Should Cars Have Built-in Speed Limiters?

Help me out here. One of the people commenting on a story about U.K. cops driving too fast has a novel solution to the problem of drivers breaking the posted highway speed limits:

What I don't understand is the manufacturing of automobiles that go so much faster than legal limits allow. Why not simply put the limits on automobiles, with a slightly higher limit set on police vehicles? Make it impossible to speed. Opportunity makes the thief, as the saying goes. Deny the opportunity.

Well, why not? How would you respond?

I may play devil's advocate, just for the hell of it (heh-heh).

Comments

[ben]

You are right. "There is No Risk-Free Level of Exposure to a Moving Car" (Surgeon General dicit)
To start with, the problem is with the defintion of speed limits. They are set without any consideration of place, road conditions, or a driver's experience. To be on the safe side and to accommodate for even the most unexperienced driver, they have to be set to the lowest possible level.
When I started driving, there were no speed limits at all, but that didn't mean that people were recklessly driving.

Adhering to s speed limit doesn't make you a safe driver. At times or under certain conditions even the speed limits are too high to be safe. On the other hand, there are plenty of situations were higher speeds present no objective risk.

Limiting the maximum speed by throttling a car would make it extremely risky to overtake another car (going at less than the limit) on a country road because it would take forever.

Would you throttle a car at 70 mph? Isn't that too fast in the middle of the town? Those who argue that a speed limit of say 65 makes our roads safer should be aware that 60, 50, 30, 20, 10, 0 would be even safer. So who determines the right limits?

And in Europe, there is still one country which doesn't have a general limit on highways: Germany. Germany also has one of the lowest (if not the lowest) rates of accidents in Europe.

[ben]

oh, by the way, shouldn't that title be:
"Should Cars Have Built-in Nannies?"

[Gospazha]

I'd start by mentioning that there are situations where speeding up is prudent, and if one is already traveling at the vehicle's maximum speed, that reduces one's options to control the vehicle. Examples include aligning one's vehicle with the best available space to merge into freeway traffic (even when traffic flow is at the speed limit) or avoiding getting t-boned in an intersection. Sometimes drivers just need to be able to speed up.

And there aren't speed limits on private property. Even if the comment writer doesn't think a car should be able to go over, say 60 mph, that doesn't give him a right to prevent anyone from going faster than that on their own property.

Though I agree with ben's comments on the ridiculousness of speed limits, I don't think there's much success to be had in pointing out how unnecessary they are. The person who is comfortable with the idea of using technology and legislation to reduce the maximum speed a vehicle can travel is already VERY comfortable with the legislation of "safe" speed limits in the first place.

[fish]

I say that a country/nation could do far worse than to examine every single law and legislative proposal put forth by England and do the exact opposite!

[GreginOz]

What a crock of shit, by Christ's Left Nut, I HATE Nanny-Staters! EVERYONE breaks speed limits in Oz. You travel at 60 KPH (40 MPH) on a main road, the normal city limit, and irate drivers hit the horn. This whole lowest common denominator shit drives my superior Libertarian intellect wild! (LOL). It is just another set of meaningless rules and regs from Gummint so they can bring the axe down on you whenever they want.

[Lee]

The above are concerned with normal everyday driving (and contain some good points too) but what about the car as a hobby?

My car is capable of well over 160mph and it came from the factory with a speed limiter set to 180km/h (was built for the Japanese domestic market). Now what happens if you want to take that car to a trackday? Would the nannies have to regulate the disabling of the limiter and then the re-enabling once the track session is over? More than likely, they'll just ban trackdays too.

The more and more I read of this kind of insanity, the happier I am to be an expatriate.

PS: I guess I should point out that the car's limiter was already disabled when I bought it from Japan, which goes to show how useful they really are! :)

[benny]

Seriously. This would be one of the dumbest laws ever....

[K. Dale Boley]

The story is about cops driving too fast. It is an example of the privileged ruling class police see themselves as. Many libertarian blogs speak on this suject. Perhaps we should limit the top speed of police cars. Or just issue them scooters and a whistle. In fact, how about the police be confined to their stations until called by a citizen wronged? At which time they can get into their speed regulated cars and solve the crime.
An interesting quote from the story "all our officers are trained to have the peak level of skills and are held accountable when there is an accident." Why not require all those who drive to be at a Peak Skill Level and leave the speed decisions to the drivers? People should be held fully responsible for their actions in cars or walking down the sidewalk. We do not need police standing guard over our highways.

