When I read the headline I briefly imagined a world where people who bought new cars were statutorily required to honk at other drivers for their driving.
I was SO torn on posting this to the Not The Onion community for that reason. I find the headline hilarious (as evidenced by me commenting "HONK" throughout this comment section)
What I’m reading is that every car will have to be equipped with functioning GPS that’s going to check against a database of speed limits.
—Speed limits that can change and be out of date.
—GPS data that could be stored and extracted from the dealership and sold or given to the government, insurance companies, and law enforcement.
—GPS data that could be sent in real time if the car has a cellular connection or hijacks the cellular connection in your phone when you connect it to the car.
I agree with your first point, but the latter two:
—GPS data that could be stored and extracted from the dealership and sold or given to the government, insurance companies, and law enforcement.
—GPS data that could be sent in real time if the car has a cellular connection or hijacks the cellular connection in your phone when you connect it to the car.
Why do you think this is more likely to happen with this new regulation, when most modern cars already have a functioning GPS module for navigation and cellular connection for software updates?
It's the standardizing that worries me. When it's required, people probably aren't going to be able to truly turn off their GPS (maybe this is already a thing, I don't know).
Edit: And when it's classified as a safety feature, it will [most likely] be illegal to disable, making car owners criminals if they refuse to be tracked.
To be clear, I do not think this is currently happening, but with an update to Android Auto or Apple Carplay, it could happen when you connect, say, your iphone to your car via usb, or possibility even bluetooth.
Tech companies are plowing forward with making your own devices work against you, so I consider it a very real possibility.
There are definitely areas of California where going less than 10 miles over the speed limit will put you well under the flow of traffic in every lane. If you're not going 80 on 80, you're gonna have a bad time.
Ford delivers fleet vehicles governed to 70Mph. Colorado’s interstate limit is 75 outside of cities … we have to reprogram every one we get so our drivers don’t cause accidents.
Plenty of spots on the 80 I cruise the speed limit in the 2nd slowest lane without any troubles. Just because a few people need to fly doesn't mean the rest of the world does.
“[an] integrated vehicle system that uses, at minimum, the GPS location of the vehicle compared with a database of posted speed limits, to determine the speed limit, and utilizes a brief, one-time visual and audio signal to alert the driver each time they exceed the speed limit by more than 10 miles per hour.”
Honestly the only part of this that is unreasonable is that it isn't immediately followed with "the database updates will be maintained and provided in an open, unencrypted format for free for the life of the vehicle, and the tracking data cannot be used for any other purpose". GPS is a one-way, triangulation-based signal. It doesn't inherently track or leak anything. I think we would be a lot safer if we all could agree what speed to go.
I think we would all be safer if we recognized individual competence and attention as the key ingredient in safety, and stopped trying to replace human attention with an ever-expanding set of sensors and woefully inadequate algorithms for determining whether the driver is being safe.
Like, if they have to model the driver as someone who’s not paying attention, then the whole design philosophy of the car is fucked, and we’re designing for failure.
The GPS isn't the issue, the speed limit database is. How does the car know what the limit is, and how does that database get updated when limits are changed or new roads are built? What is the mandate on the updating of that database?
GPS itself doesn't transfer data about the location to the outside world, but it means that the car has to constantly determine its location, and that this is now a legal mandate.
It already does, and auto manufacturers already share or sell this data.
Heck, because there’s a massive loophole in consumer privacy around the government buying data, any government agency can just go directly to a vehicle manufacturer and ask to buy the data.
Headline is misleading. This only passed the state Senate. It has not passed the state assembly yet. It also would need to be signed by the governor if it does pass in the assembly.
If you're staying within city limits; the only speed signs you'd see much of the time are in parking lots/private property, explicitly slower than the public roadway speeds.
Car, I'm on the highway! I know GPS drifted a bit, but I'm not on the residential road next to the highway that has a 25 mph speed limit, I'm on the highway with a speed minimum of 45 mph!
Mostly just freeways. I don't think it's heavily enforced. The idea is that cars traveling at drastically different speeds on the same road are more likely to cause an accident. It's best to drive "the speed of traffic" because that's what is predictable. Roads should be designed in such a way to make the target speed limit the fastest speed at which most people feel comfortable anyways, rather than just obeying a sign. So a 20mph road should be skinny and not straight. A 70mph highway should be wide and straight. Back to the point, though, in a traffic jam, all the cars are slow and therefore the speed differential is small already and therefore no reason to ticket anyone.
Wrong type of beeping, though I mistook it for that too. They mean an alert similar to the seat belt or door audible alerts. People who have some sort of device from their insurance ro monitor their driving get some types of beeps like this already (stuff like decelerating to hard).
