Every day, everything that comes out of EU is evil. The only effect of this is higher prices of cars and a paved way for more oppression of the ordinary citizen. Today, only new cars need to have new limiters; tomorrow they will criminalise driving a car with them disabled or broken; ultimately they will integrate it with eCall (remember when they mandated to put GPS+GSM in all new cars?) and police all drivers everywhere all the time.
I advise you to vote with your feet as I have done. I suspect you’re a tech worker so it should be easy to find work across the globe.
I myself emigrated to Thailand and while Thailand isn’t perfect, for various reasons I feel more free here than in The Netherlands. Perhaps most of all since I pretty much can legally avoid paying much tax here and in my opinion taxes in The Netherlands are just too damn high.
Hu? The "evil" thing here are cars (emitting poisonous gases, driving climate change, making loud noises etc.) and their reckless drivers (racing those cars in inner cities, not paying attention, claiming losing control of their vehicle was an "accident"…). Anything that limits their use and the freedom of their self-centered users is good.
It's really narrow minded to find all drivers reckless when you clearly cite pathological behaviour that's adopted by a minority of drivers. It shows you do not evaluate this rationally and makes your argument less credible.
I would argue that the minority of people actually observe speed limits, most people drive over the speed limit out of habit, sometimes only to overtake but a lot of drivers do it and I get a lot of road hate for driving at speed limit or below.
From personal experience, I know that most drivers I interact with on a daily basis are reckless and needlessly endanger others for their personal convenience and comfort. This starts at parking on pavements and cycle lanes, not stopping at zebra crossings, going above the speed limit and all sorts of other incursions.
For example, there was recently a statistic floated around that half the people in the UK had been in an accident. Assuming that all these accidents were one-on-one collisions (unlikely, people also "lose control" all by themselves), this suggests that at least 25% of drivers drive recklessly, as they have caused an accident at some point in the past. I do not understand how 25% are "pathological".
Add to this the number of people who also drive recklessly but for sheer luck have not caused an accident yet and those people who have caused accidents without involving other drivers and the above 25% go up even further.
Downvote all you like, but it won't change a thing that those wilfully reckless drivers just won't get a new car with these limiters or will disable them and will not be impacted, unlike the millions of others who are forced to pay for more useless gadgets in their cars.
It will simply eventually become illegal to run without these limiters just as it is already illegal to use particularly polluting cars in cities (for example). Of course it will also be illegal to disable them. I don’t see how what you’re describing is any sort of credible loop-hole.
You are already admitting that the current proposal will solve nothing, but will require further steps: prosecuting tampering with the limiters, prosecuting driving a car without them (even unknowingly [!]) and so on. All of that to ineffectively substitute the actual work of the police at the expense of every car owner.
Sorry? Cars are checked regularly (at least every two years for example in Germany) where any tampering can be detected and either reversed or further registration for the car refused. This system is already in place and the process of checking brakes, the engine, lights etc only needs to be amended by a process to check this system. I don’t see how this requires substantial "further steps".
There are legal speed limits. Drivers routinely ignore them. EU plans a system that automatically _alerts_ drivers when when they are exceeding the speed limit (something that essentially all sat nav do).
If it was such a useful feature, why people aren't using it already? And initially they wanted to make cars automatically slow down too, but thankfully that was thrown out. Till next time?
Some countries already allow convicted DUI to keep driving with aftermarket breathalyzers. IMO in some cases it's good as an optional replacement for the license suspension. If someone depends on their license that may be a good compromise to both not ruin someone's life and ensure public safety.
To give the parent to your comment some benefit of the doubt, some vehicles do have mandatory breathalysers fitted, but as far as I'm aware it's only commercial vehicles in certain sectors of the market (some buses and coaches, I know of, it's possible they're required somewhere in goods transport vehicles)
> If it was such a useful feature, why people aren't using it already?
Similar things are used. For example, in the UK some insurance companies make an offer which depends on the driver installing a speed tracker and not violating the limit.
The argument "why hasn't it been done yet" is quite weak. It takes time for things to be put into law, and the relevance of this kind of intervention increases with the number of drivers on the road.
Whenever someone claims the law can't actually change people's behaviour for the better, I instantly think of the UK's plastic bag charge law in 2015, which quickly cut usage by 86%.
I don't get why this is evil. I often fear speeding cars, particularly on country roads. I understand people wanting an engine with spare power, but why not make people follow the law if it is fairly simple to do?
"why not make people follow the law if it is fairly simple to do?"
That's quite an interesting question, because it seems so common-sense.
I think I know why it's an awful idea, but I'm not sure. I could certainly imagine such a question being used in all kinds of places that I would find uncomfortable, especially with computers being integrated so much into our lives and watching everything we do and think.
You are very correct. Today, x38iq84ns can leave their phone at home and the phone does not send tickets based on speed and does not call the cops against them based on geofencing. And because the vehicle tracking is not panacea, it will be supported by new "crimes" being prosecuted, involving any form of avoidance from tracking - inevitably trackers will break and people will be prosecuted for driving with a broken (=disabled) tracker. Determined avoiders will find their way and only law-abiding citizens (or so they think) will pay the price.
