California governor vetoes bill requiring speeding alerts in new cars
SACRAMENTO, California — Governor Gavin Newsom on Saturday vetoed a bill that would require new cars to beep at drivers if they exceed the speed limit.
California would have been the first to mandate such systems for all new cars, trucks and buses sold in the state starting in 2030. The bill, aimed at reducing traffic fatalities, would have required vehicles to beep at drivers when they exceed the speed limit. at least 16 km/h.
The European Union is over similar legislation to encourage drivers to drive more slowly. California’s proposal would have provided exceptions for emergency vehicles, motorcycles and motorized scooters.
In explaining his veto, Newsom said federal law already dictates vehicle safety standards and adding California-specific requirements would create a patchwork of regulations.
National Highway Traffic Safety “is also actively evaluating intelligent speed assistance systems, and imposing state-level mandates risks disrupting these ongoing federal reviews,” the Democratic governor said.
Opponents, including auto companies and the state chamber of commerce, say such regulations should be decided by the federal government, which earlier this year imposed new requirements on automatic emergency braking reduce traffic fatalities. Republican lawmakers also said the proposal could make cars more expensive and distract drivers.
The legislation would likely have affected all new car sales in the U.S., as the California market is so large that automakers would likely make all their vehicles compliant.
California often throws that weight around to influence national and even international policy. The state has determined its own situation emission standards for cars decades of rules that more than a dozen other states have also adopted. And then California announced that this would eventually happen ban on the sale of new gas-powered carsmajor automakers soon followed with their own announcement to phase out fossil fuel vehicles.
Democratic Senator Scott Wiener, who sponsored the bill, called the veto a setback for street safety.
“California should have taken the lead in this crisis, as Wisconsin did when it passed the first seat belt mandate in 1961,” Wiener said in a statement. “Instead, this veto places Californians at a completely unnecessary risk of fatalities.”
The speed warning technology, known as intelligent speed assistance, uses GPS to compare a vehicle’s speed against a data set of posted limits. If the car is traveling at least 16 km/h faster, the system gives a single, short, visual and audio warning.
The proposal would have required the state to maintain a list of posted speed limits, and it is likely that it would not include local roads or recent changes to speed limits, which would lead to conflict.
The technology has been used in the US and Europe for years. It will start from July European Union will require all new cars to have the technology, although drivers can turn it off. At least 18 manufacturers, including Ford, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Nissan, have already offered some form of speed limiters on some models sold in America, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
The National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 10% of all car crashes reported to police in 2021 were related to speeding. This was especially a problem in California, where 35% of traffic fatalities were related to speeding — the second-highest rate in the country, according to a legislative analysis of the proposal.
Last year, the NTSB recommended that federal regulators require all new cars to do so warn drivers when they are speeding. Their recommendation came after a crash in January 2022when a man with a history of speeding ran a red light at more than 100 miles per hour and struck a minivan, killing himself and eight other people.