There’s some big news out of Washington State that’s sure to be controversial: House Bill 1596 wants to put speed limit-linked governors in the vehicles of street racers and frequently convicted speeders. A state looking to install smart speed limiters into the cars of habitual traffic violation accumulators may sound like a reach, but if anything, it’s — in my opinion — pretty much the opposite of government overreach. Let me explain.
This bill advocating for speed limiters isn’t a remedial program to be completed after a license suspension is served, it’s a proposed replacement for license suspension. The bill aims for anyone facing license suspension due to repeated excessive speed or street racing to be eligible for a speed-limiter conditional license, and states, “By leveraging technology to enable individuals to continue driving and prevent speeding, the legislature intends to enhance road safety to promote safer driving habits and keep the public safe.”
As of now, the House bill doesn’t extensively detail the technology used in these speed limiters, only that it will be third-party and leased by the driver of the vehicle. While an OBDII-linked device makes sense for many applications, cars live a long time in Washington and it wouldn’t be surprising if some habitual speeders own vehicles made prior to the implementation of the standardized onboard diagnostics system port. In addition, whichever speed-limiting device gets approved for use needs to be better than OEM, because the speed limit warnings in new cars have some serious limitations.
[Ed Note: I suggest we use the old Swedish EPA-tractor strategy and lock the cars into gear, limit their speeds to 19mph. You do the crime, you do the time — lots and lots of time on the roads. -DT]
As part of my work, I spend a whole bunch of time in new cars equipped with speed limit alerts, and as anyone with prolonged experience with these systems knows, they aren’t always right. Sometimes they read high, failing to pick up new signs on camera or pull updated speed limits from GPS-linked data, and sometimes they read low, hanging onto ramp advisory speeds after merging. Assuming these alerts were hard limits, existing technology could contribute to a significant speed differential between habitual speeder-driven speed-limited vehicles and surrounding traffic, which is where the danger lies. Many roads are safest when all traffic is moving at about the same speed, so exchanging one form of risk for another form of potential risk doesn’t seem like the most desired outcome.
So, if we go back to the root of the problem, what tools are known to work here? Well, higher fines may be worth looking at. If we zoom in on studies around higher speeding fines, we can see mixed results. An Australian study found that when Britain increased its most serious speeding penalty costs by 50 percent back in 2017, there was no measurable reduction in fatal crashes. At the same time, a 2017 meta-analytic study found that increasing penalties by 50 to 100 percent may reduce offense rates. The effect of fines alone isn’t clear, but looking at where existing fines sit, they’re low enough that increasing them might be worth a shot.
According to the Tacoma News Tribune, the fine for speeding 21 to 25 mph over the limit in a speed limit zone under 40 mph is $268. That seems quite low considering the excess of speed relative to the limit, and it’s not the only area where Washington state could beef things up. See, the state doesn’t have a demerit point system, and license suspensions for milder road penalties like speeding require six infractions in 12 months, or seven infractions in 24 months. Compared to the demerit point systems used in other jurisdictions, it seems as if Washington is giving habitual speeders a comparatively long leash.
What’s more, this proposed intelligent speed assistance license requires a speed limiter on almost every vehicle the holder of the license drives, with the main exception being shared work vehicles. It’s well intended, but how do you be sure that applicants don’t just lie? Given that the briefing of the bill claims that “more than 70 percent of people with suspended licenses continue to drive during the suspension period,” enforcement seems like it could be tricky.
At the end of the day, this proposal to put intelligent speed limiters in habitual speeders’ cars doesn’t seem like government overreach to me, but rather the opposite. It’s a plan to let otherwise suspended motorists keep driving, and while it might temporarily reduce speeding in some instances, it’s hard to see how a speed limiter would impact other dangerous road behaviors, from red-light-running to cutting up through traffic. Before extending this leash, perhaps look at treating the causes first. A combination of increased enforcement visibility and greater consequences for repeated road violations could, in my view, be more effective at reducing dangerous driving than offering an alternative to license suspension.
Top graphic: Dani/stock.adobe.com; depositphotos.com
Support our mission of championing car culture by becoming an Official Autopian Member.
-
California’s Proposed Speed Limit Warning System Law Has One Big Problem
-
Why Europe’s Mandatory Speed Limiters Mean The End Of Driving As You Know It
-
California Governor Vetoes Bill Requiring Speed Limit Warnings On New Cars, But The War’s Not Over
-
Why Cars With Speed Limit Readers Can Be Annoying: COTD
Please send tips about cool car things to tips@theautopian.com. You could even win a prize!
It will surely be cheap and easy to defeat
Why adjust for various areas? They simply get an Embargo-era 55MPH top speed. I hope they enjoy the scenic route, cause some interstates may be a little interesting at the old national speed limit.