The speed limits are out of date. For highways, the original limits were set by breaking distances. Braking systems have improved tremendously (almost all disk brakes nowadays, ESC and ABS), reducing breaking distances, while the limits were never updated. So yeah, one can disagree with speed limits.
Human reactions however, have not. Don't know where you live but most EU countries have a speed limit of around 100 km/h on the highway. This gives a stopping distance of around 100m for a modern well-maintained car (Which, let's be realistic, most are not). That's a long distance. Now if you take into account that a lot of countries have higher limits (France at 130 km/h for example) and that the braking distance increases exponentially I would disagree that they are outdated.
This is no enforcement as long as it's just an alert. Those who want to follow speed limits can do that already, there is this new thing called speedometer that comes with every car. More electronic gadgets solve nothing but build infrastructure for EU dystopia that monitors everybody.
I disagree that the line between safe and unsafe speed can be distilled down to the same number for every car, every driver, and every weather/road condition. If you’re a good driver in a good car driving on a clear, dry day you should be allowed to drive faster than a bad driver in a bad car on a foggy/icy/rainy day.
Sure. If you then take personal responsibility for every accident even when going at or below the speed limit, I could quite live with this. "Personal responsibility" of course means making good for any and all damage you caused, something which you are typically quite unable to do.
The fact that people still have "accidents" and that these "accidents" are ruled "accidents" and not "willfully crashing their 2 tons of metal into something" suggests that people are not ready to take responsibility for their actions and that they cannot be trusted, even with the current speed limits already in place.
Non issue. This is just haptic feedback when you get to the limit. I hope it does log the speed as well as the last two accidents on the road I live on people were killed by idiots doing 40+ mph in a 20mph limit.
What is a problem is fixing this shit when it breaks. Which it will because it adds to the bottom line cost of the vehicle so will be done by the lowest bidder.
If it is just haptic it's OK but the talk was at least in media that it would be an actual speed limit which in current implementation is idiotic.
We have a new car which can read speed signs. In theory good idea. But tech isn't where it should be. For example when you drive on highway 100 km/h with 130 km/h speed limit and the car is warning you that you are speeding because it saw speed sign for 40 km/h on exit ramp it's a little worrying if car would actually obey speed limit. Breaking from 100 to 40 for no reason by car itself would not be good.
And there are also speed signs for only some vehicles which I don't think any car can read and for example Austrian signs (30 km/h limit and then subtext "valid only for side roads").
And another thing speed signs says limit is 50 km/h. It is valid up to next intersection. Intersection that invalidates speed limit is defined as intersection with more then 4 housing units. It's sometimes hard for human to know if intersection invalidates speed limit or not. How would a car know?
Some vehicles already log the speed -- it's routine in road traffic collisions to read it out of the vehicle computers. As I understand, it only covers the last few minutes prior to engine stop / loss of power.
There's also the age-old method of looking at the speedometer: in a high-speed collision, the return spring tends to fail. Result is the needle gets stuck at the impact speed or close to it.
"It is true that cars built in Britain will have to carry these safety systems and standards if they are to be exported to the EU," Mr Dalton said. "But we have also secured improved rules"
Its almost like having a seat at the table, for your biggest export market is a good thing.
If you were a Brit opposed to these speed limiters, surely you'd prefer "EU speed limiters not needed in britain" to "EU speed limiters needed, but with improved rules" ?
I think a speed limit is good. EU's implementation? not sure about that. What about driving by a slow driveR? you have to speed up above the limit to do that.
It's about safety, and no street legal car should be driven above 140-160km/h (87-100mph) on the highway; most people do not know how to handle a car above 80mph. It's really dangerous for both that car as well everybody around. IF you drive on your own land, race track etc. then yeah, that's where it should be allowed.
Atleast in germany you may only overtake a driver if you can do so without going over the speed limit. I would assume that this is that case for most western countries too, driving over the speed limit is illegal, if you do it while overtaking I see on reason why you should get an exception.
And after all, it's a speed limit, not a speed average or speed minimum.
Issue in europe is that most roads isn't super wide. Only two-lane; at times only one.. So to overtake, you have to drive into the other lane that's driving against you... so that's when you are forced to speed up.... On highways, then yeah not a issue, but most roads isn't highways.
If you have to speed up significantly to over the speed limit then presumably the vehicle you are overtaking was already close to the limit so why do you need to overtake?
[NB Reformed speeder here - I used to speed a lot, but then got a ticket and decided to stick carefully to the limit at all times, which actually means less stress, less fuel used and I haven't noticed arriving places really any later. Have almost got in fights a couple of times though!]
It's perfectly possible to overtake on a one-lane road without breaking the speed limit, it's something that is expected of your during the driving test if you drive behind someone sufficiently slow.
Even if you go into the lane of the oncoming traffic, you are still not allowed to break the speed limit.
If you're not part of the police, firefighters or ambulance drivers, I do not believe there is a single valid reason to break the speed limit.
1. This is a speed warning, not a limiter, it will just tell you when you're speeding.
2. If you're following a slow driver. By definition they will be going below the speed limit. You yourself say people don't know how to handle a car at 80mph. Why then allow them to reach that speed to overtake?.
