting Integration (PCI).

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
  84. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hey Sammy.

  85. Don't Stop - Cyanide & Happiness Shorts by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1
    --
    #DeleteFacebook
  86. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    pripyat

  87. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Your employer wanted to reduce costs, both by reducing rent and induced attrition. They were trying to get you to quit.

  88. Re: Driving a vehicle is not a right, fucking moro by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The guy's a lunatic, don't waste your time responding. Learn to identify people who are beyond hope and move on.

  89. Guess what vehicles are exempt? by schwit1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As with “gun-control” legislation, less-than-honest politicians (in the EU and the UK) have cynically, quietly excused themselves from compliance.

    Not surprisingly, vehicles transporting politicians (in the UK and the EU) will never have ISA installed.

    It’s good enough for us, but apparently not for them.

    Shocking, isn’t it, that politicians themselves are evidently hesitant about personally enjoying all the endlessly-ballyhooed “benefits” of this new, mandatory technology.

    Could it be that they don’t trust this dubious kit any more than the rest of us do?

    But of course, their lives and safety are “important.”

    Ours apparently less so.

    1. Re:Guess what vehicles are exempt? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are not even wrong.

  90. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by registrations_suck · · Score: 2

    Yeah. That must be it. Since no one did.

  91. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Far more. Cities are sometimes more polluted per unit area, not not per person.

    Cities exist because they save on resource use, and resource use corresponds to pollution very closely. Cities have more anti-pollution regulation and procedures, waste-water handling and less random pits holding waste and refuse.

    Some cities do face some unique problems that are not issues in rural areas, like storm water mixing with wastewater, which can lead to overflow going into local waterways.

  92. It has been done before. by LordHighExecutioner · · Score: 1

    Strict speed limits were set for all moving bodies in 1905, no need to override it with an european law, thank you!

  93. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is this a joke? Have you been to a city, New York? Any city?

    The amount of taxi / uber whatever sitting polluting in girdlock, far outweighs whatever you are talking about. 50 floor buildings with lights on all day. Subways running 24 7, people not recycling because it,can't be bothered in fast pace environment. Plastic take out containers for every lunch.

    You are outta your mind...

  94. Hold on..... by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1
    While you folks have been arguing about gas pedals in cars, it is important to know that the EU is protecting it's citizens from the real danger to health and safety. (honey, hold your hands over the kid's ears)

    Memes! Yes folks, the true danger to people isn't driving too fast, it is people using a picture of E.T. with a silly caption. Enough of a threat to humanity that the EU needs to eliminate it.

    https://www.theinquirer.net/in...

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    1. Re:Hold on..... by avandesande · · Score: 1

      That's what they deserve for exceeding the meme limit!

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
    2. Re:Hold on..... by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      That's what they deserve for exceeding the meme limit!

      The black market in memes is going to take off like a rocket.

      psst.... hey Eurocitizen? wanna buy some memes? Good stuff, nothing in the public domain.....

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    3. Re:Hold on..... by djinn6 · · Score: 1

      Public domain has been so thoroughly destroyed that I didn't even realize we have public domain memes until just now, like this one for example.

    4. Re:Hold on..... by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Public domain has been so thoroughly destroyed that I didn't even realize we have public domain memes until just now, like this one for example.

      Ahh - that's a good one! Sometimes fitting with some of the stuff here on Slashdot.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  95. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is very true, well said.

  96. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The carbon footprint of those living in cities is, in general, lower in western nations.

    Its because you have a higher population density of bums sharing the same trashcan fire.

  97. Behold the Self Driving Car 1.0 by John+Jorsett · · Score: 1

    Who needs completely self driving cars when you can just have a robot back seat driver telling you what to do? "Turn left. Avoid pedestrian on right. Stop at stop sign. Slow down. I'm telling the cops about what you just did." Much more cost-effective.

    1. Re:Behold the Self Driving Car 1.0 by PPH · · Score: 1

      Much more cost-effective.

      Not the kind you have to marry.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
  98. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Public transportation is indeed very good for the big cities.
    Without a car though, you are locked up in the city. Which every socialist government just loves. Those mobile Americans do not sit well with omouksory labour and ration books.

