The light repeating ding of the AE86 after it screeches around every corner
I expect this law to be struck down for the same reason as the Japanese one. It’s annoying.
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.
Never change
I was picturing the same thing, but I imagined it was automated and I was dying laughing.
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)
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.
Modern cars read the speed limit signs. Like my 2021 rav4 does it so it’s not just the techy cars.
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.
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.
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.
Article says gps
Ah does it? I did skim the article but must have missed it.
You think they make cars without GPS now?
Is this about speeding?
Or is this about getting every car to broadcast it’s location data?
Good thought, but that’s happening anyway unfortunately
What will it use to determine where you are and what the speed limit is?
Google maps? Apple maps? Is there some government mapping service with speed limits that are updated based on construction?
Can I turn it off when it is constantly wrong on rural roads?
HONK
I drive a 2024 Kia Niro and it always knows what the speed limit is.
Sometimes however it will tell me that I’ve just entered a one way going the wrong way, and it’s always wrong when it says that.
I think a lot of modern cars recognise the speed signs with cameras
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.
A lot of rural roads are unmarked, and use the state law standard.
HONK HONK
Can I turn it off when it is constantly wrong on rural roads?
Oh you sweet summer child.
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.
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.
Hopefully this change will alleviate that problem.
Maybe in a decade when the majority of cars have them.
Nevermind the long stretches in Nevada where the slowest guy pulling a trailer is doing 95.
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.
Carpool minimum is 85 and everything else 80 minimum.
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.
I don’t really care about the honking so much as I do the fact that this mandates that the car track its position.
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.
There was a big flap about this regarding car insurance recently, but as pointed out by the EFF (How to Figure Out What Your Car Knows About You), industry folks have been looking at monetizing this data for a while for all sorts of purposes, including advertising, consumer data sales, and even behavior analysis to understand how to better force consumers to pay for vehicle-based subscriptions.
We own nothing, not even our privacy.
It already does,
Yes, but they weren’t legally required to do this prior to this point.
Wouldn’t that mean you would also have to pay someone to be tracked on a subscription based system?
“[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.
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?
hence the omission I suggested unreasonable. That database needs to be updatable by the end user, trivially. IMHO could/should be done ad-hoc by a hobbyist or as part of a standard oil change every ~6mo.
I can also see bad actors “updating” the database to 100mph everywhere. I’m sure write restrictions could be put in place, but allowing the public access to a system like this would make it ripe for abuse.
the database updates will be maintained and provided in an open, unencrypted format for free
the tracking data cannot be used for any other purpose
These are mutually exclusive. If the data is open, unencrypted and freely accessible, it will be used for other purposes, by anyone who wants to.
Also, tracking every vehicle location and storing that in a centralized database is a privacy nightmare, no matter how well it’s secured.
I think that they’re talking about two different things there in those two different sentences.
The first is the map updates, the second the log of position data on the car.
OSM doesn’t track you. The driving data could remain offline and the car can store the database locally to compare speed with what it should be at location x travelling direction y.
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 whole design philosophy of the car is fucked and we have designed for failure.
“Individual competence” leads to over a million annual road traffic fatalities globally. Every. Year.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s bad when people die on the road. I just don’t think the path to reducing those numbers is trying to make the cars foolproof. Cars are dangerous. Perhaps we should require regular skills testing for drivers to make sure they know what they’re doing. There are definitely people who have licenses who should not have those licenses.
Skills testing would be a better investment of our resources than adding more attention replacement systems to account for a steadily-stupefying population of drivers.
The problem is that in many places there are no alternatives to driving. Taking away licenses from “those who shouldn’t have licenses” restricts their access to regular life so massively that you don’t do it unless there’s no more room to doubt the decision. The question moves from “do you meet the maximum safety standards” to “do you meet the minimum safety standards”.
The solution is to either make driving foolproof or to provide viable alternatives to those unfit (or unwilling) to drive.
I agree. And the whole design philosophy of the car was fucked when manufacturers were allowed to build SUVs and oversized trucks that weigh 2+ tons and don’t require any additional certification or licensure.
The statistics around accidents with large vehicles like that are less about their operation and more that they exist at all. Accidents will always happen, certification or no. The issue is someone struck by one will be more likely to sustain heavier or critical injuries, and smaller cars offer less protection for their passengers when hit by heavier vehicles.
So rather than “you can use one of these completely unnecessary vehicles if you pass a test once”, they should just be outlawing them all together as basic consumer vehicles. If they aren’t being designed for specific utilities or business purposes, you can’t make them and sell them to just anyone.
Well we’ve been trying that for 100 years and it turns out it doesn’t work because people are easily distracted and are generally terrible at driving.
People don’t speed because they are distracted. People speed because they think they are better than average drivers; every damn one of them.
Polls show nearly everyone, speeding or not believes they are berger than average drivers.
Na, relying on individuals to be competent and not distracted is not the logical way to make the system safer. There’s a well established hierarchy of how to design safe systems, and relying on individual expertise is at the bottom right above asking pedestrians to wear helmets to cross the street. We need safer streets, fewer, smaller, slower cars that have automated braking features. We need enforcement of speeding and distracted driving. It’s fucking absurd how many drivers are on their phones. Making folks take a competency test does nothing for this (although I’m also for stricter licensing, but we also need alternatives to driving so people can live normal loves when we take their driving privileges away).
https://www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/Hierarchy_of_Controls_02.01.23_form_508_2.pdf
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.
