Speed Gripping

New York is implementing technology to prevent its car fleet from speeding:

Speed limit signs remind speeding cars to slow down; but speed limiter technology now being tested in New York City has been developed to disable a driver’s ability to accelerate.

Through its fleet program, New York City will be the first city in the United States to use speed limiter technology as a means to keep cars driving at and not beyond speed limits in its city-owned vehicles. Fleet program vehicles will notify drivers with an alarm that the car has reached the speed limit or cut off the accelerator.

Speaking to CNN, Deputy Mayor of New York City for Operations Meera Joshi called the accelerator cut-off “a dead pedal.” Drivers will still have the option to override the cut-off and manually speed up the vehicle for 15 seconds with the press of a button under the steering wheel to merge lanes or keep up with the flow of traffic.

Europe has been working on implementing something along these lines more universally:

Every new car sold in the European Union will soon include anti-speeding technology known as intelligent speed assistance, or ISA. The EU regulation (part of the broader General Vehicle Safety Regulation) goes into effect today, and states that all new models and types of cars introduced to the European market must include an ISA system. The policy doesn’t apply to any new cars that are in showrooms today — at least, not yet. By July 2024, every new car sold in the EU must have a built-in anti-speeding system.

The devil is in the details for something like this, though at baseline I prefer something like this to speed cameras. Speed cameras can do thinks like incentivize lower speed limits to raise revenue whereas this either encourages people not to do it or prevents them from doing so. Others, however, are a lot more skeptical:

CNN reporting on new tech that could limit speed in cars based on locally posted speed limits. There's a button to override for 15 seconds. F*CK NO. I do not want a car with this. I have avoided accidents several times before by steering/accelerating & don't want that hindered.

— Sarah Rumpf 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@rumpfshaker) October 10, 2022

What this has me thinking about is navigation apps and how crude their systems are for notifying speeders that they are speeding. While a lot of speeding are folks are impatient or scofflaws, a lot of is a matter of people going with the flow of traffic or at a speed that seems “natural” but is actually significantly in excess of the speed limit. Personally, the older I get the more I find this to be the case. I used to get tickets because I was in a hurry. Maybe I wanted to get there as fast as I could or maybe I simply thought the speed limit was set too low and I was trying to skirt the line but missed the markl. In my 40’s, it’s usually because I am going a speed that I consider prudent and when the cop lights come on I am actually surprised I am in violation of the law. I’m either going faster than I think, or the speed limit is lower than I think.

You might need something like a GPS acceleration lock for my younger self and people like him, but for a lot of speeders notification would go a long ways towards getting us to slow down. Since arriving where I live now, I have gotten four camera tickets and three of them have been in the same place. Moreover, it’s not even a place I frequent! My daughter has summer camp there for one or two weeks every summer, and I usually got nailed. This past year I knew I needed to be careful about my speed and I still got a ticket. I could make a case that the speed limit is too low given the surroundings and perhaps they could make a case that the nearby park justifies it, but if my car beeped me when I drove on it we could avoid the conversation entirely.

Since the last time I got a ticket, the app Waze has significantly improved and sure enough it has affected my speed management. In particular there is a bridge on the way to Lain’s school that I have apparently been speeding on pretty dramatically for a while now.

This isn’t a systems solution to people driving at unsafe speeds, but it’s some pretty low-hanging fruit that could help on the margins is unlikely to draw nearly the degree of resistance (Ms Rumpf has said she’s fine with it) as the GPS plan Europe is pursuing. Throw in enough speed cameras and people might start demanding it. I’m not sure this is really something that can or should. be legislated, but some strong communciation from the Department of Transportation could help make it something of the priority that it currently isn’t.

As far as what functionality I would like to see along these lines, I’d mostly like a degree of configurability that is mostly lacking. HereWeGo¹ lets you set two different alert thresholds depending on the speed limit (since most people generally want a bigger buffer for higher speed zone.

I brought this up with someone moderately activist on these issues and they were skeptical of how much impact it would have in some of the most dangerous scenarios for pedestrians and cyclists, in town. He argued that even if 80% of speeders are indeliberate, the 20% indeliberate speeders are more likely to be causing the actual traffic accidents. This makes some sense to be though I think there could be some value in slowing down the indeliberate speeders around that driver. Better app notifications could help, as could a GPS-style system that you could turn off for more than 15 seconds².

1. Unfortunately, I cannot endorse this app in general. It used to be quite good but its maps have fallen behind, its directions aren’t good, and it’s lost a lot of its functionality. There are free map apps that are bette if you want the offline map capability that was its primary selling point.
2. I am a bit concerned about this part, to be honest. Fifteen seconds is long enough for somebody to floor it trying to yellow-stripe pass someone but then being forced to slow down before they get back in correct lane. I would make it a minute at minimum