  99. Gridlock Solution by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 1

    Unless we won't have roads anymore....

    Not necessarily. An alternative approach would be to simply not build any more roads and then, by about 2050 Europe will probably have reached terminal gridlock. Traffic congestion is already credited with reducing some fatalities.

  100. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by registrations_suck · · Score: 2

    The carbon footprint of those living in cities is, in general, lower in western nations.

    Really? I hope you're adding in the extra "footprint" of trucking in all that food that is produced in rural areas.

    I also hope you're adding in the extra "footprint" of all the resource development happening in non-cities that make cities possible.

    Rural areas and people can survive just fine without cities. Cities and people living there can't survive without rural areas. Given this truism, which is the more "natural" way to live?

  101. Great! by Moskit · · Score: 1

    Guess what, EU and car manufacturers are not going to pay for all these new obligatory systems!

  102. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Luckyo · · Score: 1

    If you're in US, yes. Quit your job and get another. It's never been a better job seeker's market in lifetimes of those alive and of working age today.

  103. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Luckyo · · Score: 1

    So you want a city cleansed of disgusting human life that generates all those things as a necessity of just surviving?

  104. really making their move now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    EU tightening that iron fist lately. Why would citizens of the EU want to live in a place that seems like kindergarten for adults?

    1. Re:really making their move now by registrations_suck · · Score: 1

      Because they think socialism is good for them.

  105. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bicycles First! Deal with it!

  106. Insurance for driving too fast by sjbe · · Score: 1

    You know that when you drive faster in Germany than 130 KMH, the insurance will not cover you. Even if it is legal to do so in some places.

    That makes way too much sense. There really is almost never any practical reason to drive faster than that so it probably should require a special insurance rider (with a large fee of course) and a good explanation if you wish to drive faster. The only exception I can think of is for first responders in an emergency - an ambulance should have no fixed limit if you get what I'm saying. It always puzzles me when car companies make cars that can drive 300kph or some other ridiculous speed that nobody either can or should actually reach on any public road. Honestly I'd be fine with a hard limit of 130kph or similar for any car on a public road.

    1. Re:Insurance for driving too fast by houghi · · Score: 1

      Those limits where set years in the past. I regularly drive 160-170kmh in Germany. Those are pretty normal speeds on an almost empty 3 lane highway where everybody has more lessons than anybody in the USofA.

      Driving 150kmh in places where 130kmh is allowed on almost empty and dry roads? No issue for me if people do that. To me the 130kmh is way to low then.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    2. Re:Insurance for driving too fast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Honestly I'd be fine with a hard limit of 130kph or similar for any car on a public road.

      Because you are a sheep. Sheeps do that. They put their heads down and take anything you throw at them. That is what we are becoming, thanks to people like you: sheeple

    3. Re:Insurance for driving too fast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Honestly I'd be fine with a hard limit of 130kph or similar for any car on a public road.

      Because you are a sheep. Sheeps do that. They put their heads down and take anything you throw at them. That is what we are becoming, thanks to people like you: sheeple

      He's not a sheep. He's an authoritarian putz. People like him are so convinced of their self righteousness such that they believe if they have no interest in something NOBODY should have the right to do it. They exist in a selfish bubble where they think everybody is just like them, lives in locations just like them and anyone who disagrees with their opinions is a heretic. They have taken over the public discourse and are working hard to marginalize anyone who fights against it.

  107. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The reason public transport doesn't really work outside of the major urban centers in NL, is a lack of investments in light rail/metro. If you consider the similar size of the Randstad, London, Paris, Berlin, the absence of any sort of dense railnetwork. Busses are for well known reasons not enough.

    Instead, our road infrastructure is overfunded, leading people to believe smaller urban centers or even some neighborhoods of major cities like Amsterdam don't need fast or frequent light rail, because 'we've got roads, don't we?'.

    Don't get me wrong, I live in a smaller urban center and commute by road to Amsterdam, because it is (much) cheaper than public transport and certain much faster. But at the edge of our town is a memorial to the tramline, once going to Amsterdam, and it makes me think: we are just *choosing* to support the car lifestyle and not the train/light rail one.

