I’m with the tweet. The gov’t already has a speed governor they can use to make you drive slower: proper road design. The common (but bad) practice for American traffic engineering is to make the _design speed_ of roads significantly above the posted speed limit. This induces people to drive faster than the speed limit because they feel comfortable doing so and driving is a largely subconscious activity.
I totally agree with deign as a tool for influencing behavior, I just don't think we're institutionally or financially capable of reconfiguring cities (American ones, anyway) in the ways we need to.
And whether or not this specific bill passes (or another in the future that does the same), we're still heading in the same direction. Self driving car service will aggressively scale over the next decade and they already these types of constraints built in.
> Policy like this would need time to have impact, though. It would take several years if not decades for existing vehicles without governors to age out of use.
A sizable impact could actually come quite quickly, since not all vehicles have to age out of use. At least in urban areas, a small but significant percentage of vehicles with governors could force all vehicles behind and around them to also travel at the speed limit.
Me too. The NYC pilot will provide an interesting data point. It's supposed to expand to around 7.5K vehicles in the next few years, and I'd bet those city vehicles account for an outsize proportion of vehicle miles driven within city limits.
Is that something you’re following closely? Are there specific types of vehicles they’re piloting with? (I have no idea what types of cars NYC has in its municipal fleet or why)
I believe the plan is to get federal funding to expand the pilot from 50 vehicles to 7.5K vehicles, and then eventually roll out to the vast majority of the fleet other than emergency vehicles.
I’m with the tweet. The gov’t already has a speed governor they can use to make you drive slower: proper road design. The common (but bad) practice for American traffic engineering is to make the _design speed_ of roads significantly above the posted speed limit. This induces people to drive faster than the speed limit because they feel comfortable doing so and driving is a largely subconscious activity.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/8/6/the-key-to-slowing-traffic-is-street-design-not-speed-limits
I totally agree with deign as a tool for influencing behavior, I just don't think we're institutionally or financially capable of reconfiguring cities (American ones, anyway) in the ways we need to.
And whether or not this specific bill passes (or another in the future that does the same), we're still heading in the same direction. Self driving car service will aggressively scale over the next decade and they already these types of constraints built in.
> Policy like this would need time to have impact, though. It would take several years if not decades for existing vehicles without governors to age out of use.
A sizable impact could actually come quite quickly, since not all vehicles have to age out of use. At least in urban areas, a small but significant percentage of vehicles with governors could force all vehicles behind and around them to also travel at the speed limit.
That’s a great point. I’m curious what level of saturation you’d need to see a difference.
Me too. The NYC pilot will provide an interesting data point. It's supposed to expand to around 7.5K vehicles in the next few years, and I'd bet those city vehicles account for an outsize proportion of vehicle miles driven within city limits.
Is that something you’re following closely? Are there specific types of vehicles they’re piloting with? (I have no idea what types of cars NYC has in its municipal fleet or why)
Their entire fleet is pretty huge, 30K vehicles ranging from administrative vehicles to specialized trucks: https://www.nyc.gov/site/dcas/agencies/fleet-services.page
I believe the plan is to get federal funding to expand the pilot from 50 vehicles to 7.5K vehicles, and then eventually roll out to the vast majority of the fleet other than emergency vehicles.