California Has A Plan To Prevent Speeding, & You’re Not Going To Like It

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Beginning January 1, 2030, all new cars and light trucks sold in California will have software installed that alerts drivers when they are speeding, which is defined as driving more than 10 miles per hour over the speed limit. The warnings could be a flashing light on the dashboard, an audible tone, or a device that pushes back on the accelerator pedal to slow drivers down. California state Senator Scott Wiener sponsored the new legislation which was signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom recently.

Wiener told the press this week, “We have this technology that we know causes people to slow down and we know saves lives, so let’s use it. There were people who said to me, if I want to risk getting a ticket, that’s my decision. I would respond and say it shouldn’t be your decision whether you put someone else’s life at risk.” Police patrols and ad campaigns to get people to change their habits have had only a limited impact on the number of road deaths in recent years. In 2023, speeding was a factor in 11,600 crash deaths, according to the latest federal data, a figure that has been largely unchanged for a decade, according to the Washington Post.

Road safety advocates say the new technology, along with similar systems that would block people from driving drunk and help them avoid risky lane changes, could prevent thousands of deaths annually. But for drivers accustomed to broad freedom to drive pretty much however they like, the technologies would represent a stark new reality — cars that say no. Road safety advocates backing the measure, many of whom have lost family members in crashes involving speeding drivers, say requiring the technology could save more families from the kind of suffering they have endured. “We know that speed kills over and over again,” said Joe Martinez, a Fresno activist whose son Paul was killed in 2013.

Speeding Technology Is Ridiculous

Opponents of the California bill cast the idea as more than faintly ridiculous. “We’re going to have a government approved mechanism on our cars to make sure that we don’t go any faster?” James Gallagher, the Republican leader of the California Assembly, said during the final floor debate. “That’s the definition of a nanny state.” A key question for regulators is whether the public will accept the systems, something researchers at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are still pondering. The federal agency includes the technology on a list of approaches that “work” to reduce risk, but declined to comment on the California bill. NHTSA said in a statement that it was starting research on the systems’ capabilities and acceptability to the public. A group representing the manufacturers of car modification products urged drivers to weigh in: “This intrusive legislation threatens your driving experience and personal freedom.”

Other lawmakers are pursuing the idea of systems to control speeding as a way to tackle the most dangerous drivers. This year, the D.C. Council adopted a bill to require people convicted of serious speeding offenses to have speed-limiting systems installed on their vehicles. Similar legislation has been introduced in the state of New York. The history of auto safety measures also shows why the issue could be politically treacherous. In the 1970s, NHTSA suffered a major setback when it required that cars not be able to move if all occupants were not wearing seat belts. The technology didn’t work well and the rule caused an uproar. In 1974, Congress stepped in to overturn it. “There’s that worry that if you go too far and you get pushed back it may take you a lot longer to make progress again,” said Jeffrey Michael, a former NHTSA official. “‘Be very careful’ was the lesson learned there.”

Researchers suggest the technology could be effective if widely deployed. A European rule requiring it on all new vehicles came into force in July, and regulators there predict it will cut traffic deaths by 20%. The rules will be phased in gradually, with automakers given options on how to comply. The rollout has been largely free of controversy. In 2021, Congress directed NHTSA to set rules requiring technology such as an alcohol breath sensor to stop people from driving drunk. NHTSA is in the early stages of that work. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a safety advocacy group, estimates the systems would eventually prevent almost 10,000 deaths a year.

Some lawmakers who backed the bill said they were frustrated by the slow pace of federal action. But the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an industry group, said it would be wrong for one state to require the technology while federal regulators are still weighing its potential benefits. It had urged Newsom to veto the bill. “We can’t have 50 states setting 50 competing sets of vehicle technology and safety rules,” the organization said in a statement.

Freedom Vs Public Safety

The problems of using technology to tackle speed and drunk driving pose almost opposite challenges, said Richard Blomberg, an engineer who has conducted research for NHTSA. The public sees drunk driving as broadly unacceptable, but designing a system to stop speeding will be tricky. Speed is easy to measure, yet drivers are likely to be more resistant to it being curbed, he said. Jeffery Michael said NHTSA can avoid the pitfalls of 50 years ago and that modern technology would be much more reliable. In his view, a handful of drivers incorrectly blocked from starting their cars would be worth the lives saved. “There’s always anxiety about introducing new technology in cars,” he said. “You have to look at the benefits and the costs.”

