Darryl Anderson was drunk behind the wheel of his Audi SUV, had his accelerator pressed to the floor and was barreling toward a car ahead of him when he snapped a photo of his speedometer. The picture showed a car in the foreground, a collision warning light on his dashboard and a speed of 141 mph (227 kph).
An instant later, he slammed into the car in the photo. The driver, Shalorna Warner, was not seriously injured but her 8-month-old son and her sister were killed instantly, authorities said. Evidence showed Anderson never braked.
Anderson, 38, was sentenced Tuesday to 17 years in prison for the May 31 crash in northern England that killed little Zackary Blades and Karlene Warner. Anderson pleaded guilty last week in Durham Crown Court to two counts of causing death by dangerous driving.
Why can someone even drive a car that can go that fast on public streets? Countries should enforce speed limiters on vehicles brought into their country for roadway use. It may not prevent drunks from driving, but it could slow them down and prevent some deaths and injury. People don’t even need to be drunk for these speeds to be dangerous.
Because every time government tries to limit vehicles there is a very loud roar of whataboutism and mah freedom.
At a certain point we need to prioritize people’s safety over “vroom vroom”. 200+ km/h is nearly double highway speeds. Children dying from speeding crashes should be much more important than somebodys ego and desire to speed.
If children dying from mass shootings isn’t enough to move these obstructionist-types, then nothing is.
As a driving enthusiast even I agree with this.
However, people will just work around any limiters that get set like we already do.
Many cars and motorcycles already have speed limiters—often 130-150mph.
From this month it is already happening in Europe, with caveats.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/11/speed_limiters_arrive_for_all/
That’s not a limiter, just an alert that you’re going over the posted limit
I said, with caveats.
There are four options available to manufacturers according to the regulations. The first two, a cascaded acoustic or vibrating warning, don’t intervene, while the latter two, haptic feedback through the acceleration pedal and a speed limiter, will.
That implementation of a speed limiter is not a hard limit though.
How would these work exactly? Where I live max speed on freeways is 70mph and 25mph on residential streets. You can definitely still kill someone using a car limited to maximum legal speed.
He’s saying that if the car in the article was speed limited, it would’ve hit the back of that poor girl’s car and dented it, instead of ruining people’s entire lives
You can certainly kill someone going the maximum legal speed in a place where the speed limit is much lower. But the likelihood of injury and death still does increase with the increase in speed. So if, say, 5% of accidents involving someone going 70 are fatal, but 10% if the person is going 90 (these are made-up numbers), then if cars are not even able to go above 70, you end up saving lives.
I doubt there’s significant difference.
One of those speed limits is designed for a location where cars are unlikely to hit a human directly. Another location can have a child randomly run into the street. 70 and 170 are both death sentences.
Speed limiters in cars that don’t dynamically adjust to actual speed limits are useless and only exist to check the boxes for idiot voters disconnected from reality.
So how would a cop catch up to someone who bypass their limiter? Or respond to hostage situation in a timely manner? Or get to another unit who needs assistance?
I think it would just be better to fire cops who abuse their power.
So how would a cop catch up to someone who bypass their limiter?
A lot of (sensible) municipalities have banned high-speed chases by police since they’re so insanely risky to bystanders. Nothing wrong with cops not being able to speed dangerously, even if it means perps sometime escape (to be caught later anyway since their identities are usually known).