> If you're following a slow driver. By definition they will be going below the speed limit
That doesn't mean it's safe. I had the terror of joining the motorway behind a car doing 30mph last night. It kept that speed once we miraculously made it onto the lane. It was an absolute menace.
There is no standard minimum speed limit on motorways in the UK unless indicated by a blue circular sign, which can apply to any road. These are rare. Motorbikes under a certain power limit, disabled vehicles, bicycles and horses are also not allowed on motorways.
There is however the offence of unnecessary obstruction of traffic, which any bellend doing 30mph on a motorway might find it quite possible to be found guilty of.
I'm in the UK. It wasn't a comment on the limiter as such, rather pointing out to the above poster that going under the speed limit can be very dangerous too.
I had a similar experience two nights ago where the car in front of me just slowed down for no reason before joining. I was checking my shoulder and only realised when it was too late.
It was either rear end him or join. My front wheel came off the ground in my frantic attempt to gain the speed of the car just behind me. Fun times.
In Romania, lots of people floor the accelerator when overtaking, because most of our roads only have one lane and they tend to overtake even if there's not enough space to do it safely.
"most people do not know how to handle a car above 80mph"
It's 2019, most modern cars will do 80mph comfortably and safely, good breaks, good handling, modern electronic driver aids that are appearing and advancing, on a clear motorway 80mph is completely safe.
If driving a luxury saloon 100+mph can feel like you are doing 70mph, note i'm not saying 100mph is a responsible thing but it's completely legal on stretches of the German Autobahn where i was happily cruising along at 120-140mph on my motorcycle to have a Mercedes come up behind me with a little old woman peering over the steering wheel then flying by making me look slow.
Good. People have been driving too fast for too long. Too many people die in car crashes. Speed is often the factor that determines whether you (or the pedestrian they're hitting) lives or dies. Drivers have had plenty of time to moderate their own behaviour, but they haven't. If they can't behave, they should be forced to behave.
It will just alert the driver not actually limit. [1]
Many systems already exists like that. Even simple ones which you can set by hand to a specific speed and it will beep when you go over.
[1]
""The Commission wanted to make it compulsory that the car would automatically slow down to observe speed limits but we have secured a compromise where the system merely has to alert the driver that he or she is speeding," said Daniel Dalton, the Tory MEP for the West Midlands."
> The speed limiter device, called intelligent speed assistance, or ISA, uses GPS data and sign recognition cameras to detect speed limits where the car is travelling, and then will sound a warning and automatically slow down the vehicle if it is exceeding the limit.
My Volvo has sign recognition, and although it is quite good, it frequently gets it wrong. It will pick up signs on the back of lorries/buses, as well as signs for i.e. a neighborhood (5kmh) without subsequently picking up the fact that I have moved out of that area, and am now allowed 50kmh. If this erroneous behavior would translate to limited speed, I'd be extremely unhappy.
Recent BMWs (at least the last 5 years?) have a speed-limiter that will limit the car to a configurable speed, even mashing the pedal to the metal won't make it pass that limit. Very convenient for driving around speed cameras.
Yes, I recently replaced my car headunit with an android based systema and I now have Waze as my Sat Nav. It is configurable to notify you when you are speeding[1]. More amusingly it'll tell you how close you are to the average speed for a section of road covered by average speed cameras[2].
We have the parliamentary election coming up soon here in Finland, and the roadside is currently littered with ads that prominently feature candidates and their numbers, very cleanly printed and often on a nice solid colour background. There have been stories in the news that this has caused actual problems with the current speed limit detectors, especially when the numbers happen to be even tens.
So a warning-only approach definitely seems like the right way to go for now. Possibly with a manual option to either dismiss or accept the hard limit.
I can already see it happening. My car will randomly decide it is actually a truck and slow down to 80km/h on a highway with a 130km/h speed limit and then I get a fine in the mailbox.
A sensible stepping stone towards full autonomous driving in the few remaining years/decades that we are actually still allowed to risk each other's lives on the road by driving ourselves. Once this stuff gets good enough, I expect insurance and liability to make non automated driving increasingly more expensive and restricted.
Obviously this plan will have a few hurdles to take before it becomes law. Also, I expect e.g. the German car lobby to not like this at all as they do like their no limits stretches of autobahn here.
Right, so minor speeding is practically never a contributor in accidents. In accidents where speeding was the cause it's typically not minor, i.e. someone going 180km/h at 80km/h road.
I really like the current state of affairs here in Germany where speeding is a minor office until around >40km/h at which point you'd get a 1 month driving ban. This means that when the traffic conditions permit you can easily go that 10-20km/h faster and no harm done. (This applies to landstrasse)
Why not enforced collision detection? Presumably that will prevent more accidents than alerting for speed will.
Most manufacturers seem to have these systems already (even if they're reserved as optional extras / high end models) - and it seems crazy that this wouldn't be the first safety measure to apply.
Edit: Seems this story has been moderated: http://hnrankings.info/19498747/
@dang - any idea why? Seems a few stories about EU regs, but this is focusing on motoring.
It is surprising to me how many here are okay with nanny state policies like this, yet are up in arms any time government tries to do anything that limits our digital freedoms.