Washington State has road signs declaring: “Litter and it will hurt!”
I just assumed that the cops pulled folks out of their cars for traffic violations and beat the stuffing out of them right there on the road.
I’m from Oregon–we don’t litter so I felt safe.
Another favorite Washington road sign is “Speed controlled by radar”. What, you speed and they use microwaves to melt your vehicle?
I’ve only driven tractors that were in theory limited by gearing. Last was 13mph or so in high 7 at 2,600rpm. Which with no suspension was dangerous. Like a 1st gen explorer was positively safe on the limiter to me the tractor at 100mph less was dangerous.
I’d advise a kei car instead. Enough power for 55mph, not enough past that. Pick the restrictions on seats. Like a midget II provides 1, most kei trucks provide 2, and vans 4. Bonus points more attention to driving when your knees are part of the front crash structure.
I’d rather they did something about red light runners, extreme tailgaters and those people that overtake by going out of the road.
Every other commenter has already made many good points or arguments. So I’ll just add, at least this is well-intentioned.
If well-executed (which I admit is a big “if”), this is certainly a better option than revoking or suspending the license altogether, which would almost inevitably lead to job loss in most areas in the US (since you’d no longer be able to make it to work timely), leading to poverty and/or recidivism, etc.
Of course, I also think speeding could be reduced if workplaces were more flexible with start times, and importantly, if we were actually paid for our commutes. We rush when we don’t have time to spare…which happens a lot in daily life.
Putting speed limiters into street racer cars sounds like the most misdirected plan ever concocted by a state’s legislative branch ever. If there is ever a group of people that can collectively figure out how to modify/hack their cars with hardly a ounce of concern for other people on the road, it would be street racers.
I’m sure someone will sell a kit to easily swap the limiter from their e36 into their mom’s x3 with nothing more than a 9v battery and an air freshener from O’reilly’s
The “Employees must wash hands” in US public bathrooms are not there to teach employees to wash hands, on the off chance that they never knew they had to, or that they knew and then forgot.
It’s there to make “But I didn’t know !” not an option when they get caught shit-handed.
The same way, this thing won’t be there to be impossible to circumvent. It will be there as a heavy reminder.
A court-mandated ankle bracelet is not impossible to take off. It’s impossible to take off without consequences.
Street racers are all big, brave and bold while they’re anonymous and not caught. Once they get to the point to have this thing installed – they’ll be much less so.
If it’s based on car diagnostics you can circumvent that. For instance making sure that the code within the device is integer limited. By that I mean if the car’s maximum speed is 130MPH but the highest speed limit is 70MPH you modify the code so it only counts up to 74MPH and introduce noise so it bounces up and down every so often to emulate traffic and passing. It’s highly unlikely they’d use floats to store the speed log, so it’d be a lot easier to make a disguise addendum. You can still go 85MPH, but the device will read back no higher than 74MPH to the enforcement officer that comes every two weeks to your house. Most of these sorts of things don’t even have code sanity checks or tamper evident ROMs that even basic home routers have (speaking from experience of disassembling a decommissioned breathalyzer out of curiosity), so it’d be pretty easy. If you can get into the thing you can rewrite whatever’s in it.
About the only thing that’d be a bitch to overcome would be if it also tracks GPS location and logs that, because you’d have to figure out some way of making it delay the GPS pings and timestamps to roughly line up with your faux speed over distance, and fit that code into the limited space of the onboard flash memory.
Look into what some people do with ESP32s for fun and then realize these people could trivially circumvent whatever bottom bid contractor assembled device the state starts sending out.
Once again – the thriving and burgeoning community of developpers busy cracking such a device would be the same as the thriving and burgeoning community of ankle bracelet hackers.
It will probably not be difficult to circumvent. It will be difficult justifying circumvention given the consequences.
Not to mention that 90% of the technology used to make these scumbags’ cars faster is legally sold, at scale, to thousands or hundreds of thousands of perfectly law-abiding Sunday racer clients, and has a disclaimer on where it can be used.
I’m curious to see how circumventing this would be marketed, what the market for it would be, how many people would need it, and who would build it for them. Because they have not otherwise shown proof of extreme brightness, street racers. All-around dumbassery and scumbagness zigzagging on the FDR between kid-haulers in rush hour doesn’t genius-programmer make.
I doubt there would be much of a central group so much as like, a generalized ability. Much in the same way modern videogame console flash modding works where you just download some software, write the image to a USB flash drive, and you’re good to go. A lot of modern embedded devices rely on security through obscurity because once it’s out there it’s likely never going to be touched again meaning it will never get updates. All it would take would be one guy writing a tool in Python and another showing you which pins to solder wires to and then thousands of individuals would do it themselves. Normal people are already learning the basics of this as phones get more and more locked down and they have to enable root on them to get rid of all the carrier bloatware.