  108. u Ess Eee! U ESS EEE! by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 0

    The United States of Europe government is ahead of schedule in growth of power it strips from anachronistic member states.

    You were warned. Before you downmod me because you like this law, realize there will be many you don't. Your nations will do little more than administer roads and other mandated social benefits.

    --
    (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  109. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Filthy, ignorant Europeans.

  110. Re:9-11 was a Jew job by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes. Because WTC7 wasn't struck by a plane, and it still came down. That's genius level planning from a cave.
    WTC7, WTC1, and WTC2 all collapsed at free-fall speeds, that's literally miraculous execution by the radicals.
    WTC7 wasn't owned by a Jew who said that admitted that they had decided to "pull" the building. Oh wait. It was.
    Larry Silverstein, said owner, just happened to be out of the office that day. How convenient.
    WTC7 didn't come down until firemen warned people to get back because the building was coming down soon, that's very prescient.
    WTC7 housed the NYC Emergency Response/FEMA teams which miraculously were not at home at day. That's very prescient.
    WTC7's collapse, when seen by a demo expert unfamiliar with the incident, was declared to be a "controlled demolition" "positively".
    WTC7's collapse was reported on major media _before_ it collapsed, with it still on camera. They must be psychic.
    WTC7 refused to deal with questions and concerns about their "model" of the WTC7 collapse, a model that made all sorts of crazy
    assumptions and then cut off simulation just before the building collapse was supposed to happen.
    Jewish Mossad agents were not seen jumping for joy and dancing when they saw the attack. Oh wait they did.
    But Mossad agents denied being agents, until they got home in Israel and naively believed that admissions of be agents wouldn't
    be found by the foreign media because they were speaking in Hebrew.

    Ashkenazi Jews have an average IQ of something like 115. Middle Easterners have an average IQ of 85.

    Maybe it was the IQ115 people who were cleaver enough to fool IQ100 people into believing that 9/11 was carried out by IQ85
    people living in caves on dialysis.

  111. Logic from the National Vehicle Association... by gachunt · · Score: 1

    The only way to stop a bad guy with a speeding car, is a good guy with a speeding car.

  112. Too fast for the conditions by sjbe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Lets for a moment ignore the fact that speed is not THE cause of most road fatalities

    Actually it is but not in the way you are probably thinking. My grandfather once pointed out to me a logically airtight fact. If you are the vehicle operator of a vehicle that causes any accident there is one inescapable truth in every case - you were driving too fast for the conditions. Those conditions include the mental state of the vehicle operator as well as weather, traffic, and the rest. This is always true even when other factors are in play as well (which there often are). If you hit something unintentionally at any speed (even at 1kph), it is ALWAYS true that you were driving too fast for the conditions. Sometimes the only safe speed is 0. If you are drunk any you hit something, being drunk is obviously causal but equally true is the fact that you were driving too fast for the conditions. You should have not moved the vehicle. You cannot hit something if you are not moving. A vehicle moving sufficiently slowly (possibly 0kph) by definition cannot cause a fatality.

    Bear in mind that police can issue tickets for reckless driving at speeds well below the legal limit for a given stretch of road if the conditions warrant. Speed limits only apply when conditions are "normal". Once something changes "normal" (weather, impairment, distraction, disability, etc) then speed absolutely becomes a consideration.

    1. Re:Too fast for the conditions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you are the vehicle operator of a vehicle that causes any accident there is one inescapable truth in every case - you were driving too fast for the conditions.

      Great, that's a real help in cases where it isn't possible to know in advance what the safe speed is, if there even is one, which is essentially all cases. So what you're saying is that there's no point to speed limits because nothing's safe. Got it, we'll set the speed limiter to 0, problem solved.

    2. Re:Too fast for the conditions by sjbe · · Score: 2

      Great, that's a real help in cases where it isn't possible to know in advance what the safe speed is, if there even is one, which is essentially all cases.