Enshittification is hitting every part of society…
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.
Hang on to your old cars.
That’d be great if there actually were functional public transportation or any alternative transportation in most of California and 99.9999% of America.
It’s always time. The world saving policy makers treat poor person time as if it’s an infinite, free resource.
Public transportation turns a 10 minute trip into a 1 hour trip. Aside from that, no problem.
Bingo! Absolutely.
Once you add time to the equation everything falls apart.
I got so frustrated at my old blue collar job I gave it up earlier this year. City planners are dicking over drivers engineering intentional congestion as a means of traffic “calming.” I averaged 3 mph on a major road. I lost too much money between job sites.
One of my old customers called up and i got everything squared away anyways. According to Google maps, here is my trip I took today:
Notice it’s not possible to make a repair and hit a hardware store under 50 miles with public transport.
This is reality. Today. My day. And I get soooo much shit for pointing it out.
I have absolutely suspected that they’re trying to strong arm the car experience into sucking. They just don’t care what’s built on top of the things they’re knocking down.
Google maps won’t give you a route at all in public transit if you include multiple stops. I think generally, for public transit, you either have to use google maps to extensively look up and plan your own route, or you have to use a different app. There’s one just called “transit”, which I think people generally use, has good integration, and sometimes local agencies have their own app or will use a different one, there’s a handful of generalized ones.
But yeah, in any case. Probably, Google should be better about that.
The solution isn’t making driving easier, it’s making the alternatives superior. If public transportation is slower than driving, then that is a policy failure.
And in a world where there are viable alternatives to driving, people that do need to drive will get around faster, not slower.
The solution isn’t making driving harder; it’s making the alternatives superior
Isn’t this what you mean? Instead of using the stick, they should be using the carrot. Instead of making the current choice more painful, make the new choice more desirable. That way we can move forward into the future while actually increasing the amount of utility we get from our decisions.
You missed the blue collar part. I use a van full of tools for my previous employment. Tools that are not allowed on public transport.
I walk on a bus with chainsaws (I used 2 today) I’m going to have an interview with some cops.
Right, but ideally only people who genuinely need to use cars do so, which would include situations like yours. But not:
- Commutes to office jobs
- Errands that people could easily walk or cycle to if it was safe and convenient
- Visits to friends and family
- Groceries, restaurants, etc
- Traveling to most towns and cities
In that world, there would be a lot less traffic and you would get to your job a lot quicker. And the rest of us won’t be tethered to an expensive object that is only required because of bad government policy. But I get that during that transition there will be some teething pains, and sometimes governments will get it wrong, and it’s unfortunate that it has affected you. Ultimately though, it’s very much a necessary change.
Your career is a small price to pay for making someone else’s life easier.
You gotta remember those government decisions, that let you run your own tool-using business without permission from the car czar, are bad policy that’s ruining life for people tethered to their cars.
Don’t worry though: your car situation would be approved. It’s all the other people who’d be forced to take the bus. Not you, comrade.
Of course you’d be able to keep your career after our great change has happened. For now, remember that your career is a sacrifice … the birth pains of our brave new world of buses.
Thank you for your cooperation. As soon as the revolution is complete you may resume your work in complete freedom.
/s
There are functional public translation systems in most medium sized cities and larger. Its just that they suck absolute balls compared to the freedom of owning a car.
Nope. Realistically speaking, in more than half of the cities that have some form of public transportation in the U.S., the public transportation is so inadequate that it’s not an alternative.
At one point, a few years ago, to go from the northwest suburbs of minneapolis (maple grove/brooklyn park) to the north central suburbs of minneapolis (eden prairie/edina) by bus, on a weekday, it took 11 hours, a trip farther south into the city proper (spoke routes coming out from a central hub) and mutiple MILES of walking between stops. For a 20-ish mile trip.
This is FAR from uncommon for anywhere with a bus system if you get anywhere outside the absolute center of the infrastructure. The spoke methodology meant you could get from the suburbs (and farther) to downtown and back just fine, but as soon as the busses stopped running every ten to fifteen minutes, you were looking at hours of switching routes and waiting to get from anywhere not central to anywhere else not central.
That’s not an alternative to using a car, it’s a marginally available, occasionally usable, limited choice alternative to SOME walking, SOME of the time.
Until there are 24 hour, regularly and frequently scheduled public transportation options going everywhere there are roads to, public transportation cannot be a viable alternative to all car use.
I’d settle for it being a viable alternative to SOME car use, but much of the time, outside of a handful of MAJOR cities, it’s not.
…and I took the bus in Minneapolis for years, despite having a car and a license. It makes sense when you live and work downtown, but that’s about it.
The public transportation in most cities is only functional in the sense that the ignition works in the busses and they occasionally drive between a few points in a few areas.
Fuck that.
Yet another reason I don’t live in California.
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.
Bet it’s uploading your location too.
FUD. You’re literally just making ship up to be angry about.
For now we’re talking about something not yet implemented. We shall see.
There is no need for any information to be uploaded. You are getting angry at something you imagined.
Of course there is no need. Do you think there is also no desire, or that they will pass up the opportunity? You are naive or trolling. Bye.
I’m surprised California dealerships aren’t on top of this as a huge threat to their industry. Everyone will want to buy a car out of state.
Except they’d probably all just add the beep feature
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.
I blame the takeover kids
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 to their face. 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.
Nobody should ever buy new cars!
Wait a second….
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.
