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Comment by matsemann | Hacker News Reader

One thing I'd like modern cars to implement, given that they're supposedly close to self-driving, is to cap your speed at some percentage above the speed limit.

There is no reason why a driver should be capable of driving the car 130 km/h in an 80 km/h zone.

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I've always wanted a slightly less draconian version of this- a speed limit setting that makes the throttle pedal harder to push down once you've hit the a given speed. Sort of like a natural cruise control. This would keep you from accidentally creeping up over the limit, which is certainly something that I do, but still allow you to go faster if you make the conscious choice.

Mercedes had a version of this called a "haptic pedal" in their previous gen C-Class PHEV. It would provide a small bump of resistance before you engaged the gas engine. It also would gently push back when it saw the car ahead was slowing down, to encourage efficient coasting. A quick search shows they spread it to a few other cars.

Both emergency situations exist & also cars aren't that infallible, so there would need to be a way to override such a system or disable it. Otherwise imagine the chaos of a track day or autocross when someone's car suddenly thinks they are on the road next to the track and slams on the brakes...

If you gathered up every single one of these edge cases and multiplied them by 10 you wouldn't get anywhere near the actually-existing, non-hypothetical, measurable problem of speeding.

So, sure, we should talk about edge cases and people who implement this technology should work on them, but even if they didn't, the tech would still be a good idea given fairly pedestrian calculations of the relevant tradeoffs.

And even if we accept your premise that the edge cases are a big deal, the solution presents itself quite readily: let there be an override with serious consequences for frivolously engaging it. Simple.

For every suggestion to curb the car problems of society, there will always be someone bringing up edge cases to defend status quo.

How many meters are done on a track each year, compared to public roads? I'd wager most people have never even set foot on a track. Cases like that should have absolutely no bearing on policy making.

And emergency is always used as am excuse as well to not limit car use or rebuild streets. If anything, getting rid of traffic means that it's now easier for them to get to where they are going. Same for disabled people. It's always people shouting "you can't ban cars here, think of the disabled", when the truth is that getting rid of most of the cars and building better infrastructure would make their day easier.

I think the issue of "always bringing up edge cases" is meant to illustrate that a LOT can go wrong with some of these hard and fast rules. It is why humans are simultaneously great and terrible at driving. One slightly bad driver can be accounted for by several slightly better drivers navigating around the bad one's behavior. This smooth "self-correction" on the roadway leads to lots of rule breaking but also probably saves a lot of time/lives by allowing individual humans to navigate a situation (especially since lots of people forget the exact rules of the road...ex. do you yield in a turning situation or not, what exceptions would you not yield?)

However, I really do like your last point, the easiest way to solve is just remove the cars from as much of the equation and introduce transit that follows rules (trains, busses -higher compliance with road rules perhaps) and let humans navigate the last meter themselves

> I think the issue of "always bringing up edge cases" is meant to illustrate that a LOT can go wrong with some of these hard and fast rules.

This makes more sense as an objection in a vacuum than it does in the reality where the alternative is that speeding is a big problem within cities. We don't have to solve every edge case. We just need the edge cases to be less of an issue than speeding already is. And that's a much easier bar.

Asking, "what if we do this?" is fine, but one should also always consider, "what if we don't?"

But that is the point... if we don't do something here, humans can continue to take their own actions to resolve the situation (speed up with traffic or move to the right or choose an alternate route). That level of flexibility allows for each person to make the choice they want and feel comfortable with (as opposed to the car making a decision for you)

Let's be clear here that "letting the car make the decision for you" in context means "you can't go as fast as you want in an urban area because the car will prevent it." As in, you can't drive many multiples of the speed limit in urbanized areas packed with buildings and pedestrians and other cars. The car should prevent that in practically all cases. The car does know that that's a good idea in practically every conceivable case. A human driver who thinks they should drive many multiples of the speed limit in an urban area is wrong.

It's so manifestly wrong that it shouldn't even be technically possible. There's no good reason to manufacture a car that responds so stupidly to such a dangerous and irresponsible input.

And when the day finally comes that the conditions are just right so that a driver dies attempting to flee an avalanche because this tech prevented them from escaping at speed, we will put a lone checkmark in the "lives lost to this technology" column that's adjacent to a "lives saved" file 10 miles long.

If I could be permitted just a little bit of levity: https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762?lang=en

> I think the issue of "always bringing up edge cases" is meant to illustrate that a LOT can go wrong with some of these hard and fast rules.

There's a story out there by Cory Doctorow about self driving cars. Car Wars - https://craphound.com/news/2016/11/23/car-wars-a-dystopian-s...

Its no longer accessible on the site... but you can find it on wayback. https://web.archive.org/web/20190225032830/https://this.deak... (though the formatting in the twitter feed like section is a bit weird)

The part that is most applicable to this begins at "But it was more complicated than just biased data".

More often is people trying to implement solutions without thinking the problem through to the end.

Like trying to ban the sale of combustion engines without having a robust charging infrastructure. Or making parking in a downtown area a nightmare without improving the public transit infrastructure.

Or in this case, trying to implement maximum speeds in cars when the technology (GPS? Accurate speed limit maps? Extra sensors on cars and roads?) isn't good enough or isn't there.

> How many meters are done on a track each year, compared to public roads? I'd wager most people have never even set foot on a track. Cases like that should have absolutely no bearing on policy making.

It absolutely should have a bearing as you are essentially arguing that those cases you should be illegal & banned. You can't ban something and then argue that "well, not many people were doing it anyway, so we can ignore it even though we're banning it."