The hardware would be entirely legal to do this. I mean, would they really ban laptops, soldering irons, and USB flash drives or SD cards? Just because someone broke into some extremely niche hardware using off the shelf components that probably only has like a thousand examples across the entire state? Nah. Definitely not.
And people will absolutely do this even if the consequences of getting caught are harsh, because unless someone’s looking through the data expecting inconsistencies or looking for small windows of impossible data inputs the risk is minor. Most likely the local Sheriff’s Deputy or whatever will just look for spikes or to see if it went over the limit and not view things in detail. The only risk would be if it did GPS logging which would be difficult if not nearly impossible to spoof, but that’s getting into privacy laws and infringements on them.
As for marketing it? Just throw it up in a thread on VWVortex or in the comments in some truckbro’s Instagram or something. People who know will grab it and test it and then start spreading it around even if the original posts get incinerated. It’s happened with console emulators, head unit jailbreaks, Roku and Firestick piracy sideloaders, and all sorts of other things.
And the people who would to this would be the same people who build giant tesla coils in their backyard to create a rendition of Bad Apple with the resulting noise. Tinkerers can’t help but break into stuff and test what it can do. That it would benefit somebody else would be of secondary concern if not incidental. I mean, I took apart a breathalyzer just because I was curious how it worked, not because I had one installed in my car that I wanted to feed fake data into.
It will of course be circumvented and be circumventable.
Then again, the guy who builds teslacoils in their backyard is unlikely the guy getting a hardon because their special ecu mapping barfed a backfire on downshift on Mjr Deegan at 3am, waking up 20k people, and slaloming inches away from others in dense traffic. If anything, they’d rarely interact together.
Once again – it’s not about being able to get around it. It’s about getting around it and getting caught. Which will happen once they speed up again.
Unless the idea is to get around it THEN obey the speed limit, while feeling as being the winner because they can speed up again. Which is ok in my book.
This. It’s like all the “don’t assault people” and “don’t take risks” training i get at mu govt job annually. It’s not to teach us anything, it’s for the govt to cover their ass and say “well, we told the dumbass not to be a dumbass and he still was!”
If it’s not GPS tracked I got a kit to sell , larger diameter wheels. 10% speeding kit available at your local tire store (if it fits).
> Putting speed limiters into street racer cars sounds like the most misdirected plan ever concocted by a state’s legislative branch ever
You must be new to US state politics
This should be like an inverse “cash for clunkers” and improve the desirability of pre-96 OBD II vehicles so we’ll call it the “speeders in beaters” bill.
To me, I think there should be a two step plan to fix this sort of stuff.
If we had “reasonable and customary” speed limits (which yes should be 85 in a lot of Western State interstates), but dropped the hammer on asshats that went completely insane breaking them, I think we would have a much safer driving situation.
It’s a VERY small portion of the population that causes the majority of accidents. Ask any cop and ask if they can point out 5 people that cause all the traffic accidents and they will be able to. It’s not the guy going 80 in a 65 while passing a truck that’s a danger, it’s the one going 50 through an intersection a couple seconds after the light turned red that is. Or the dumbass Youtuber trying to show their latest car can hit 200 mph during rush hour, or the guy that thinks he drives better and more carefully when he has a couple beers in him, or …. As I said, ask your local cops, they will ID about 0.1% of the locals that shouldn’t be allowed to walk on public streets nevertheless drive.
Another category is the guy respecting all the rules but failing to make his intentions clear for the other users.
I knew a lot of people wich were respectful of the rules, but they were buying a new car every couple of years because the other drivers keep running into them…
Yeah, there are lots of categories of bad drivers. Think to yourself and name at least one person you would never climb into a car with again. Yeah, you have a name or two there don’t you? We all do.
Maybe we should add something to the ballots. Each time we vote, we can name someone that shouldn’t be allowed to drive. If someone gets too many votes…
And the reason could be something like my mom. Last time I rode with her, I swore I would never do it again. She broke no laws, but she had one foot on the brake and one on the gas and she alternated flooring one or the other. She seemed incapable of modulating the gas or the brake and very unsure as a driver. I think it might have been the very early stages of dementia. Her skills just degraded.
Won’t really help, as i used to follow a cop doing prisoner transfer at 110mph or so. 90mph was deep in the free money range where everyone got pulled over. So unless you find a way to make cops care about the limit.
To be fair, cops have a lot more driver’s training than civilians (normally). They might even have as much training as German civilians. Add that they have a fleet manager that won’t let them leave on 3 worn out doughnut spares and a prayer and the suspension systems generally are upgraded and maintained… and a case can be made that a cop can drive faster than a civilian safely.