I know this doesn’t limit freedoms, per se, since it’s already illegal to speed. But I find something about it deeply troubling.
If we had a culture where killing people with your car, even accidentally, was viewed as similar to killing people with [other implement, gun, etc.] even accidentally, this wouldn't be necessary.
Imagine it - person wants to go bird hunting, and the local school is great hunting grounds. A kid gets killed by some stray buckshot, and they get a fine and increased insurance costs.
But we let people operate deadly devices right by streets (you know, the things made for walking until ~100 years ago), schools, parks, etc. and _even when their irresponsibility kills people_ the punishments are tiny. The only exception seems to be alcohol - but just being an idiot driver is fine.
I strongly dislike the privacy implications and nanny state here. But not as much as I dislike ~60,000 dead people a year. Besides, if you carry a phone (or licence place for that matter) you've sacrificed all your privacy anyway.
And really, it's more deaths than that, due to excess pollution (both air pollution and sound pollution).
There aren’t many ways that I can think of, aside from driving, that you can kill someone accidentally.
Accidentally shoot someone? That’s almost certainly negligence, not really an accident.
With cars, there are accidents. There’s also a whole lot of negligence. But because accidents do happen it’s difficult/impossible to prove negligence in most cases.
Bird hunting and alcohol examples don't work because they have that "recreational" aspect of the activity. That is killing innocent birds and using psychedelic substances on yourself.
Cars to me personally are more like a some strange kind of war: you're mildly forced to take that gun and go into a stressful environment every day.
> A kid gets killed by some stray buckshot, and they get a fine and increased insurance costs
Killing someone in a car accident where you're to blame will result in a suspended prison sentence at the very least. It's called vehicular manslaughter unless you were obeying the laws and what happened was not intentional or reasonably preventable. Like if someone falls out of a tree under your wheels. So the comparison doesn't stand.
This doesn't seem to be my experience in most of Europe. Actually in some countries the driver might even be held responsible for cases when someone jumps in traffic from between cars parked on the side of a road.
Edit, from the article:
> there is something undeniably screwy about a justice system that makes it de facto legal to kill people, even when it is clearly your fault, as long you’re driving a car and the victim is on a bike and you’re not obviously drunk and don’t flee the scene
If true it's actually shocking that any civilized country would have this system.
As an Australian, I can confirm this. It's not necessarily their fault, but cyclists are extremely irritating for drivers, and an outright danger in some cases. Due to our road designs being mostly car-centric and our laws, it is hard to share the road with them.
We are required to give 1 metre clearance when driving at < 60km/h, and 1.5m at 60km/h or over. If it is no other lane available and we cannot cross the dividing line due to oncoming traffic, we are forced to reduce our speed to that of the cyclist (which often means halving it or more) until we can overtake them safely.
The government is attempting to retrofit bike lanes, but this does not remove the requirement to give space, and the lanes are co-located with parking spaces, which forces cyclists to move back onto the roads. This also leads to a lot of mirrors being damaged, mostly accidental but some cyclists brag about damaging cars that regularly park in the same place and block bike lanes. This leads to a lot of resentment from car owners.
As an aside, cyclists are also allowed on our footpaths, and this has led to quite a lot of pedestrians being injured by cyclists colliding with them at speed.
I could go on about this at length, but the point is that there is a considerable amount of frustration, resentment, and anger towards cyclists.
One of the major bones of contention is the government refusing to require the registration of bicycles for road use (number plate) as it would discourage bicycle use, which would be at odds with the government promoting it for health benefits. But I know multiple people who've been injured or had there cars side-swiped by cyclists, and have no recourse due to being unable to identify them for a police report.
> If it is no other lane available and we cannot cross the dividing line due to oncoming traffic, we are forced to reduce our speed to that of the cyclist (which often means halving it or more) until we can overtake them safely.
In most situations where you're actually likely to be going the speed limit the cyclists normally have a shoulder to ride on anyway. Other times motorists are just irrationally impatient to get to the next red light.
> As an aside, cyclists are also allowed on our footpaths, and this has led to quite a lot of pedestrians being injured by cyclists colliding with them at speed.
In most of the country they aren't allowed on footpaths, only in Qld and maybe a couple of others. And how many is plenty? There was one pedestrian killed by a collision with a cyclist in 2006 but 230 killed a year by cars (http://www.executivestyle.com.au/when-cyclist-and-pedestrian...)
> The government is attempting to retrofit bike lanes, but this does not remove the requirement to give space, and the lanes are co-located with parking spaces, which forces cyclists to move back onto the roads.
Cyclists aren't exactly fans of this either, I'm still waiting for a council to get sued into oblivion for creating these death traps.
The problems with cycling is that the riders have both far more "flexibility" in what they can do and get away with, and that many have zero "legal" qualification to practice the activity. I say this as both a regular (daily) cyclist and driver, and I find the 2 points dangerous to myself in both these functions.
So the first point means many cyclists will just choose what kind of participant to traffic they are at each moment: they will behave like a car or pedestrian as they please, following car rules, pedestrian rules, or personal rules depending on which fits them best. And not having a driver's license to suspend means the rules are usually written on the spot. Traffic lights, stop signs, are just informative. So many cyclists insist that requiring them to wear a helmet is "victim blaming". [0] Not many would say the same about not wearing a seatbelt.
