It took a bunch of old NIMBYs to have scooter companies install speed limits within certain locations. We have the technology to have cars automatically limit speeds to the maximum allowed on the given road. We choose not to. Instead people keep getting killed.
This is not pie in the sky science fiction to drool about. We could do it now. We could do it 5 years ago.
Huh? Are you actively advocating for everyone's car to send location data, and have the ability to be remotely controlled? Terrible idea. The difference between cars and scooters is that you buy a car that you OWN, and you rent a scooter for 10 minutes.
No, remote control is not required. It would probably be implemented as every car having machine vision to recognise road signs, or a built-in sat nav with the map data including speed limits. Both of which are already available on production cars - the new "feature" would be linking those to a speed limiter.
Of course, whether this would be popular with voters or car companies is another matter...
My 2018 Honda regularly detects the wrong speed limit (45 miles per hour limit, but it detects 70) and will fail to detect any speed limit. It also seems like it can't detect Florida's interstate speed limit signs at all, since they have both the maximum and minimum speed limit on the same sign.
This, on a software discussion board. So many horrible errors in such a small package! I sort of have ~3 different map+nav systems, and they won't even agree with each other what the situation is, never mind the Real World (tm). Speed limits specifically: they are in agreement about 80% of the time.
Machine vision, triple meh. Even with strictly standardized set of easily recognizable shapes, this is useful for post facto mapping ( https://blog.mapillary.com/tutorials/2017/08/21/mapping-traf... ), but nowhere near realtime without false negatives.
Machine vision is okay for ex post detection (e.g. https://blog.mapillary.com/tutorials/2017/08/21/mapping-traf... ), but realtime decision making? Nope. Never mind detecting people (RIP EH), even detecting a standardized set of basic shapes is harder in practice than in theory.
As for built in sat nav - I have three (3). Their notion of current max speed matches about 80% of the time...and that doesn't always match the actual max speed in meatspace.
State provided speed limits by city block can be stored in a chip the size of a lentil, and easily updated over the air. No need to broadcast anyone's location.
It's absolutely political. Automated traffic enforcement remains extremely unpopular among Americans, because there's still a cultural expectation that driving should be a relatively unrestricted activity. Until that perception changes, driving and alternate methods of transportation in America are just a form of prisoner's dilemma, where it always makes sense to choose a car.
Are you retrofitting tens of millions of existing vehicles on the road? Be realistic.
Nobody ever thinks these kinds of statements through. It's just, oh we'll sign the regulation, and poof, everything instantly falls in compliance. No. No, the world just does not work that way.
You're putting words in my mouth. We stopped selling lead gasoline. We mandated seat belts, anti-block breaks, airbags and more. Nobody asked to retrofit every car on the road, but that's not a valid excuse.
Well the question I have posted before is simple, with self driving cars who is at fault when they break the speed limit. I am pretty sure distracted driving accounts for far more accidents than speed alone does. Even taking people's licenses won't stop many from driving.
however - we could force the issue of speed limits within city spaces for cars that are newer, like you said we certainly have the tech and any car with traffic aware cruise control should be able to have a limit forced upon it within city limits
We also have the technology to capture your license plate as you zoom down the road. Do we want to have tickets just mailed out for violating the limit? Perhaps make it random which roads are enforced so to make it feel as if all are enforced?
as for scooters
scooters stand a good chance of being out right banned in many cities. right now Atlanta has a curfew hours on them and considering that four deaths this year occurred on them as well as over two hundred responded to calls for injury I would not be unhappy if they were.
How much does speeding increase accidents? Is it more than everything else we could do? Is there something else, cellphone banning, driver skill requirements that we would be much more effective we should be putting our effort into?
This is not pie in the sky science fiction to drool about. We could do it now. We could do it 5 years ago.