Behind the legalese and minor exemptions, which effectively won’t apply to many drivers, the provisions of the California legislation are clear, Autoblog says. Any vehicle sold from 2030 onwards that has a front-facing camera or GPS guidance system will be required to provide a warning whenever drivers exceed 10 miles over the speed limit. While nothing in the bill prevents more aggressive measures, such as the car automatically reducing speed once this overclocked limit is detected, or additional warnings related to speeds, it also makes it clear that this system must be able to be disengaged by the manufacturer or a “franchisee,” which likely means the drivers themselves.

Much like adjusting the rearview mirror and driver’s seat when getting into their cars, many drivers will probably elect to turn off the warnings about speeding, especially if they tend to speed as part of their normal driving style. Even if a driver doesn’t turn off this feature, the bill only calls for a one time warning, with audio and/or haptics. But the fact that it is not sustained will make this required minimum safety feature fairly easy to ignore or forget, even by well-meaning drivers with a bit of a lead foot.

While manufacturers are expressly permitted to go above and beyond these regulations, it’s likely they won’t unless drivers demand it. There may be some drivers who speed without realizing it infrequently enough to benefit from this system, but most will either disable the warnings or grow irritated by the constant reminders. One potential solution these hypothetical drivers might come to is that, since the warning only triggers when they first exceed 10 mph over the speed limit, why not simply keep driving over the limit once they cross that threshold? Japan has been using similar technology for years, with a chime that sounds continuously when the posted speed is exceeded. Japanese drivers with a sporting bent like to talk among themselves about “keeping it on the chime” for as long as possible. Instead of lowering the average speed of vehicles on the road in California, this new law may actually increase the average speed of vehicles on the road.

The Takeaway

With more than 40,000 highway deaths a year in the US, clearly something is way out of whack with how Americans drive. It is a valid question whether anyone has a social license to speed. What about the nervous parent rushing a sick child to the hospital? Or the sleepy traveler who gets up too late and is rushing to the airport? A more appropriate question is whether speeding should ever be tolerated on public roads. Most of us have witnessed the Porsche and the BMW driver racing each other on the highway, speeding down the breakdown lane at twice the speed of the the other cars, and weaving dangerously between lanes with millimeters to spare.

Speed has always been a core function of driving from the first auto races like the Mille Miglia in Italy. Automakers in Brescia wanted to prove the superiority of their cars and so hatched the idea of a 1000-mile road race through Italy. It became an international event until in 1957, a Ferrari blew a tire and plowed into a crowd of spectators, killing 9 people. Who among us hasn’t blasted a back road now and again, clipping apexes and pretending to be Mario Andretti? It is almost a part of the American psyche to speed. Remember the Cannonball Run and Smokey And The Bandit? NASCAR racing was born in part out of a desire to emulate the exploits of moonshiners who souped up their cars so they could outrun the local revenue agents.

Way back in the ’50s, Henry Ford complained loudly that safety doesn’t sell. The pushback against airbags and seatbelts led to legendary legislative battles. Helmet laws for motorcyclists were cast as intrusions on the right of bikers to become organ donors if they so chose. In some states, that battle came to the asinine result that drivers could ride without a helmet but passengers could not. In the land of the Marlboro Man, will nanny cars be welcome? Maybe. People are pretty much used to buckling their seatbelts today, but it has taken 30 years to get to that point. Drunk driving used to be tolerated because everyone did it, but attitudes about drinking and driving have changed considerably over the years. Today it is considered very uncool to be blasted out of one’s skull on booze while behind the wheel. Speeding could eventually become less cool as well.

The discussion comes down to personal freedom. The boundary between what society tolerates and what individuals want has always been in tension, moving first one way then the other over time. Will Americans accept cars that refuse to speed or nag them if they do? Probably not in 2024, but by 2030, who knows? 40 years ago, no one knew about cup holders. Today no one would buy a car without them. If this new technology is coming, it will take a while to go mainstream, but we will probably get there eventually. 40,000 deaths a year is just stupid. That fact alone militates strongly against taking a laissez faire attitude toward speeding.