For the second point, the lack of any formal education equivalent to a driving school where you are told about the laws and best practices translates into people being blissfully unaware when endangering themselves and others. Most pedestrians and drivers will know the rules even if they don't follow them. They are taught in school and sometimes from a young age. Cyclists fall in the middle, neither this nor that.
The problem with helmet laws is that it then means if you kill a cyclist who's not wearing a helmet, people (even erroneously) apportion some blame to the cyclist.
After all, why don't drivers wear helmets? Head trauma kills plenty of people in car crashes.
Give it time, and eventually you start seeing people picked on while they're walking, too. Our minister for transport wants to make it illegal to walk at night without wearing a high vis vest.
Maybe instead of forcing everyone to dress like clowns, just don't hit people with your car. Also, note that the safest places in the world for cycling (Netherlands, Denmark) have very low helmet usage. They DO, however, have presumed liability laws, meaning that the operator of the more dangerous vehicle is presumed liable in a crash.
Having presumed liability laws sounds dreadful - you can really follow all the road rules and still be found guilty, because a "less dangerous" vehicle crosses your path and causes an accident?
Australian road rules are quite reasonable - all parties have a duty to try and avoid accidents, but for example if a bicycle exits a footpath onto a lane where you have an existing right of way and hit them, they would be at fault for failing to give way, and also because any action that causes a vehicle with right of way to change their behaviour can be considered dangerous driving
Presumed liability doesn't mean drivers are _always_ at fault, but it does mean that the person operating the more dangerous vehicle has a higher burden of proof.
If you operate a car on a city street where you _know_ there might be kids running in to the street, then _you_ are the one introducing an element of danger, not the kid. Similarly, if you drive by a child walking down the sidewalk (pavement, walkway, depending on where you are), you should slow down to aid in stopping on the off chance that child runs in to the street. Even if it's your right of way.
Similarly, a cyclist might hit a pothole and fall, etc. and the reality is that a slight scratch on your bumper will be death to them, so you have to be more careful.
100, 110ish years ago, streets were full of people walking, horses, etc. It would be ridiculous to say "well I had the right of way so I killed that street vendor in my way". But enough drivers killed enough people using the street and we decided to say it was the fault of the person using the street as people had for millenia.
That, of course, makes driving less convenient - but then, cars make walking and cycling massively inconvenient and we seem OK with that. Also, for situations where you need long, uninterrupted stretches of high speed motoring, limited access roads (aka motorways) exist, and there it's reasonable not to expect pedestrians, cyclists, jaunting cars, etc.
> the person operating the more dangerous vehicle has a higher burden of proof.
Which many times means you are basically guilty by design. Witnesses may be hard to come by and they are unreliable in all regards (memory, understanding of what happened, honesty), and unless the country accepts dash cam videos and you have one installed it means you're pretty much screwed as a driver.
> Also, note that the safest places in the world for cycling (Netherlands, Denmark) have very low helmet usage
They are are safest for cycling because the law went to such an extent to protect cyclists to the disadvantage of pedestrians and drivers. Most times there's basically 0 legal recourse when the cyclist is actually to blame. All the burden is put on the other traffic participants. As an eye witness (an victim) of multiple accidents involving cyclists and pedestrians I can tell you that many times the best you get after being hit by a bike that was doing something illegal is some swear words while they pedal away. I've been hit by a guy who was texting with both hands while riding his bike over a pedestrian crossing and he just pedaled away.
They have no incentive to behave better, the law is on their side and there are almost no repercussions (fines, suspended license, etc.). Even when the law has provisions for this the application will be extremely lenient. And if you live in a country where privacy laws prevent you from using any dash-cam recording in court you're royally screwed as a driver in almost every case. And pedestrians are royally screwed from all sides because they lose to both drivers and cyclists.
And why enforce different safety and education rules than for drivers? Why enforce a safety belt for people in a car but not a helmet for people on the bike? Even the lightest accident can turn into death if you're not wearing a helmet, even when nobody else is involved. If you don't care about your life how can you expect others to?
Negligent homicide is a thing in Germany and mostly used in street traffic. It is sent with up to 5 years. Two street racers have been sentenced with murder now, cause they have killed someone in a race.
(1) It's an unnecessary limitation on personal freedom.
(2) It's a burden to people with lung issues.
(2a) It introduces the possibility or infectious disease spread, because people share cars and are less likely to clean the breathaliser frequently enough to prevent bacterial buildup.
(3) These things are garbage and often don't work the first time, especially in the cold.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 170 ms ] threadI myself emigrated to Thailand and while Thailand isn’t perfect, for various reasons I feel more free here than in The Netherlands. Perhaps most of all since I pretty much can legally avoid paying much tax here and in my opinion taxes in The Netherlands are just too damn high.
For example, there was recently a statistic floated around that half the people in the UK had been in an accident. Assuming that all these accidents were one-on-one collisions (unlikely, people also "lose control" all by themselves), this suggests that at least 25% of drivers drive recklessly, as they have caused an accident at some point in the past. I do not understand how 25% are "pathological".
