Originally Posted by Leisesturm

I must admit I got impatient towards the end of new posts and started skimming, but I'm hanged if I saw the post that acknowledged that speed on its own is rarely what is deadly. Also, the unrestrained virtue signalling in the completely groupthinked opinion that forcing all motor vehicles (and e-bikes) to obey speed limits would bring about utopia. Wrong. A car going six miles per hour can kill you. For every accident that took place because some idiot was speeding, several happened where the driver was well below the speed limit, but was careless. Made some kind of blunder behind the wheel and someone(s) died as a result.

When I moved to the West Coast from NYC I rented a 16' moving truck from Penske. I hadn't driven in five years. With scant instruction I was given the keys to 15,000lbs of GVWR and encouraged to take it anywhere I wanted for the next 9 days! The one restriction: the vehicle was speed limited to 75mph. I don't know how they managed it, but no matter what amount of gas pedal, downslope, or following wind, that truck did not ever exceed 75mph. Nor did it need to. 75mph is damn fast for something that big, and there was NOTHING stopping me from doing 75mph down a 15mph (marked) residential street!! Long before the means to actively control vehicle speeds and link them to posted maximums for various kinds of roads, our cars will be fully automatous and will do it for themselves. That is a better way of doing it, because the self-driving car will not just obey the speed limit, which is an absurdly low bar for excellence. The self driving car will have no negative emotions clouding it's judgement if forced to stop due to another operator or pedestrians stupidity or poor judgement. This is something distracted or impaired drivers don't always do.

Of course, there have been and will be AV failures, and these are overhyped by those with a vested interest in the status quo. The worst AV, however, is not worse than the worst human driver. What happens when they get good? Do you think any insurance company is going to let a human get near their insured ever again? This 'intelligent speed assistance' is just a place holder until human driver obsolescence. It's got no real teeth, and that's ok, I suppose.