There will always be contrived bogeyman edge cases to scare us from doing something.

The only question that matters is would it result in fewer road deaths? I bet the answer is yes.

In the US every single day 100 families are torn apart by a death on the road. I’m sure you don’t want it to be yours.

> The only question that matters is would it result in fewer road deaths?

Speed doesn’t kill, it’s the sudden stopping that does.

That’s a “think of the children” type of an argument. Remind me: how many people die because of guns every day in the US? On a serious note, how many of those road accidents are caused by exceeding the speed by less than 10%? You see, there is a difference between speeding and reckless driving.

Neither you nor me live in the US. They have other options to reduce those deaths. There’s no reason to drive a 4 ton EV truck made out of stainless steel doing 0 to 60 mph in 3 seconds.

I don’t care about this particular edge case. The idea of being remote controlled by buerocrats is appalling to me.

I live in Europe. Regulations here make Teslas slam on the brakes when the road is curved by more than x degrees, and break off a lane change apruptly if they take longer than x seconds. The intentions behind these rules written by some buerocrat in Brussels surely were as good as those behind the cookie banner.

I’m glad I still get to override those rules with my pedals and steering wheel.

Interval cameras (checking your speed over a length of road, using ANPR) are very effective at slowing traffic in the UK. Although you still get people in expensive cars driving 20mph faster than others; maybe undeterred by fines, or using false plates.

The system can tell you if there was a runaway truck (at your time and location), so an appeal should be easy for that uncommon situation.

I like that solution much better. I find that a driver should always be free to make a cost/benefit calculation. The ideal, in my view, would look something like this:

- Speed of every car on the road is recorded continuously.

- If you stay within the limit, you pay nothing. For each second that you are faster than the limit, you incur some financial penalty, where the amount is calculated based on both the speed difference and the purpose of the limit (pedestrian safety vs. noise pollution, for example). In extreme cases, you can lose your drivers license.

- Speed data is also made available to your insurance. So drivers know they won’t get away with somebody else paying for any damage they may cause.

As a driver, I very much prefer this not to exist. But I think it would be the right thing from a “veil of ignorance” perspective of justice.

That "should" is doing a lot of work, and it is not always easy to convince a bureaucratic system that it has made a mistake.