But most of the reality is that cops sort of believe they are above the law. Generally speaking, if a cop breaks the law, even in a civilian vehicle, they will be let off if caught.
There’s a youtube video floating around of a cop pulling over an obvious drunk driver. The guy he pulls over is his chief. Things get ugly, but as a credit to the cop, the chief went to jail and when the video came out, the chief got fired.
But how many cases don’t get published where the Chief would have avoided all consequences from speeding while drunk?
You make a great point about appropriate speed limits. I moved North to South 25 years ago and notice the same thing. Speed limits are generally close to appropriate, and in the last few years have been increased on several highways locally. Meanwhile my northeastern hometown has stretches of Interstate still clinging to the double-nickel. That’s one bit of ’80s retro nostalgia that I can’t get behind.
This neglects that slowpokes are actually the larger causer of accidents. One person going 15 over the speed limit is a hell of a lot safer than one person going 15 under the speed limit.
6+ speeding/moving violations in 12 months? Hahaha!
My tags have been expired for over two years and I speed everywhere I go.
I haven’t been pulled over once in over five years.
Make all the rules you want Washington, without enforcement they are pointless.
Thank you for self identifying as an asshole.
Judging by your username and comment, I’m gonna guess you drive an Altima.
Only till I get ahead of these payday loans. Then I’m getting something bigger like an Escalade or a lifted Ram.
Better than doing it for everyone.
This state will do everything except hire more State Patrol officers. I5 between Seattle and Tacoma is just a raceway for a lot of people. There’s always someone in a BMW racing someone in a Subaru, or a Subaru trying to race a group of motorcycles. Speed limiters aren’t going to stop them. Unless there are actual consequences, nothing is going to change.
“Speed limiters aren’t going to stop them.”
Sure they will. By definition.
Nope, kept up with a group faster than my limiter because they took corners far slower. Given I was in a 1st gen explorer and they were in “superior” cars i doubt much has changed. I’ve seen even worse like a lady trying to go fast while getting beat by a ups semi w 3 trailers on a windy interstate. So normal clowns will get smashed by a decent drivers at the speed limit.
Apples meet oranges.
Its very hard to beat a limiter if you go slow around corners. I’ve *seen* a batshit woman go fast on the highway and lose to a semi because the speedlimit was too fast for her in the corners. Maybe the chumps need to get good if they are limited to highway speeds. Or maybe they need to find a real road out of the city.
You lost me. My only point was a speed limiter is by definition:
“a governor used to limit the top speed of a vehicle”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limiter
So yes they will stop speeding when the governed top speed is matched to the roadway in question.
The problem isn’t speeding. The problem is driving like an asshole.
Therefore, once again, I would like to propose StillNotATony’s One Shot Law.
In this law, every American citizen, upon turning 18, receives the right to shoot one person. Now, you can’t KILL them, just injure them.
When you decide its time to shoot your shot, you call 911, your identity is verified, and a special police unit is dispatched to you. You point out the person you want to shoot, and the police hold them down while you shoot them in, say, the butt. An ambulance that is dispatched with the officers then treats the injured.
Now you only get ONE SHOT. So make sure you really wanna shoot this person. I believe that initially, there will be a flurry of shootings, but once things settle down, people will realize the value of it. Also, since no one knows if you’ve used your shot (unless they were present when you did), everyone might get a little more polite. And maybe – just maybe – after being shot a few times, the assholes out there will realize that they were the problem all along.
Vote StillNotATony as dictator for life!!
What happens if 17million people sign up to shoot the same person?
The law needs to make sure that this includes ANYONE – CEO’s, politicians, underwater basketweavers, etc… Although we all know that a few of the same names will crop up quite often.
Then the VP takes over. Then the Speaker of The House. Ad infinitum.
Sooner or later we would realize one of the janitors at the Capitol actually has some good and workable ideas.
At the same time? Vaporization, I assume.
Or 75 million even? Just wondering.
When my company launched a new logo, they pasted it on everything, and I mean everything. Notepads, pens, pencils, jackets, umbrellas, underwear, glasses, etc. etc. etc. We joked they were going to engrave it on the rocks out front… Which gave us the idea of the Official Company Rock. Pretty much the same idea you had. Everybody gets one official company rock, and they may use it however they wish… But you only get one rock.
This is similar (but also very, very different) to my solution to jackassery on the roads:
I think that all cars should be equipped with paint guns and if you see someone driving like a jackass you shoot it, only once, with your paint. You might even color code the paint to vehicle type or government vehicles could have their own, bespoke color or something, though I haven’t fleshed out exactly how to use the color coding system.
Anyway, you get so many hits and you just get pulled over and your car gets impounded for a month and it’s cleaned off when you get the car back.