      It's generally very easy to tell what a safe speed is. Doesn't mean you can't be wrong sometimes but it's not hard to tell if you have any meaningful experience as a driver. And the fact remains that if you cause an accident you were wrong. Driving is an inherently risky endeavor. If you cannot handle this fact then yes you should not drive.

    3. Re:Too fast for the conditions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you are the vehicle operator of a vehicle that causes any accident there is one inescapable truth in every case - you were driving too fast for the conditions.

      When I took defensive driving years ago, slow drivers were the #2 cause of accidents. Accidents, not fatalities. They weren't even on the fatalities list. Later when I took defensive driving again, they changed from "#1 - too fast, #2 - too slow" into "#1 wrong speed". Tricky! Oh, it has a name, Solomon Curve.

    4. Re:Too fast for the conditions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, for most people, anything more than 0 mph is too fast for the conditions...

      A vehicle moving 0 mph can certainly cause an accident when others moving at the speed limit run into it or swerve to avoid it. I've seen people stop in the right hand lane (left lane for you weirdos in the UK) of a two lane road to consult their phone for whatever stupid reason.

      I've been on small twisty roads where some idiot was travelling about 10 mph when the speed limit was 30 mph. That is very dangerous considering there are so many blind turns and physics makes it difficult to essentially stop given the short line of sight (and swerving can lead to a head on accident - and now that you are stuck behind them, you now become the target for getting rear ended). Likewise, we have a lot of idiot cyclists who insist on travelling these roads and don't hug the outside of the lane - I can't feel sorry for them when they get run over because you just can't see them until you are right on top of them (I say this as a cyclist myself). The hardcore cyclists get it, but the mid-life crisis dumbshits who go out and buy a $5+K carbon fibre bicycle and all the fancy gear because their kids are out of college and they don't have anything else to do with their money ride around with their heads up their asses.

    5. Re:Too fast for the conditions by djinn6 · · Score: 1

      If you hit something unintentionally at any speed (even at 1kph), it is ALWAYS true that you were driving too fast for the conditions. Sometimes the only safe speed is 0.

      Actually strictly speaking, 0 is always an unsafe speed. If you were going grocery shopping, at some point you will starve and die because you couldn't reach the store in time.

      This might sound like a silly argument, but if any accident is unacceptable, then the only solution is to ban all vehicles, which in the modern age would lead to mass starvation as people would be unable to get to work or acquire daily necessities.

  113. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

    Maybe the rational approach is to realize there is no one-size-fits-all solution; a transport infrastructure designed for cities won't work in rural areas, and unimproved roads in rural areas doesn't work in cities. You need both, where appropriate.

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  114. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm so proud that my stupid / too-obscure creimertroll generated this amount of discussion.

  115. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It seems you are on the very bottom rungs of society, and deal with people who have severe mental illnesses.

  116. Netherlands: fewer cars, more life satisfaction by pereric · · Score: 1

    The Netherlands have a GNP per capita with the US. Amsterdam - and the Randstad region in general - is quite an economic powerhouse. Rotterdam is the largest or second largest port in Europe, too.

    Also, the Netherlands score far higher on most measures of life expectancy and satisfaction. One important part is the livable cities.

  117. Am I too late to post the lyrics to Red Barchetta by Rob+Cebollero · · Score: 1

    14 minute Neil Peart solo begins

    --
    Decentralization: the brief interval between the decline of one centralized regime and rise of another.
  118. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's "Affect." English much?

  119. Upper limit on speed != limit on acceleration by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

    Just because your top speed is hard-limited by software doesn't mean your rate of acceleration is limited, you'll still have all the horsepower you need, and by the way how many day-to-day circumstances require you to be able to go faster than 122mph? Here in the U.S. anyway anything over 100mph, so far as I remember, is a felony, and the vast majority of drivers wouldn't be able to properly handle a vehicle going that fast anyway.

    Besides which, as I've stated previously: there'll be aftermarket work-arounds for all this almost simultaneously with the cars hitting the roads. People who really want to give this law a big middle finger will do it anyway. Even the so-called 'black box' will have a work-around to prevent detection of what they're doing.

