A world where nobody drives over the speed limit

In spite of the rise of self driving cars, could you imagine a world where cars forced drivers to obey the speed limit and potentially other rules?

BMW’s new 4-series cars take an approach on reading speed limits differently than how many others and I expected them to. Instead of building some cloud based system, they’ve added two front cameras to actually read road speed signs! What’s interesting isn’t how cars figure out the speed limit, but what they have the potential to do with this additional context.

People don’t take speed limits, among many other laws, seriously.

“ … findings by researchers from Purdue University who surveyed 1,000 motorists about speed limits and driving habits … findings were consistent with other research that has shown two-thirds of all drivers regularly exceed posted speed limits, and roughly one-third report driving at least 10 m.p.h. faster than most other vehicles.

As far as I know, the 4-series cars currently just display the speed limit from the electronic dash. What if they went further and forced their cars to honor speed limits and perhaps other traffic laws. It certainly wouldn’t be very hard with the technology we have today.

An idea like the one presented above would be accused by society of being an attack on personal freedom and overly utilitarian. BMW, a company that builds cars exclusively for the driving experience, would especially not permit something like this.

However, the forced speed limit concept is just an intermediate step to self driving cars! Self driving cars will robotically follow all traffic laws, otherwise they would be far too dangerous and also blatantly illegal.

What intrigues me is the mostly positive public sentiment to self driving cars. People are cool with Teslas’ having complete control of the driving experience for the sake of ease and safety, but they likely would not drive a car which gives partial autonomy because they feel like their personal freedoms are being betrayed.

How come partial autonomy feels like a bigger treachery to freedom and free society than complete autonomy? I don’t quite know either but I definitely would not drive a car that forced me to drive under the limit but a self driving car sounds quite appealing.

Post what you think in the comments below.