Your policy impacts it, therefore your policy must account for it. Even if that account is to decide that the impact is justified, you are making significant changes to things outside of your stated & claimed goal.

> And emergency is always used as am excuse as well to not limit car use or rebuild streets.

I did no such thing?

All I said is there needs to be an 'off' switch, just like there is for traction control in the majority of vehicles today. The overwhelming majority of people leave it enabled (as that's the default), and the world is better. Rules don't need to be black & white to have broad societal improvements.

> It's always people shouting "you can't ban cars here, think of the disabled", when the truth is that getting rid of most of the cars and building better infrastructure would make their day easier.

Except you were arguing that cars should be banned for uses outside of being on the road as part of normal traffic. As in, your "rule" wasn't improving your hypothetical excuse situation here. It was instead making it the only legal usage of a vehicle, to compete with mass transit.

Good luck passing that law when we can't even gather political will to put in average speed cameras in most cities, which would also solve speeding without needing self driving.

British Columbia once had radar cameras on the highways. Instead of getting pulled over for speeding, you’d get a ticket in the mail. People hated it and consequently we elected a thoroughly corrupt government on the promise to rescind the practice.

But for a while there we all drove at around the same speed, within about 10% of the posted limit, and it was fucking glorious. It was so much less stressful: very little passing of one another, fewer idjits weaving in and out, left turns off the highway less of a guessing game, fewer accidents … it was just fantastic when most everyone did the same speed.

Of course now we’re worse off than ever, because without cameras the cops essentially gave up enforcing speed limits and now there’s an over 50% difference in speed between the slower and faster vehicles.

First I'd need to be convinced that speed is the problem. How about we work on road design before we starting trying to second guess drivers?

Even then I'd probably still vote against whichever politician decided it was a good idea.

Why? Is it some kind of human right to endanger others with reckless driving?

That's begging the question, how did you decide that 130 kph was reckless?

Tesla supports setting a speed over/under current area's speed limit (not sure if it's disabled in certain jurisdictions - worked for me both in California and Florida)

I believe there is a push in Europe to include this in cars based on computer vision. It was pitched as "not above speed limit". I would at least hope it is "not above speed limit for long" or have some form of slack.

So, you're entirely removing the option of "escape" from people caught in bad situations then. I'm not sure that's wise. Further, you'd have to ask, how hard would it be to disable that? Then, given that some users will have this disabled, how does that impact the roadway as a whole?

Tell me: how many "escapes" will this stop, compared to the amount of lifes it otherwise would save? Isn't the tradeoff worth it, you think..?

I believe that this is one of the worst ideas about modern cars I have ever heard.

It's almost equivalent to saying that we should replace all metal knives in kitchens with plastic knives. "There is no reason why a person should be able to use a metal knife to hurt someone else."

Some of the problems with your idea : 1) A lot of places don't have speed signs - then should we allow people to drive 130 in 80 zone? 2) Outdated / incorrect signs - not every place on the planet has properly maintained roads. 3) AI mistake - if an AI mistake leads a car to read 50 kmph as 30 kmph, what then? Should the driver suffer? 4) Emergencies - have you ever been in one? Imagine if your car led to someone's death because you didn't trust people with their own car 5) Empty roads - if you have an empty road in front of you, you can go 110-120 in 80 zone. This practice is followed at every single place on the planet. etc. etc.

You know the worst part about your idea? It's so insane that it actually will be implemented in the next 5-10 years. That's the part I hate the most. Bad ideas are not a problem, but actually implementing them is.

All it takes is 1 exec in Tesla who thinks like you or who has had a loved one die by overspeeding.

Any opposition to your idea can be crushed by saying "do you want people to die by overspeeding"?

We won't ban alcohol, but we want to ban overspeeding. The irony!

1) in my country the default is 80 km/h when no sign. Use that, then. Like seriously, do you think people today think "wow, no sign, I can drive 200"??

2) a sign isn't outdated, it's by definition the limit

3) so what? No one gets hurt by someone driving a bit slower for a short stretch.

4) if you care so much about emergencies, shouldn't you be for this policy? Tens of thousands die each year in traffic accidents, isn't that worth solving vs some obscure edge case that might perhaps sometime cost someone their life??

5) no, follow the speed limit. You're the kind of driver that makes this kind of law necessary. It doesn't matter that the road ahead is empty, if you misjudge the next turn and kill someone. What a crazy, selfish and entitled attitude you have.

> All it takes is 1 exec in Tesla who thinks like you or who has had a loved one die by overspeeding.

Your lack if empathy is astonishing. This happens all the time, and is why it should be implemented.

You can buy metal kitchen knives in most parts of the world but you may not be allowed to walk around town pointing them at people, and you may not be able to buy a claymore even if it is just for cutting cheese or opening letters. And speed limits can be >60mph even when 30-40 may be dangerous. So I don’t really understand what your analogy is, because in the real world there are reasonable restrictions on things, and where the proposed restriction still allows things that are unsafe.

You missed the point of my analogy. You CAN point your knife at anyone and even attack with it. You will be punished for it. That's the point.

The knife is not going to stop you from pointing it at someone. If we want car to force people to not overspeed, perhaps we should replace metal knives to plastic ones to prevent people attacking other people with it.

My entire point is that the responsibility to drive safely should be on the driver. The car should not force anything.

Also, you should read the rest of my answer to see why I think it's a really bad idea.

In 2020, the US had 1,700 deaths caused by knives and other cutting instruments[1] and 38,000 deaths from cars[2]. Cars clearly need more safety regulation than knives.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/195325/murder-victims-in...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-traffic-deaths-jump-105-...

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