My car beeps at me if j go the wrong way down a 1 way street. Of course it hasn't updated the maps of the area where i live in at least 10 years so it just beeps constantly.
Are you serious?! I would set it on fire and launch it at the manufacturer’s headquarters, then plead “temporary insanity by incessant beeping” to the court.
Its not just that, it's measuring their speed and distance and if they cut in and start braking it can send the lorry into an auto hard breaking moment where the hazards come on. Give lorries space.
The car has to track your location and regularly download the local speed limits so it knows when you are speeding? Bet it's uploading your location too. This is way invasive and not just annoying.
That's sort of the point. Make driving a shitter experience to promote public transport or just stay off the roads all together. You'll enjoy what's socially popular or your independence will cost a premium.
We already prohibit collecting data on road enshittification so it can never be bad.
That'd be great if there actually were functional public transportation or any alternative transportation in most of California and 99.9999% of America.
I live in Washington State and this morning as most mornings I drive near a school so there's always some asshole cop looking for ticket opportunities. Always 1 or 2 cars behind. Maybe just because my car is a shade of red or something.
California is a massive market and has huge impacts on car manufacturing across the US. Put it simply, if a car can’t pass inspection in CA then it is almost not worth selling it. A car bought in Pennsylvania will have additional parts and components to pass CA smog standards. Not only would it hurt their brand loyalty to have a car incapable of being sold in CA, but it may simply be cheaper and simpler to build the capacity in for all cars instead of having two slightly different trims.
So this turns every car on the road into a speed sensor yes? And then the cops use that aggregate data to feed cops info to inform speed traps and collect ticket quotas
Literally impossible unless the cars have some kind of tracking software to monitor location.
and you know if its doing that, its not doing it without leaking your data to law enforcement and advertisers.
So, yeah, no thanks. Train cops to do their actual, legitimate jobs instead of letting them waste their time with actual fucking inhuman torture, and the issue would also be solved. and in the right way, instead of the invasive privacy destroying way.
I love that you got downvoted even though you’re correct.
My Mazda uses GPS and the camera also reads road signs to display the speed limit on our HUD and instrument panel. The speedometer shows the limit as well and if you go over it shows a red line (which is useful honestly). Doesn’t beep thank god, I’d burn it.
It's quite unreliable though. Ours works probably ~90-95% of the time. The other 5-10% it missed the sign or reads the sign on a neighbouring road. That doesn't sound too bad, but if it's going to beep at you (for a mistake it made itself nonetheless) it would quickly get really annoying.
Maybe it uses the road signs? I think most modern cars already read the road signs and display the limit on the dash.
Only issue with this system, at least from my car is that it can sometimes get it wrong, so it would be super annoying if the car beeped when I was doing more than 10mph that what it thinks the limit is.
I literally am laughing out loud picturing one car going over the speed limit and all the other cars within a 100 foot radius being forced to honk in response. That’s literally what the headline makes it sound like
Why would you spend such a large amount of money for a new car? I don’t get it. If you are middle class it is like 50% or more of a whole year of income. If you are wealthy it’s still stupid to waste so much money on a thing that generally will depreciate in value. I don’t understand why so many of my co workers keep buying cars so they can go to work and buy more cars.
I share your frustration. Cars are dumb. New cars are shit and dumb. It's also super bad for the environment - the manufacturing is a huge part of the total carbon emission of a car.
Seems pretty clear to me that it's a status thing - you're displaying your access to resources by showing that you can waste them. That's why I think it's legitimately useful to insult people's new or expensive cars. Deny them the social reward they seek and it puts pressure to find a new status token. Maybe instead they can waste money on carbon fibre bikes or the latest overpriced micro-transportation.
Not trying to say we should never buy new cars, but I do have a feeling making tens of millions of new cars has a worse environmental impact than driving and repairing and old car,
But I do see in places like big cities how smog can become an issue…. But we are ignoring the whole mountaintops and other environmental impacts from making the new metal and batteries in my opinion…
We only leased a new car because it was literally cheaper to lease than to buy used last fall. The market was absolutely upside down. Plan on buying it at the end of the 33 mo lease.
In the states I can see how having a car is a practical necessity, I just don’t have faith that buying new cars is the environmental answer we are told it is by car manufacturers
So glad i don't live in California. Peddle to.the metal for me all the way. You apes in California just have some fun on the 5 and the 10 driving slowly anyway.
Yep. Bombing down the PCH sure ruins my nights. The canyons suuuure aren’t fun to blow through either. I’d much rather live somewhere ugly and flat with no culture
Someone speeding like crazy, you honk at them, they turn around, stalk you until you stop and they smash your windows.
It's called road rage.
DON'T honk at speeders. People are psycho.