    1. Re:Upper limit on speed != limit on acceleration by registrations_suck · · Score: 1

      Just because your top speed is hard-limited by software doesn't mean your rate of acceleration is limited.....

      If your top speed is limited, and you are going your top speed, how is your rate of acceleration not limited to 0?

    2. Re:Upper limit on speed != limit on acceleration by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      Because they're not *mechanically* limiting the top speed by hamstringing the engines' performance, they're *electronically limiting it* through software control. The engine itself, unleashed, would go *faster* if it could. The torque curve will be the *same* even if the top speed of the vehicle is limited. Therefore the *acceleration curve* will be the same regardless of whether the top speed is capped by the ECC or not; you'll still be able to accelerate off-the-line exactly the same, or punch it to pass someone just as effectively.

    3. Re: Upper limit on speed != limit on acceleration by registrations_suck · · Score: 1

      You didnâ(TM)t answer my question.

    4. Re: Upper limit on speed != limit on acceleration by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      You're either not very smart, or you're just a shitty troll; which is it?
      You've got all you're getting from me. Figure it out on your own.

    5. Re: Upper limit on speed != limit on acceleration by registrations_suck · · Score: 1

      Still did not answer the question.

  120. Thanks Volvo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For leading the way...

    Microsoft is next to "show us the way" to Socialism....self-imposed wealth taxes and direct challenges to Amazon to match them?

    Yaaah....corporations have always done the heavy-lifting for Empire.

  121. 140K serious injuries avoided.... by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 1

    Over the next 20 years, if this is done.

    To put that in perspective, there are rather more than 1.4M injuries (not necessarily serious) resulting from auto accidents in the EU per year right now.

    Doing a bit of math, we see that this new technology will reduce the injury rate by 0.5%.

    I'm skeptical that this is going to be worthwhile, given that the reduction in injuries is going to be down there in the noise level, or just barely detectable....

    I'm also curious whether the police and emergency services are going to be required to be so limited. Or is this change just meant for the riff-raff?

    --

    "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
  122. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I get food and most other things delivered. You don't need a car for that.

    Yes, yes you do. How do you think that food and most things are delivered? Probably not on the bus or by bicycle... You are just shifting the externalities of a car from yourself to someone else, and then strutting like a peacock at how you no longer need a car.

  123. Every time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Every damn time I think the EU can't get any stupider, they prove me wrong.

  124. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by dcw3 · · Score: 1

    Relative to population (it's relatively small on a global scale), Amsterdam is indeed an economic powerhouse.

    Yeah, a little better than Pittsburgh and less than Portland.

    --
    Just another day in Paradise
  125. Harder for the brain by dromgodis · · Score: 1

    Currently, the accelerator pedal usually has a continuous effect - press a little deeper and you get a little more oomph, press more deeper and you get a lot more oomph (unless you are too low on the revs). That is very easy for the brain to grok, predict and modulate.

    I don't think that it is a good idea to make this a non-continuous effect. Press a bit and you get oomph up to a limit (that is non-intuitive unless you watch the speedometer all the time instead of watching the traffic). Press a little deeper and you get nothing, press even deeper and you get nothing. Press even more deeper and suddenly you get more oomph again. Not intuitive to modulate.

    1. Re:Harder for the brain by PPH · · Score: 1

      Analogous to an automatic transmission kickdown.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
  126. Put more $ into research for self driving vehicles by nehumanuscrede · · Score: 1

    Once the self-driving car problem is solved and is a reality, the whole driving experience will be taken away from the human driver and handed over to the computer. At that point, being able to speed will be just one of the things you'll no longer be making decisions on.

    Speeding will become a thing of the past.
    Traffic jams will become a thing of the past.
    Vehicle accidents and fatalities will drop to near zero.
    DUI / DWI will become a thing of the past.

    You'll no longer be a " driver ". You'll simply be a passenger. Hell, you may not even own the car.

    To force everyone into a self-driving solution, insurance costs will be so high for a non-self driving car that only the .01% will be able to afford one.
    ( Assuming they're even allowed to drive on the same roads as the self-drive varieties at all. Eg: Off road vehicles only )

  127. News Item: 1950 Peugot Truck Passes 10 Audis by swschrad · · Score: 1

    on the Autobahn.