Add to this the number of people who also drive recklessly but for sheer luck have not caused an accident yet and those people who have caused accidents without involving other drivers and the above 25% go up even further.
So yes, I stand by my previous comment.
Gas emissions and loud noises are set to be gone pretty soon anyway.
Or are you just too self centered to see through your own narrow minded BS?
How dare they be so evil? Jeez.
Mandatory breathalyzer is much more stupid.
What about for convicted drunk drivers?
Would these measures be more acceptable for people who have already proven themselves untrustworthy?
You are unhappy with the new law. I'm asking if you would find a targeted law more reasonable.
The suspension as punishment, the breathalyser as prevention of future incidents.
Yes that doesn't address the 'depending on your license' angle. but I'm not sure that should be a valid defence anyway?
I don't think life-long sentences is OK for all but most severe crimes. And a single DUI, especially on lower end of punishable spectrum, is not such.
Similar things are used. For example, in the UK some insurance companies make an offer which depends on the driver installing a speed tracker and not violating the limit.
The argument "why hasn't it been done yet" is quite weak. It takes time for things to be put into law, and the relevance of this kind of intervention increases with the number of drivers on the road.
Whenever someone claims the law can't actually change people's behaviour for the better, I instantly think of the UK's plastic bag charge law in 2015, which quickly cut usage by 86%.
That's quite an interesting question, because it seems so common-sense.
I think I know why it's an awful idea, but I'm not sure. I could certainly imagine such a question being used in all kinds of places that I would find uncomfortable, especially with computers being integrated so much into our lives and watching everything we do and think.
Of course, everyone already carries a smart phone with GPS tracking, so you could argue this is no more dystopian than that.
Do you agree with speed limits?
The fact that people still have "accidents" and that these "accidents" are ruled "accidents" and not "willfully crashing their 2 tons of metal into something" suggests that people are not ready to take responsibility for their actions and that they cannot be trusted, even with the current speed limits already in place.
What is a problem is fixing this shit when it breaks. Which it will because it adds to the bottom line cost of the vehicle so will be done by the lowest bidder.
We have a new car which can read speed signs. In theory good idea. But tech isn't where it should be. For example when you drive on highway 100 km/h with 130 km/h speed limit and the car is warning you that you are speeding because it saw speed sign for 40 km/h on exit ramp it's a little worrying if car would actually obey speed limit. Breaking from 100 to 40 for no reason by car itself would not be good.
And there are also speed signs for only some vehicles which I don't think any car can read and for example Austrian signs (30 km/h limit and then subtext "valid only for side roads"). And another thing speed signs says limit is 50 km/h. It is valid up to next intersection. Intersection that invalidates speed limit is defined as intersection with more then 4 housing units. It's sometimes hard for human to know if intersection invalidates speed limit or not. How would a car know?
There's also the age-old method of looking at the speedometer: in a high-speed collision, the return spring tends to fail. Result is the needle gets stuck at the impact speed or close to it.
"It is true that cars built in Britain will have to carry these safety systems and standards if they are to be exported to the EU," Mr Dalton said. "But we have also secured improved rules"
Its almost like having a seat at the table, for your biggest export market is a good thing.
Plus you could replace Brit and Britain with EU (citizen) and it would still be as true.
It's about safety, and no street legal car should be driven above 140-160km/h (87-100mph) on the highway; most people do not know how to handle a car above 80mph. It's really dangerous for both that car as well everybody around. IF you drive on your own land, race track etc. then yeah, that's where it should be allowed.
Atleast in germany you may only overtake a driver if you can do so without going over the speed limit. I would assume that this is that case for most western countries too, driving over the speed limit is illegal, if you do it while overtaking I see on reason why you should get an exception.
And after all, it's a speed limit, not a speed average or speed minimum.
[NB Reformed speeder here - I used to speed a lot, but then got a ticket and decided to stick carefully to the limit at all times, which actually means less stress, less fuel used and I haven't noticed arriving places really any later. Have almost got in fights a couple of times though!]
Even if you go into the lane of the oncoming traffic, you are still not allowed to break the speed limit.
If you're not part of the police, firefighters or ambulance drivers, I do not believe there is a single valid reason to break the speed limit.
2. If you're following a slow driver. By definition they will be going below the speed limit. You yourself say people don't know how to handle a car at 80mph. Why then allow them to reach that speed to overtake?.
That doesn't mean it's safe. I had the terror of joining the motorway behind a car doing 30mph last night. It kept that speed once we miraculously made it onto the lane. It was an absolute menace.
There is however the offence of unnecessary obstruction of traffic, which any bellend doing 30mph on a motorway might find it quite possible to be found guilty of.
It was either rear end him or join. My front wheel came off the ground in my frantic attempt to gain the speed of the car just behind me. Fun times.
Maybe autonomous driving really is a good idea.
Precisely.
It's 2019, most modern cars will do 80mph comfortably and safely, good breaks, good handling, modern electronic driver aids that are appearing and advancing, on a clear motorway 80mph is completely safe.
If driving a luxury saloon 100+mph can feel like you are doing 70mph, note i'm not saying 100mph is a responsible thing but it's completely legal on stretches of the German Autobahn where i was happily cruising along at 120-140mph on my motorcycle to have a Mercedes come up behind me with a little old woman peering over the steering wheel then flying by making me look slow.
