Originally Posted by Road Fan

I agree with your points, and pleasantly surprised by a good discussion of Adaptive Cruise Control (as some of my old employers called it) here on BF! Another diversity factor in the USA is that the US roads have a variety of vehicle ages and equipment. Even if NHTSA uses FMVSS to mandate centralized speed control AND has all the relevant location data, Americans have very durable cars which drive perfectly well even after 12 years on the road - same for the rest of the Americas and Europe. For a centralized speed control system, for example with more tech like centralized computing of required speed limits, broadcasting all that data to key points on the road network, and then broadcasting it to vehicles which are required to respond, the aliens have probably nearly landed. In English, I think the technical capability nearly exists and has been so for at least a decade. But until replacement of the automotive fleet can be directed and accelerated, only a small percentage of the automotive fleet will be able to comply.

So how much good can this possibly do? Can it even make any real improvement if the transition in the automotive fleet is not mandated and enforced?

Even if it is enforced, Americans will still be what we are. There will be many who will not accept it even if it is an enforced law.

My overall opinion about "Intelligent Speed Assistance" is that the social and societal problems are far bigger than the technological problems (the "alien technlogy").

We could ease into it by just increasing the capabilities of systems within cars on an incremental basis, allowing a slow enough transition to "track" the loss of capabiity in aging vehicles. But this is another rant topic altogether.

Originally Posted by Road Fan

For a centralized speed control system, for example with more tech like centralized computing of required speed limits, broadcasting all that data to key points on the road network, and then broadcasting it to vehicles which are required to respond, the aliens have probably nearly landed.

Originally Posted by Road Fan

until replacement of the automotive fleet can be directed and accelerated, only a small percentage of the automotive fleet will be able to comply.

So how much good can this possibly do? Can it even make any real improvement if the transition in the automotive fleet is not mandated and enforced?

We could ease into it by just increasing the capabilities of systems within cars on an incremental basis, allowing a slow enough transition to "track" the loss of capabiity in aging vehicles. But this is another rant topic altogether.

Originally Posted by RubeRad

CA (and other states sure to follow, and the UK) are mandating that after a certain date, no new cars can be sold with gas engines. Existing cars can still be bought and sold used. That will be the beginning of a slow transition. Same could be done for speed governing. After a certain date, no new car can be sold that doesn't support speed compliance.

In both cases, there will be a run on gas/"speedable" cars right before the deadline, and a shock to the new car market as some % of customers don't want the mandated cars

Originally Posted by PeteHski

I don’t think the system needs to be that complicated. Quality GPS speed mapping and real-time sign recognition are all that is needed, both of which are already in widespread use across Europe.
A modem car like my Tesla could easily and effectively be speed limited today by a simple OTA software update to prevent manual over-ride of the reported speed limit. This could be in the form of a hard or soft limit to provide some degree of flexibility.

Of course all this is very unlikely to happen any time soon for obvious political reasons and it is no solution for legacy cars which don’t have the onboard tech. But I think it is getting a little closer to reality on this side of the pond thanks to ever increasing speed enforcement measures ie smart speed cameras and relatively large penalties for excessive speeding. It’s enough to have calmed traffic speeds quite significantly compared to say 30 or 40 years ago (speaking for the UK at least)

Originally Posted by Alan K

What if the government mandates that no one can drive a car that is older than 15 years, just as recently done in the largest so-called democracy on the planet!

And all new cars can only be sold with all the necessary tracking and controlling alien technologies already built into them - problem solved.

Observation of the recent few years make me wonder about the motivations of our rule-makers; not everything is logical or in the interest of greater good of public.

Originally Posted by Road Fan

For both technologies (EV and speed-controlled) there will be a considerable transition time. My point was, is that acceptable?

Originally Posted by Road Fan

It's correct that the basic function can be provided with less "formal" adjacent systems, and the function is good when all the adjacent functions are on-target. But some governments, lead by EU, require strong attention to be paid to safety systems not functioning correctly due to faults in electronics. This certainly refers to electronic systems within the consumer vehicle, but adjacent systems not in the vehicle can be viewed as part of the system which my car depends on. While vehicle-only implementations can already be very complex, when an external system is used to add a higher quality (more reliable, more complete or more accurate) function such as dynamic map alterations, its aberrations could be counted as a cause of a failure of my car (for example) to provide road construction data when my car is autonomously driving close to a construction site. System of system failures and their effects on the population of vehicles are active research topics, with experimental platforms being built.

Your point, how much of this complexity is really needed, is one of the topics which are on the table. In the USA, NHTSA needs to know how much to regulate, and what really does not need more rules to be written. Same for Japan, China, South America, Canada, India and EU.

Originally Posted by Road Fan

I agree, safety, logic and reason are not always what we see coming from government. That's where I go for a bike ride.

What if they do? My expectation is that they won't, meaning that significantly safety benefits (lives saved, i.e. reduction of road injuries and fatalities) which some might expect will not be realized for a number of years, until attrition takes non-compliant cars off the road. This enhances the time until we see annual fatalities coming back down to less than 30k per year. Which way do we as a nation want to go.

Sorry to get political, but these big safety systems do have significant consequences. It's not just an engineering problem.

Originally Posted by PeteHski

Just to be clear I wasn’t referring to autonomous driving here. Only a simple dynamic max speed limiter based on posted limits. I already drive using this system (TACC) most of the time and it very rarely makes a mistake on the speed limit. I’ve driven through central London many times and it hasn’t missed a beat through countless changes in the speed limit. But when it does make the occasional mistake it soon recovers when it sees the next speed sign or reverts to GPS mapping. If the driver is still clearly responsible for keeping within the speed limit then there are no legal issues.

Originally Posted by RubeRad

There are programs where people can receive discounts on their car insurance if they permit a spyware device to wirelessly report on their driving behavior (and they have good driving behavior). That is a type of speed governance by financial incentive.

I would have signed up for that so the insurance companies could help me ensure my teenage boys don't drive like teenage boys, but my wife nixed it because privacy.

What if car owners were given a choice:

• Your car has a speed governor so it is technologically incapable of driving faster than (whatever it thinks) the speed limit is
• You have a monitor in your car, and whenever it thinks you are speeding, it sends GPS data to the government (you also get a copy). Cases over a certain threshold for mph over the limit will be human-reviewed and tickets issued.