    --
    if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
  128. Brexit is smart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See, this is why. Why would you want to be part of a group that would mandate a policy like this in your sovereign country?

  129. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by aliquis · · Score: 1

    Here the city is growing and the country have pretty high immigration. The politicians rebuild city rows into thinner ones and close some and Sweden has been in the forefront of building roads for safety and deaths happen much less here than in the US even though we import Orcs.
    Anyway that of course make traffic flow worse resulting in more queues, wasted time and pollution. Sure some tragic may change routes lowering the traffic in some spaces but then you get longer routes and still more time wasted and more pollution.

    As for what it's used for except one small Street in the city like 150 meters which they painted pink once and green another time with giant popcorns as art installation I haven't noticed anything. Of course some place may have gotten bidirectional bicycle lanes on both sides or just one rather than two lanes of road to pass at a pedestrian crossing but nothing really changing.

    In the city they have built houses in what used to be parkings near parks, green spaces, open spaces and one large area gifted by a person for the recreation of the citizens will also be used to build houses as well as possibly an old event park where they use to have dancing and concerts.

    So none of that "for the people" things have happened. Parks and forests are destroyed and shrunk and roads are made worse but with no gains from it.

    If they actually remade the roads to prestige bicycle and pedestrian roads with no nasty ass busses and green spaces then I would be somewhat ok with it because it would also increase quality of life but as is it just make things worse for those who use a car just to make that worse unlikely with any understanding of the consequences (I doubt many more take the bus now.)

  130. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by aliquis · · Score: 1

    Maybe the war will come. Maybe not.

    The loss of control happens before it.

  131. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bicycles First! Deal with it!

    Yeah, fuck those shitty pedestrians.

  132. Nothing to see here... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    By 2022, there won't be an EU to enforce the ban. All this will accomplish is pissing even more people off. Way to go, EU!

  133. oh yeah? by ArylAkamov · · Score: 1

    *laughs in aftermarket ECU*

  134. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Will using the correct word affect you?

  135. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by registrations_suck · · Score: 1

    Yes. I should make my career decisions based on other peoples' disapproval of my transportation arrangements. That seems reasonable.

  136. hack by your_neighbor · · Score: 1

    Print a small 140 Km/h sign
    stick it in front of camera
    profit

  137. Re:Put more $ into research for self driving vehic by registrations_suck · · Score: 1

    Once the self-driving car problem is solved and is a reality...Speeding will become a thing of the past. Traffic jams will become a thing of the past. Vehicle accidents and fatalities will drop to near zero. DUI / DWI will become a thing of the past.

    ...

    ...and yet, mental illness will continue.

  138. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    what about those people who actually like to go grocery shopping, you insensitive clod!

  139. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Best way to 'deal with it' is a length of parachute cord across the bike trail at neck level.

  140. No such thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But, just as with self-driving cars . . .

    They don't exist and they certainly won't in our lifetime.

    Isn't it obvious?

    Every time an article like this is posted, you see a plethora of questions and statements beginning with "But what if . . . ?", "What happens when . . . ", "Yeah, but suppose I . . . ?",

    Haven't you people noticed? Don't you realize that all of this shit has to be programmed into the car's system, so it doesn't kill everyone? If the system can't determine that it is driving right next to a truck, simply because it is the same color as the fucking sky, then you have to ask yourself what other everyday scenarios weren't even taken into consideration, because nobody even gave it a second thought?

  141. Re:This is what happens when you give up your guns by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And pee sitting down.

  142. STUPID by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What if you are running from terrorist, or some natural disaster? As a driver, if I am responsible for everything my vehicle does, then it must be 100% under my control.

    1. Re:STUPID by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Obviously the terrorists will also be limited to same speed as you.

  143. Re:Put more $ into research for self driving vehic by avandesande · · Score: 1

    To force everyone into a self-driving solution, insurance costs will be so high for a non-self driving car that only the .01% will be able to afford one.