[Myrtle]

Hopefully the restriction on civilian vehicles will work better than restrictions on guns and underage drinking.

No bad guy would ever think of disabling his restrictor so that he can outrun the police.

[smurfy]

"Perhaps we should limit the top speed of police cars."
Around here they do just that. The police are outfitted with Chevy Tahoe SUVs that are limited at 94 mph, according to an officer I spoke with. His next line, "but don't try anything because my Motorola travels the speed of light."

I think the limits are a great idea. Drivers have a demonstrated unwillingness to obey this particular part of the law. This is the same direction we are going with chronic drunk drivers, physicaly disabling the vehicle when the driver is out of compliance with the law. Only here there is no presumtion of innocence, we ALL speed.

All of the practical concerns cited above can be mitigated.

"that doesn't give him a right to prevent anyone from going faster than that on their own property"
A few weeks ago I read a police blotter where a guy got a DUI in his own driveway. He hit a parked car while backing out of his garage. It's one small step from the DUI framework to speeding.

[Garth]

Or you could equip car engines with a device that could be engaged which would lower the maximum speed temporarily. It could be used by cops to stop a fleeing vehicle, or it could be used in construction and school zones where they really do need to slow traffic down for everyone's safety but there's always some idiot who wants to speed through.

[FreeMotorist]

Personally, I'm opposed to this, for reasons already mentioned. However, I do support having posted speed limits (as long as they're prima facie, i.e. can be overruled by some kind of "reasonable and prudent" clause) on all roads that are not freeways/expressways/motorways/autobahns.

Freeways etc. are designed with the intention of facilitating high traffic speeds while reducing accidents. For example, there is no cross-traffic at-grade (since all roads crossing freeways are built as bridges and/or tunnels, sometimes with ramps for access), so drivers on freeways cannot be broadsided except in really extraordinary circumstances, and they feature strong center dividers to prevent head-on collisions (the deadliest types of accidents since the force of impact is the the combined force of both vehicles, e.g. a head on collision at 50km/h is equivalent to hitting a brick wall at 100km/h). Because of this, it is entirely possible to drive at 300km/h on a freeway and still be reasonable and prudent if you maintain the right distance from the guy in front of you (for example, in Germany, there is no speed limit on the autobahn network, but you must maintain a distance of 1m for every 2km/h of your speed, e.g. 60m at 120km/h, 90m at 180km/h, etc).

Of course, it is reasonable and prudent to restrict trucks and other heavy vehicles at all times due to their mass. Remember, even Germany has limits for trucks and for vehicles pulling trailers (80km/h and 80-100km/h respectively).

It is also reasonable and prudent to slow down a bit at interchanges, since interchanges are the parts of freeways that do feature a large ammount of interaction between different traffic streams. IMO, the only parts of freeways that should be speed limited are interchange ramps (due to their relatively sharp curves) and 500m buffer zones between interchanges (due to traffic shifts between lanes). I haven't tried to determine what the reasonable and prudent speed when passing interchange is, but my guess is 130km/h. Of course, if it's an 8-lane freeway or more, perhaps the inner two lanes can be exempt from slowing down to 130km/h near interchanges unless they're changing over to the outer two lanes.

Sadly, some jurisdictions post speed limits on freeway sections that could do without them as a source of revenue generation. However, if they instead focus on the distance between cars, they will probably be able to generate even more revenue, since tailgating is an even bigger problem than "speeding".

As for police officers driving over the speed limit, restricting them is not the solution due to their driver training (a point which has been made before). Also, it is legal for them to observe "German-style driving regulations" if their lights and siren are on in most jurisdictions.

Bottom line: Speed only kills on roads that are not designed for high speeds. However, if a road is designed specifically for high-speed driving, why should it even have speed limits? If someone has managed to go through driver's ed, they'd surely know how to determine whatever the reasonable and prudent speed is for a given moment.

And like someone has said before, reducing speeds as a safety measure is a weak idea with a slippery slope, since the only speed limit that will truly eliminate accidents is 0km/h (no movement whatsoever). Would you agree to such a limit?