Bloomberg – Inside California’s Coming Fight Over Vehicle Speed Limiters
State Senator Scott Wiener’s bill would require cars sold in the state to be equipped with devices that cap speeds, an approach that EU safety regulators have already adopted.
Full original article by David Zipper in Bloomberg
Editors note: a discussion between David Zipper and California State Senator Scott Wiener on new legislation to mandate speed regulators on new vehicles. Explains the details on why mandating this simple and already existing technology would greatly improve safety on our roads. Also covers rebuttals to common arguments used against making this safety improvement.
Excessive speed is a factor in over 12,000 annual deaths in the US, or roughly a third of all crash fatalities. Already a longstanding problem, speeding surged on emptier streets during the Covid-19 pandemic and has lingered in its wake. The traditional array of policy deterrents — police enforcement, PSA campaigns, and automatic speed cameras — seem unable to rein in the fastest drivers, who endanger themselves along with everyone else on the road.
On Jan. 24, California State Senator Scott Wiener introduced a bill outlining a different approach. If California Senate Bill 961 passes, the state would be the first in the US to require technology known as Intelligent Speed Assist, which uses GPS location data to adjust a vehicle’s top speed to reflect a roadway’s posted speed limit. Wiener’s bill mandates that speed limiters be installed on all new cars sold statewide by 2027, with the devices set to 10 miles per hour above the speed limit. (Drivers would be able to temporarily override the system, and emergency vehicles would be exempt.)
Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat well-known to housing advocates for drafting legislation aimed at reforming California’s zoning codes, has been at the center of hot-button debates over corporate carbon emissions, LGBTQ+ rights and drug legalization, making him a “regular target for scathing Fox News diatribes,” as the Los Angeles Times wrote last year. His latest bill seems likely to continue that streak: A story in The Federalist, an online conservative outlet, warns that “California is about to make us all drive so slowly we won’t want to drive at all.”
Speed limiting technology isn’t new — a century ago, local lawmakers tried and failed to make speed governors mandatory for automobiles in Cincinnati. But in an era of quicker vehicles and elevated pedestrian deaths, the idea has gained fresh traction. The European Union has already adopted an ISA mandate that comes into effect later this year. Congress and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have shown no sign of following suit, but if California’s bill succeeds, it will be a watershed moment for the nascent movement to leverage speed limiter technology to mitigate the US road safety crisis. And it’s a tool that states and cities might use even if the federal government does not.