    Your insurance charges are calculated directly from risk, because that is WTF insurance is. Why do people keep parroting this nonsense?

    --
    love is just extroverted narcissism
  144. liberty is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    nihilism is the only answer to life's little mysteries.

  145. What happens if . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Suppose you're sitting at a 4-way intersection regulated by a stop-light. Across the intersection, there is a shop on the corner. The entrance is on the corner of the building, facing the intersection. The light turns green, allowing the car the right of way, but the car's sensors pick up the red light reflecting off the glass door at the entrance of the shop.

    Now suppose it is the other way around. The car's sensors are picking up the green light reflecting off the glass door.

  146. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by mschuyler · · Score: 1

    So you don't travel anywhere at all except to work?

    --
    How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
  147. joined at the hip by a Black Swan by epine · · Score: 1

    Driving 150 km/h in places where 130 km/h is allowed on almost empty and dry roads? No issue for me if people do that. To me the 130 km/h is way to low then.

    It's not that simple. 160 km/h is just fine on a highway in an optimal state of maintenance, under otherwise optimal circumstances: weather, traffic, angle of the sun, hours of restorative sleep, recent sugar intake, condition of tires on vehicle and all around general mechanical soundness, no giant trucks shedding part of their loads, no giant piles of leaves migrating to the opposite bank without using a marked crosswalk, etc. etc.

    Long, long ago I crossed much of Canada on my motorcycle at a typical cruising speed around 145 km/h—a speed where my bike absolutely purred along—completely aware that at every minute of every hour I was one short, inattentive moment away from becoming a giant road pizza. (Consequently, I had very very few inattentive moments, and I was aware of every vehicle in my viable light-cone of paint exchange, 360 degrees, at all times.

    Much of the trans-Canada wasn't even divided at that point, especially in the prairies, so you're often undertaking passing manoeuvres in the oncoming lane with extra haste, despite multiple miles of forward visibility; I very patiently awaited my main chance, and then lowered the boom, dropping a gear down and spiking up to 90% of red line as I hit the gap hard; there's a brief wind-waggle as you come hard around the ass-end of a big rig, which doesn't much change your vector (if you ignore the effect, as you should), but it does slam you into ten degrees of sideways tilt before you bounce upright again half a second later; not quite Yeager punching through Mach 1, but as close as I ever got).

    This was entirely unlike some of the grocery-getters who were drafting along behind the big rig, completely unaware they were riding a giant wave, then they try to punch out into the passing lane at half throttle, and almost fall back once the hit the brunt of the wind, before they finally get religion about the throttle, by which point their passing manoeuvre—if they stick it out—has stretched out to 15 to 20 long seconds, by which point the halfway-panicked driver is struggling to figure out whether that oncoming car in the far distance is less than a full mile, which is darn hard to do—though, unfortunately, it won't be at all hard to do by the time the the struggling grocery-getting pulls even with the big rig's powerful hindquarters, not if he's misjudged this treacle adventure the least bit. Good work, Sherlock. You can punch the brakes, drop back 30 m in a heart beat, and tuck back in behind the big truck—supposing he's not also so jumpy by now he punches his brakes at the same time, thinking he's giving you a necessary out in the forward direction. Compared to this kind of thing, my three-second power surges well north of 145 km/h seemed like a giant oasis of unadulterated prudence.

    Never once did I leave a big rig speculating nervously about whether I had competently managed this business of darting in/out of the oncoming lane. Not only that, I tended to start these manoeuvres from 3 seconds back, beginning my hard acceleration still safely tucked in my own lane, on an inside line, perfectly timed to hit the open gap behind the oncoming car, at speed, hard off the ass-end of the truck ahead, the precise moment the maw opens up. This involves solving (simple) differential equations in three dimensions simultaneously: where (right off the ass-end of the truck in front), when (the precise moment the maw opens up), and how fast (a lot honking faster than the truck ahead)—all have to perfectly align at a single moment in time (though there is some rubber in the "honking fast" constraint, with leeway up or down, to absorb minor miscalculation).