Pretty much the same idea I’ve had for a while now. I’d limit the number of paintballs each person gets to keep it from getting out of hand, and the paint would have to be something that would not easily wash off but would be removable over time (if such a thing exists).
I’ve wanted to do this for years! My idea was to conceal the barrel in the grill and activate it from the driver’s seat. What I never figured out was how to keep the paintballs viable in the harsh environment of the engine bay.
Yup. The reality of life is that the threat of violence IS a good way at making sure people behave. That still exists today, but the consequences are such that people rarely do the act of violence, negating the impact that the threat of violence has on people’s behavior. Meanwhile the consequences for non-violent acts of misbehavior (white collar crime, speeding, DUI, etc.) are treated with a slap on the wrist.
Those slaps can HURT!
(or so my friends who attended mean nun Catholic school tell me)
I’d run out of bullets within 15 minutes on most internet forums.
“Now you only get ONE SHOT”
“Look… If you had… one shot… or one opportunity…
To seize everything you ever wanted… one moment…
Would you capture it? Or just let it slip?”
“You better – lose yourself in the music, the moment
You own it, you better never let it go
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime”
“His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy
There’s vomit on his sweater already,
SHOWER spaghetti”
(This line I give a shout out to DT…^)
What if you accidently kill them with your shot? What are the consequences for you?
Usually the cost of insurance increases so much that you can’t afford it, or you lose your license. Why are they not doing that here?
There’s a few problems here.
If it’s installed on a car, there’s nothing to prevent them from renting a car or borrowing another car. It also affects anyone in that household, which I can’t see holding up in court.This stuff is always a slippery slope. For example, maybe all new drivers need a governor on their car too. And if the speed limit is 75, why does any car need to be able to go above 75mph. Let’s govern them all at 75mph. (It’s similar to how I feel about Michigan just passing a law to allow speed cameras in construction zones. Sounds great, until they are everywhere in a few years).
Reason I hate going to Chicago from Indiana there are those stupid speed camera’s are all over the city and they are rarely marked well same with the speed limit next thing you know you get a ticket in the mail for going 42 in a 35
Come to Fort Wayne in Indiana… there seems to be almost no traffic enforcement here. It’s common to drive 50 in a 35 with no worries about getting a ticket. They will occasionally do some token enforcement efforts, but those are far and few between. School zones are a no-go though. If school’s letting in or out, just go the 20 mph because as bratty as those kids are, we still can’t run them over for points.
Come to Fort Wayne in Indiana… there seems to be almost no traffic enforcement here. It’s common to drive 50 in a 35 with no worries about getting a ticket. They will occasionally do some token enforcement efforts, but those are far and few between. School zones are a no-go though. If school’s letting in or out, just go the 20 mph because as bratty as those kids are, we still can’t run them over for points.
Why would you assume that losing insurance or even their license would stop a person in this situation from driving? The article even mentions that most people with a suspended license keep driving…
I don’t assume it will. I don’t assume this program will stop them either if they are that willing to drive. They will get another car and not register it in their name. Will the state even put a governor on a car in their household if they don’t have a license?
Oh I don’t think the speed limiters will work either, but you did ask why they weren’t doing the lose your insurance/lose your license stuff. Anywho, I agree, I don’t think any of these things are much of a deterrent to the habitual offenders they are theoretically meant to target.
“If it’s installed on a car, there’s nothing to prevent them from renting a car or borrowing another car. It also affects anyone in that household, which I can’t see holding up in court.”
The solution there I think is to have rental cars with this tech too. Renters with this on their record have this feature of the car activated as part of the check out process and deactivated on return.
Jail is another option. Get caught speeding in a borrowed car and you go straight to jail. Period. The person who loaned the car gets a notice from the court their car was being used by a speeder and has been impounded.
Preventing someone’s family from also breaking the law doesn’t sound like a hardship to me.
Good point. No reason all the cars in the household of a serial speeder can’t be included on the limited list.
And for good measure require the speeder to disclose the consequences* of loaning an unlimited car for their use if they are caught driving an unlimited car.
* impound and fines.
I guess we should just use smart governors to limit the speed of all cars to the posted speed limit. Why stop at family members of a habitual speeder? Or we could just use a small internet connected AI computer with cameras and a printer in all cars to print a ticket for you instantly upon any breaking of the law.
Since I’m responsible now to know the court history of anyone that I let borrow my car, I’m sure I’m OK with it getting impounded. The person will tell me the truth, right, or is there a public database where this information is accessible to me.
Might as well put a breathalyzer interlock on all cars too. /S
Where do we stop?
I don’t drive like an a-hole and I generally keep very close to the speed limit unless I need to go the speed of the traffic to not be a nuisance. I’m not out there loaning my car out to people. But I also know that putting a bunch of rules and obstacles out there are generally going to hurt the people who generally follow the rules much more than the people who do not follow the rules.