If the numbers are correct at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn the Autobahn has the least fatality rate on German roads.
- Speeding
- Driving under the influence of alcohol and other psychoactive substances
- Nonuse of motorcycle helmets, seat-belts, and child restraints
- Distracted driving
- Unsafe road infrastructure
- Unsafe vehicles
- Inadequate post-crash care
- Inadequate law enforcement of traffic laws
Many systems already exists like that. Even simple ones which you can set by hand to a specific speed and it will beep when you go over.
[1] ""The Commission wanted to make it compulsory that the car would automatically slow down to observe speed limits but we have secured a compromise where the system merely has to alert the driver that he or she is speeding," said Daniel Dalton, the Tory MEP for the West Midlands."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/27/all-new-uk-car...
[1] https://support.google.com/waze/answer/6386895?hl=en
[2] https://support.google.com/waze/answer/7052887?hl=en&ref_top...
So a warning-only approach definitely seems like the right way to go for now. Possibly with a manual option to either dismiss or accept the hard limit.
Obviously this plan will have a few hurdles to take before it becomes law. Also, I expect e.g. the German car lobby to not like this at all as they do like their no limits stretches of autobahn here.
So all new cars track you and can track others on the road as well?
Perhaps I am irrational nut but I always dislike state and technology taking away agency from me.
I really like the current state of affairs here in Germany where speeding is a minor office until around >40km/h at which point you'd get a 1 month driving ban. This means that when the traffic conditions permit you can easily go that 10-20km/h faster and no harm done. (This applies to landstrasse)
FYI here's a table describing the fines for speeding: https://www.bussgeldkatalog.org/german-driving-laws/
I bet in reality this is just about some instance wanting to have mandatory GPS tracking in the vehicles for their own malicious purposes.
Most manufacturers seem to have these systems already (even if they're reserved as optional extras / high end models) - and it seems crazy that this wouldn't be the first safety measure to apply.
Edit: Seems this story has been moderated: http://hnrankings.info/19498747/ @dang - any idea why? Seems a few stories about EU regs, but this is focusing on motoring.
I know this doesn’t limit freedoms, per se, since it’s already illegal to speed. But I find something about it deeply troubling.
Imagine it - person wants to go bird hunting, and the local school is great hunting grounds. A kid gets killed by some stray buckshot, and they get a fine and increased insurance costs.
But we let people operate deadly devices right by streets (you know, the things made for walking until ~100 years ago), schools, parks, etc. and _even when their irresponsibility kills people_ the punishments are tiny. The only exception seems to be alcohol - but just being an idiot driver is fine.
I strongly dislike the privacy implications and nanny state here. But not as much as I dislike ~60,000 dead people a year. Besides, if you carry a phone (or licence place for that matter) you've sacrificed all your privacy anyway.
And really, it's more deaths than that, due to excess pollution (both air pollution and sound pollution).
Accidentally shoot someone? That’s almost certainly negligence, not really an accident.
With cars, there are accidents. There’s also a whole lot of negligence. But because accidents do happen it’s difficult/impossible to prove negligence in most cases.
Cars to me personally are more like a some strange kind of war: you're mildly forced to take that gun and go into a stressful environment every day.
Killing someone in a car accident where you're to blame will result in a suspended prison sentence at the very least. It's called vehicular manslaughter unless you were obeying the laws and what happened was not intentional or reasonably preventable. Like if someone falls out of a tree under your wheels. So the comparison doesn't stand.
Edit, from the article:
> there is something undeniably screwy about a justice system that makes it de facto legal to kill people, even when it is clearly your fault, as long you’re driving a car and the victim is on a bike and you’re not obviously drunk and don’t flee the scene
If true it's actually shocking that any civilized country would have this system.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/science/2019/03/27/australi...
We are required to give 1 metre clearance when driving at < 60km/h, and 1.5m at 60km/h or over. If it is no other lane available and we cannot cross the dividing line due to oncoming traffic, we are forced to reduce our speed to that of the cyclist (which often means halving it or more) until we can overtake them safely.
The government is attempting to retrofit bike lanes, but this does not remove the requirement to give space, and the lanes are co-located with parking spaces, which forces cyclists to move back onto the roads. This also leads to a lot of mirrors being damaged, mostly accidental but some cyclists brag about damaging cars that regularly park in the same place and block bike lanes. This leads to a lot of resentment from car owners.
As an aside, cyclists are also allowed on our footpaths, and this has led to quite a lot of pedestrians being injured by cyclists colliding with them at speed.
I could go on about this at length, but the point is that there is a considerable amount of frustration, resentment, and anger towards cyclists.
One of the major bones of contention is the government refusing to require the registration of bicycles for road use (number plate) as it would discourage bicycle use, which would be at odds with the government promoting it for health benefits. But I know multiple people who've been injured or had there cars side-swiped by cyclists, and have no recourse due to being unable to identify them for a police report.
In most situations where you're actually likely to be going the speed limit the cyclists normally have a shoulder to ride on anyway. Other times motorists are just irrationally impatient to get to the next red light.