    Point of view from the big rig: oncoming car on undivided highway blows past on the left; 500 ms later, motorcycle pops out ti

  148. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Phillip2 · · Score: 1

    Yes, well, I come up with a clear counter example to your statement. And then you say, "ah well, that doesn't count because of something else that I have just thought of".

    There are many cities that have started to put in more enlightened transport policies that more cars, going faster, killing more people. In answer to your question "how small is my world", well, the bit that I live in at any one time is probably about the same size as yours.

  149. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Phillip2 · · Score: 1

    "It is also important to remember that people don't always have great choices here either."

    Yes, indeed. Some countries have been good at ensuring that people have choices; others have just gone the car route.

    "That employer now tells me that I am working out of an office 30 minutes away (best case) by car, way out in the sticks somewhere, and I can like it or lump it."

    Or expect a reasonable redundancy package; at least that would be how it would be in a country with sensible employment rights.

    "As a side note, I routinely find myself going 80 mph+ on the highway with a posted limit of 55 mph. Fuck speed limiter devices."

    If you crash, with luck you will survive or kill only yourself.

  150. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I get food and most other things delivered.

    That's a luxury solution for people with plenty of money. I too live in Europe and whenever I see a grocery delivery service it's considerably more expensive (on top of subscription fees and minimum order amounts).

    That's a problem with all these well-meaning initiatives from "progressives": they royally fuck over people who aren't the usual upper-middle-class Greens voters.

  151. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1
    ... wait wait...

    What job your wife has? Watch out for the vice squad.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  152. Re:Fortunately will not effect me. by Phillip2 · · Score: 1

    Amsterdam and the entire Netherlands is the best example, of course. Copenhagen is very human-transport friendly. Barcelona is taking very radical strides with its superblock structure. London is trying. A bit. With patchy success.

    In the US, there are no real beacons, but some cities are better than others. San Francisco, Portland, for example. On the East Coast, Boston in parts, and some of New York could be given the low rates of car ownership. But, yes, there is a long way to go here.

    In terms of pollution, China is electrifying its entire bus fleet and adding more. Even in India, cities are converting their Tuk-Tuks to LPG and electric.

  153. bikers are shitheads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The only people who are bigger pricks than bicyclists are goddamned pilots. "Goose-Incarnated" appears to be both. Good luck with that.

  154. You still can go as fast as you want at any time. by dam.capsule.org · · Score: 1

    I know this is slashdot but is it too much to ask to at least read the summary:

    The system can be overridden temporarily. If a car is overtaking a lorry on a motorway and enters a lower speed-limit area, the driver can push down hard on the accelerator to complete the maneuver.

    So you have the power when you need it. Just hit the accelerator to the bottom and it will bypass the limit.

    Next EU law: website will make it impossible to comment without having read the corresponding article.

    --
    What sig ?
  155. Re:You still can go as fast as you want at any tim by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The EU also says the override is for initial public acceptance. Better not to have the law at all rather than lose your rights one by one and then find it's too late, you're tracked.

  156. More brand by pizzamannetje · · Score: 1

    Skoda and probably the entire VW group also have most of this technology in their more expensive cards: lane guidance, traffic sign detection, assistive cruise control which automatically keeps distance and warms in case of crash risk. The navigation also shows speed limits. It's just not linked to a limiter yet.

  157. underage sex by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    why would qn 11 yr old girl want sex with an older msn

  158. Re: Fortunately will not effect me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Really? I hope you're adding in the extra "footprint" of trucking in all that food that is produced in rural areas.

    Of course, because the "footprint" of a truckload of food is divided among many people. It isn't like rural people don't need things trucked in, your average rural person isn't going to get everything they used produced locally.

    Rural areas and people can survive just fine without cities. Cities and people living there can't survive without rural areas. Given this truism, which is the more "natural" way to live?

    Unless you choose to live off the land without modern technology, neither is more "natural".

  159. Yet another brexiteer lie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The proposal calls for device to make you attentive to the fact you are over the speed limit.
    Automatically forcing breaking is not required.
    This is just another item in the long list of brexiteer disinformation being spread about the EU.