Fine by me. I, for one, welcome our new speed attenuation overlords.
“The person will tell me the truth, right, or is there a public database where this information is accessible to me.”
Why would you need that? Would you loan your car out to a random stranger? Or to a bald faced liar who clearly thinks nothing of you?
Surely you would only loan your car to someone you trust not to do something really stupid with it like risk getting it impounded. If you loan your car to someone like that maybe you deserve to lose your car.
If you do find it necessary to loan your car to someone you don’t know very well or trust a whitelist/blacklist database would work, the same one that would be used by rental agencies. Scan your new friend’s licence with your phone and verify it’s valid, any restrictions and insurance info. If your friend is blacklisted you’ll know. That would double for exchanging info in a collision too with the bonus of knowing right away if the A-hole who hit you just tried to give you bogus info.
“I generally keep very close to the speed limit unless I need to go the speed of the traffic to not be a nuisance”
Speeding to “not be a nuisance” makes you part of the problem.
You’re using a slippery slope because you agree that it’s absolutely fine to limit a criminals ability to break the law even if it prevents other people that aren’t criminals from breaking the same law.
Let’s talk about crime and punishment! So, first off, socially we’ve been conditioned to believe that persons are less likely to commit crime the harsher the penalty is. Which is true, but for people who are unlikely to be committing the crime with intent. Once intent is established to violate the social contract, there’s little recourse negative punishment in diversion. For example, death penalty/ no quarter for piracy did little to nothing to stop people from raising the Jolly Roger. A large increase in driving infraction will likely primarily impact the only habits of the fringe/ unknowing (i.e. people who are slightly going above the speed limit to work type scenario).
With habitual offenders. And 6 infractions in a year seems pretty habitual. Consequences rarely effect recidivism. There, is argued a possibly that the increased punishment is likely to actually increase recidivism due to furthering damaging a person’s life and some complex personality tendencies/ illness factors. Harsh penalty tends only benefit greater society, by keeping that person excluded. Which kind of gets to the real complex problem of punishment, in that who punishment serves? What are the goals? But I digress. When a person is habitual offender, really, your only meaningful course of treatment would be to address the underlying issue fairly individually. As root cause could be varied (mental illness, substance abuse, personality etc.) though Education and meaningful community support. But that cost money and would probably actually work, so we ain’t doing that. But, I guess this might help? it seems very obvious how one would work around it though.
“Let’s talk about crime and punishment!”
Ah, Dostoyevsky. A good novel, but a bit of a difficult read. Your book club might be a better forum than Autopian since it’s not really about cars.
They’ve got a name for people like you H.I. That name is called “recidivism.”
That’s one bonehead name, but that’s not me any more.
And I’m not just telling you what you want to hear – unless you want to hear the truth.
Then I’m definitely telling you what you want to hear.
I don’t know man, if the penalty for speeding was death I would do everything to avoid speeding probably even get a speed governor for myself as a choice. And anyone who didn’t follow the law would die quickly and no more speeding.
There is a huge difference between speeding and piracy, with piracy the gain was good if it went good, alternative lines of work sucked and your chance of getting caught was hit or miss. With speeding the gain is minimal at best, the alternative is not that bad and the risk of getting caught is high (when the state cares).
When someone is a habitual law breaker at some point we need to stop thinking about them and start shrinking about their victims, yea it sucks for their life but we all make choices and sometimes society is better when bad people are seperated from everyone else.
This seems like an ok idea, but I’m not sure about the effectiveness. This looks like a plan with a lot of potential holes in it. Any speed limiter would be avoidable by the well or even moderately well funded.
As just a normal guy, there are 3 vehicles in my household. If I run afoul of this law, does my wife’s car get a limiter? My daughter’s? If not, then I’m rarely held accountable, as we seldom use all 3 at the same time. If so, now there’s a penalty and invasion of privacy for non-violators.
Even if I was solo, there seems to be a lot of options to ignore this, almost as easily as ignoring speed limits!
While this is true, the wealthy being able to circumvent most laws and legal punishments is its own issue that needs to be addressed
Shit, that ain’t a bug, it’s a feature.
I think in many cases the current system imposes penalties on innocent family members. When you suspend someone’s license making them unable to get to work, the consequences for the family can be much worse than having to deal with a speed limiter. I have concerns about this proposal’s effectiveness too, but no system is perfect.
“As just a normal guy, there are 3 vehicles in my household. If I run afoul of this law, does my wife’s car get a limiter? My daughter’s?”
Yes. The limiter has no effect on those who don’t speed so why not?