> As an aside, cyclists are also allowed on our footpaths, and this has led to quite a lot of pedestrians being injured by cyclists colliding with them at speed.
In most of the country they aren't allowed on footpaths, only in Qld and maybe a couple of others. And how many is plenty? There was one pedestrian killed by a collision with a cyclist in 2006 but 230 killed a year by cars (http://www.executivestyle.com.au/when-cyclist-and-pedestrian...)
> The government is attempting to retrofit bike lanes, but this does not remove the requirement to give space, and the lanes are co-located with parking spaces, which forces cyclists to move back onto the roads.
Cyclists aren't exactly fans of this either, I'm still waiting for a council to get sued into oblivion for creating these death traps.
Can you imagine doing that with a general traffic lane? "Oh here's your motorway btw there might be cars parked in it"
That's worse than no lane at all.
So the first point means many cyclists will just choose what kind of participant to traffic they are at each moment: they will behave like a car or pedestrian as they please, following car rules, pedestrian rules, or personal rules depending on which fits them best. And not having a driver's license to suspend means the rules are usually written on the spot. Traffic lights, stop signs, are just informative. So many cyclists insist that requiring them to wear a helmet is "victim blaming". [0] Not many would say the same about not wearing a seatbelt.
For the second point, the lack of any formal education equivalent to a driving school where you are told about the laws and best practices translates into people being blissfully unaware when endangering themselves and others. Most pedestrians and drivers will know the rules even if they don't follow them. They are taught in school and sometimes from a young age. Cyclists fall in the middle, neither this nor that.
[0] https://www.dw.com/en/german-bike-helmet-ads-labeled-stupid-...
After all, why don't drivers wear helmets? Head trauma kills plenty of people in car crashes.
Give it time, and eventually you start seeing people picked on while they're walking, too. Our minister for transport wants to make it illegal to walk at night without wearing a high vis vest.
https://www.kildarestreet.com/wrans/?id=2017-10-03a.1396&s=t...
Maybe instead of forcing everyone to dress like clowns, just don't hit people with your car. Also, note that the safest places in the world for cycling (Netherlands, Denmark) have very low helmet usage. They DO, however, have presumed liability laws, meaning that the operator of the more dangerous vehicle is presumed liable in a crash.
Australian road rules are quite reasonable - all parties have a duty to try and avoid accidents, but for example if a bicycle exits a footpath onto a lane where you have an existing right of way and hit them, they would be at fault for failing to give way, and also because any action that causes a vehicle with right of way to change their behaviour can be considered dangerous driving
If you operate a car on a city street where you _know_ there might be kids running in to the street, then _you_ are the one introducing an element of danger, not the kid. Similarly, if you drive by a child walking down the sidewalk (pavement, walkway, depending on where you are), you should slow down to aid in stopping on the off chance that child runs in to the street. Even if it's your right of way.
Similarly, a cyclist might hit a pothole and fall, etc. and the reality is that a slight scratch on your bumper will be death to them, so you have to be more careful.
100, 110ish years ago, streets were full of people walking, horses, etc. It would be ridiculous to say "well I had the right of way so I killed that street vendor in my way". But enough drivers killed enough people using the street and we decided to say it was the fault of the person using the street as people had for millenia.
That, of course, makes driving less convenient - but then, cars make walking and cycling massively inconvenient and we seem OK with that. Also, for situations where you need long, uninterrupted stretches of high speed motoring, limited access roads (aka motorways) exist, and there it's reasonable not to expect pedestrians, cyclists, jaunting cars, etc.
Which many times means you are basically guilty by design. Witnesses may be hard to come by and they are unreliable in all regards (memory, understanding of what happened, honesty), and unless the country accepts dash cam videos and you have one installed it means you're pretty much screwed as a driver.
They are are safest for cycling because the law went to such an extent to protect cyclists to the disadvantage of pedestrians and drivers. Most times there's basically 0 legal recourse when the cyclist is actually to blame. All the burden is put on the other traffic participants. As an eye witness (an victim) of multiple accidents involving cyclists and pedestrians I can tell you that many times the best you get after being hit by a bike that was doing something illegal is some swear words while they pedal away. I've been hit by a guy who was texting with both hands while riding his bike over a pedestrian crossing and he just pedaled away.
They have no incentive to behave better, the law is on their side and there are almost no repercussions (fines, suspended license, etc.). Even when the law has provisions for this the application will be extremely lenient. And if you live in a country where privacy laws prevent you from using any dash-cam recording in court you're royally screwed as a driver in almost every case. And pedestrians are royally screwed from all sides because they lose to both drivers and cyclists.
And why enforce different safety and education rules than for drivers? Why enforce a safety belt for people in a car but not a helmet for people on the bike? Even the lightest accident can turn into death if you're not wearing a helmet, even when nobody else is involved. If you don't care about your life how can you expect others to?
(1) It's an unnecessary limitation on personal freedom.
(2) It's a burden to people with lung issues.
(2a) It introduces the possibility or infectious disease spread, because people share cars and are less likely to clean the breathaliser frequently enough to prevent bacterial buildup.
(3) These things are garbage and often don't work the first time, especially in the cold.