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.
post
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—Speed limits that can change and be out of date.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.
This is bad. Really really bad.
…GPS data that
couldwill be stored and extracted…
GPS data that
couldwill be sent in real time
FTFY!
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.
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.
I don't really care about the honking so much as I do the fact that this mandates that the car track its position.
“[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.
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.
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.
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?
Our GPS often shows the incorrect speed limit.
And map data for speed limits is outdated at best.
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.
Welcome to lemmy, where every proposal and chamber vote is now law.
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?
I think a lot of modern cars recognise the speed signs with cameras
A lot of rural roads are unmarked, and use the state law standard.
Someone driving at an unsafe speed? How about some distractions, that should work out great!
Beep beep!
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!
Beep beep!
It not the job of citizens to enforce the law but I guess cops are too busy murdering citizens.
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).
Haha this will make using car alerts completely meaningless
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.
How about tailgating?
Is this about speeding?
Or is this about getting every car to broadcast it's location data?
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.
Enshittification is hitting every part of society...
Mine does this, but it's a user configurable speed limit.
The light repeating ding of the AE86 after it screeches around every corner

this is hilarious, and i support this just for the absolute chaos it will create
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.
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.
Modern cars read the speed limit signs. Like my 2021 rav4 does it so it's not just the techy cars.
top 50 comments