New cars in California could alert drivers for breaking the speed limit

SACRAMENTO, California — California could eventually join the European Union in requiring all new cars to warn drivers when they are exceeding the speed limit, a proposal aimed at reducing traffic fatalities that would likely impact motorists across the country if it were to become law become.

The federal government sets vehicle safety standards across the country. That’s why most cars now beep at drivers if their seat belts are not fastened. A bill in the California Legislature — which received its first vote in the Senate on Tuesday — would go further by requiring all new cars sold in the state by 2032 to beep at drivers when they exceed the speed limit by at least exceeding 16 km/h. km/h).

“Research has shown that this has an impact on slowing people down, especially because some people don’t realize how fast their car is going,” said Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat and author of the bill. .

The bill narrowly passed on Tuesday, an indication of the difficult path it could take. Republican Sen. Brian Dahle said he voted against it in part because he said people sometimes need to drive faster than the speed limit in an emergency.

“It’s just a nanny state we’re causing here,” he said.

Although the goal is to reduce traffic fatalities, the legislation would likely affect all new car sales in the US. That’s because California’s auto market is so large that automakers would likely make all their vehicles compliant with state law.

California often throws its weight behind the scenes to influence national – and international – policy. California has set its own auto emissions standards for decades, rules that more than a dozen other states have also adopted. And when California announced it would eventually ban the sale of new gas-powered cars, major automakers quickly followed with their own announcement to phase out fossil fuel vehicles.

The technology, known as intelligent speed assistance, uses GPS technology to compare a vehicle’s speed against a data set of published speed limits. Once the car is traveling at least 10 mph (16 km/h) above the speed limit, the system “sends a short, one-time visual and audio signal to alert the driver.”

California would not be required to maintain a list of posted speed limits. That would be left to the manufacturers. It is likely that these maps do not include local roads or recent changes to speed limits, which would lead to conflict.

The bill states that if the system receives conflicting information about the speed limit, it must use the higher limit.

The technology is not new and has been used in Europe for years. From later this year, the European Union will require all new cars sold there to have the technology, although drivers can switch it off.

The National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 10% of all car crashes reported to police in 2021 were related to speeding – including an 8% increase in fatalities caused by 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 National Transportation Safety Board recommended that federal regulators require all new cars to warn drivers if they are speeding. Their recommendation came after an accident in January 2022, when a man with a history of speeding was driving more than 100 miles per hour when he ran a red light and struck a minivan, killing himself and eight other people.

The NTSB has no authority and can only make recommendations.