“An Australian study found that when Britain increased its most serious speeding penalty costs by 50 percent back in 2017, there was no measurable reduction in fatal crashes.”
“At the same time, a 2017 meta-analytic study found that increasing penalties by 50 to 100 percent may reduce offense rates.”
Are there rigorous studies that actually look at speeding as a direct cause of fatalities? Or is it just that bad driving leads to fatalities?
I’m not sure why this is so controversial since it is only applied to people who are convicted of certain crimes. It sounds like the street racing equivalent of breathalyzer ignition locks for those convicted of DUIs.
I am also having a hard time understanding why this punishment is regarded as inappropriate in a country where you can be sentenced to life in a prison that is worse than hell or, in some states, killed by the government.
Only applies to convicted so far. Once it gets in and doesn’t solve the problem (do these laws ever ‘solve a problem’?) they’ll have to get more aggressive and make it apply to everyone because if it saves just one life, am I right? Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
I suspect speed limiters will be mandatory for all eventually regardless of whether or not this law passes. I don’t think this law will make much of a difference. If anything, allowing a reasonable law to pass might delay any requirements for the rest of us.
Unfortunately, we do not have a constitutional right to speed (that must have been an oversight by the founding fathers… we really need an amendment), so I think speed limiters will be inevitable when the technology works better.
Anyone with 6+ speeding/moving violations in 12 months should be doing hard time in prison.
And I say this as someone who speeds a lot.
At the very least they need to go back to some sort of driving school
I think is most states if you get a certain amount of points on your license arent you required to do some sort of traffic school right? Or if that just to take points off so your license isn’t suspended?
Oh shoot, yeah I forgot. Probably why it sounded so familiar lol
Something that’s opened my eyes recently with all the discussion of crime is how much of it could be prevented by simply imprisoning many-time repeat offenders.
A large number of crimes appear to be carried out by a very small number of people for whom normal consequences do not seem to have any effect, and who simply need to be removed from society.
I would not be surprised if the same kinds of people are responsible for a large fraction of speeding, reckless driving, DWI, etc.
Driving school is an appropriate consequence for a one or two-time speeder who is chastened by the experience and is actually willing to learn and do better. I expect this applies to the vast majority of people, but not the majority of 6+ time offenders in a 12 month span.
Oh yeah, at that point it’s very anti-social behavior that they feel like societies rules don’t apply to them. Don’t want to play by societies’ rules, don’t get to play the society game
Sad thing is with the repeat offender thing you will still have people that will defend them as say it is unfair to punish them for XYZ reason. But there just has to come a point where like umm this person has caused 10 accidents for reckless driving or this person has robbed stores at gun point 6 times I don’t think they are going to learn at this point for whatever punishment they have been receiving because they keep doing the same thing.
“Sad thing is with the repeat offender thing you will still have people that will defend them as say it is unfair to punish them for XYZ reason”
Well yeah, that how the US legal system is supposed to work. That doesn’t mean the judge has to accept or even be influenced by the defense’s argument.
It’s time we took the George Carlin idea, and wall off Wyoming. People who can’t act within the bounds of societal norms get sent there. Then, they get to fend for themselves, with a bunch of other anti-social people.
“A large number of crimes appear to be carried out by a very small number of people for whom normal consequences do not seem to have any effect, and who simply need to be removed from society”
And that kids is how Australia was founded.
And that kids, is how the Holden Commodore was invented.
Or, they should have invested in a quality radar detector by now. A good one will pay for itself after about 2 missed tickets.
P.S If legal in your area.
P.P.S. I’ve definitely have never had 6 in 12 months! 2 in 18 months was crazy for me and required a change.
My radar detector has paid for itself so many times at this point. I used to average 1 speeding ticket a year which got annoying with all the 5-hour online “traffic school” courses I had to take for each one (in Arizona you can take it every 12 months to basically get away points-free for a speeding ticket). It’s been like 4 years without a ticket now, and I haven’t changed my driving habits one bit. Granted, the enforcement here has also fallen quite a bit as they can’t seem to hire anybody to work the highway patrol, not that I’m complaining!
This is the way.
Yeah, getting caught that many times is embarrassing. Part of the fun of speeding is doing it without getting caught. I’ve got a radar detector and Waze, but if I had the budget, I’d totally have laser jammers and all the other fun countermeasures that the cannonball runners have.
I get into our shared car.
Suddenly I can’t speed.
I call wife to see what’s up.
Yada yada yada we get divorced.
Her speeding ends up costing me $381,000. Plus lawyer fees.
And now my credit is so bad, I have to get an Altima.
And the cycle begins again.
High five! You’re better off without her bro!
I really don’t see how it could be “overreach,” it’s basically just the habitual speeder equivalent of a ignition-interlock breathalyzer for drunk drivers.
Though, like determining intoxication from cannabis products, it’s not nearly as straightforward as BAC.
The problem, however, with your “increase traffic enforcement visibility” is several-fold:
1) it could involve putting lots more police officers on the roads, when traffic stops are some of the most deadly types of police interactions, for both civilians and cops alike
Or
2) install more speeding cameras, which everyone hates.
Yeah I cannot recall how many times I have people cause near crashes because they slam on their brakes when they see a cop. If everyone is going 60 in a 55 I don’t think the cop is magically going to pull over everyone. Or people that don’t get over into another lane and just fly past the pulled over cop on the shoulder.
I think this would lead to government overreach but that is a different topic. What I wanted to know how would these devices know when to limit the speed? Like I understand GPS on google maps might know the speed limit in an area but what if it has changed (construction or something) would these devices know some how of the change? Would they limit you to the exact speed limit? Would they require offenders that need these have a vehicle of certain vintage and newer? As I doubt older vehicles could be equiped with these. This leads to way more questions haha
Does anyone complain about “government overreach” with IID’s?
There are probably people that do complain that ID’s are. People complain about everything haha
Absolutely. Be happy you haven’t met any of them. It’s usually the “sovereign citizen” types.
Not a terrible idea, honestly. But it still functions off the old “speed is bad” mantra (or fallacy) that doesn’t always apply.
Driving 25 mph in a 25 zone where all other cars are stopped and a kid is crossing the road is just bad judgment and doesn’t technically involve speeding.
Similarly, I’ve been a lot more terrified at what a Tesla can do within the confines of the speed limit, than what it can do above the speed limit.
Still, it’s a step I guess. Sometimes repeat offenders just need the idea that they’re being watched constantly, which at least solves one piece of the equation (enforcement frequency = infinity!) and is less concerned with the cash grab portion of it (fines). From that perspective, I like it.
It seems like the way it’s worded it’s strictly for egregious violations or repeat offenders. If every guy caught street racing got one of these instead of jail time, I consider that win
But question is what stops cops from just saying that someone that was speeding was street racing?
Same thing that stops them from installing breathalyzers on cars when someone gets pulled over for their first DUI.
Where I live in Indiana they can require a breathalyzer installed on a first time offender. So I am sure other states might have similar things.
I guess I see it more as freedom from being killed by street racer or drunk driver so I’m not too cut up about infringing on their driving privileges
Oh no I agree I think we should have ways to stop people from drunk driving or wreckless driving as best as we can but I can see letting cops have more power and control leading to consequences for average joe blow that was going 65 in a 55 and a cop pulls them over has a power trip.
Luckily you have a choice about what speed you go. Speeding tickets are entirely voluntary.
“I think we should have ways to stop people from drunk driving or wreckless driving as best as we can”
Why would you want to stop people from wreckless driving?
😉
You get issued a Government owned lavender K-Car, while your car is taken away. Don’t need a speed limiter if your car isn’t able to hit the speed limit.
Or a yugo as you will just be pushing it everywhere. So hey might help with health issues in the country at the same time of cutting down speeding.
Moped.
Haha funny thing you say that because I see a few people driving around where I live on scooters that probably cannot go any faster then 20mph on roads that have speed limits of 45mph I always wonder if they do that by choice or is it due to some legal issues they may have ran into? Because they will be out on them in the freezing cold.
DUIs, usually. Many places have a special class of motorcycle registration for <50cc mopeds that still allow people with suspended licenses to get around. Those scooters are very popular in Vegas, a town where driving drunk is a citywide pastime.
VW Bus. or if that’s too precious, Renault Twizy.
Diesel Rabbit
https://www.autoweek.com/car-life/a1877791/introduction-volkswagen-diesel-misery-driver-training-class-1982/
(The gas ones are fun- used to have an 83 GTI 5spd in black)
Peel P50! 28mph
They are still cool though
I didn’t realize they were the world’s slowest car, officially
“It’s so slow that it has become a part of history.”
https://carfromjapan.com/article/slowest-car-in-the-world/
https://www.theautopian.com/watch-matt-farah-sit-in-the-peel-p50-the-smallest-production-car-ever/
BMW Isetta
Just thought of the funny scenes of Urkel’s Isetta going slow
https://youtu.be/ULfFAN62kKo?si=tBDStHlIlAReA9-p
And fast…forgot about the scene where it has a rocket launcher!
https://youtu.be/6I1q9Ha1thQ?si=JNfmgsLeGwoOJsn3
I still like the Isetta’s though…they are iconic and have a fascinating history
https://www.theautopian.com/the-full-history-of-the-most-famous-microcar-the-bmw-isetta/
I really don’t see the problem at all. This actually corrects the problem unlike jail time or license suspension.