I'm all for stronger enforcement of speed limits to save lives (e.g. ticket everyone over the speed limit with cameras automatically, no cops needed), but requiring shit to be installed into someone's car doesn't seem effective. They could just disconnect it.
This device doesn't make it easier to catch speeders, what it does is give a way for habitual speeders to stop speeding. The primary goal is no doubt that these people will simply stop breaking the law now that there's a device there helping them do that without the need for further law enforcement. To the extent that fails though, it's a measure which makes it reasonable to increase penalties and thus increase the level of deterrence.
Increasing penalties for speeding without this device has issues. It's basically impossible to prove that you intended to break the law, and that you didn't just misjudge your speed. Worse there's become a culture of mildly breaking the law, and it's even harder to prove you intentionally went beyond what's acceptable in that culture. There's a reasonable doubt that it was a honest mistake. This makes it politically, legally, and morally problematic to have significant penalties attached to speeding.
But if you're caught speeding because you disabled the device that a court ordered installed to prevent you from speeding, all worries about intent go out the window. It is, beyond a reasonable doubt, a deliberate violation of the law. Not the actions of a well intentioned person who was in a hurry and bad at judging their speed. This means that, relative to speeding, penalties can be significant increased resulting in better deterrence.
Specifically it looks like Virginia's new law makes it a "class 1 misdemeanor", which is the harshest class of misdemeanor in Virginia law, and the same as a DWI or simple assault. Sentencing maximums are a bit deceptive because they typically aren't what are assigned, but theoretically punishable by up to a year of confinement.
I'm not sure that intent should be at all relevant. If you're not capable of routinely keeping the vehicle within the speed limits, then perhaps you shouldn't be driving it?
If you're caught once, then a fine and a slap on the wrist should be enough to make you pay more attention. Twice - bigger fine & harder slap. If you're caught N times, then lose your license.
Something like "ignorance is not an excuse in the eyes of the law".
I don't understand the argument about "judging your speed". Isn't there a speedometer prominently displayed in every car in the USA as well? You don't have to "judge" anything, just read the number the speedometer shows - is it above or below the speed limit?
You can't keep a constant eye on both the road and the speedometer. Further, you might have missed the last speed limit change or remember it incorrectly. It's also possible for the speed sensor in your car to be faulty or out of calibration. This happens if you change the size of your wheels/tires significantly without reprogramming the ECU - and that setting isn't made available to the owner of the vehicle, at least not in most cars I'm aware of¹.
In fact, most cars lie to you about the speed - reporting a speed slightly faster than reality. It's a cover-your-ass measure for the car manufacturers because it's illegal to sell a car (in the US, at least) where the speedometer is inaccurate in the other direction, that is, reading slower than actual speed.
1. Some older vehicles, including pre-1996 GM trucks (and probably others from the same era) had the speedometer calibration controlled by a resistor array on a circuit board under the dash, those can be changed with a lot of effort and a soldering iron, or by swapping out the whole circuit board with a different one that matches your tire size + rear end gear ratio.
> In fact, most cars lie to you about the speed - reporting a speed slightly faster than reality. It's a cover-your-ass measure for the car manufacturers because it's illegal to sell a car (in the US, at least) where the speedometer is inaccurate in the other direction, that is, reading slower than actual speed.
Haven't seen that in a long time. Everything I've driven in recent years has a speedometer speed that matches roadside speed sign speed within 1 MPH.
If the law set the speed limit as the hard boundary, with hard punishments for driving at 70, everyone else would drive at 65, occasionally getting close to 68-69.
If the reasonable speed for a road is 70, the legal hard limit could be at 75 to be considerate of this effect. But make 75 the actual hard limit with $200 fines for hitting 75, $1000 fines for hitting 80, and jail time for hitting 85. Make it almost certain to be caught if you hit these hard limits.
I guarantee you fewer people would die on the roads if this is the way things worked.
The graph seems a bit too much. It says that GPS 110 means ~125 on the odo. Although from personal experience I'd say it's more around a delta of 5 at those speeds, and 3 for lower speeds.
Most modern cars phone home on lte/4g/5g. Police could auto-ticker speeders if they wanted to today. Probably don't want people to know how ubiquitous the tracking already is though.
I am not sure why you are being downvoted. The potential for abuse is clearly in place. It did not happen in our timeline yet, because it would likely cause an uproar, but to me writing was on the wall, when, way back when, Elon sent an update to a Tesla during a disaster to change a battery behavior.
As an Hardware designer I don't think that is the problem nowadays. Make it physically hard to remove and add a gps tracker to the unit and if it doesn't move for a few days, have them proove to you it wasn't tampered with. Then the only way to do it is to break the thing open and simulate trips that match yours all the time, which requires you to MITM the connection between the GPS and the microcontroller.
Aside from that cars phone bome anyways as ot is, so another way to crossreference data.
This can be as nontrivial as you want it. The problem is rather that a state shouldn't treat its citizens like that. That is probably why they start with repeat offenders.
You’re forgetting a step - which, being a hardware designer instead of a lawyer, is understandable.
The fourth amendment means that there should never be a situation where you are arbitrarily required to provide the government access to, or information about, the ways that you use or modify private property like a vehicle.
No I did not forget it, I was responding to an technical argument with an technical answer. And I am the type of person who wouldn't design such a system if you held a gun up to my head.
Of course there is a legal layer to this as well. But given how the US legal system treats other constitutional rights that ought to be valid for everybody on American soil at the moment, I thought I'd skip that for now, because apparently something being a constitutional right doesn't make it so.
We already require breathalyzer interlocks be installed for habitual DUI drivers in a majority of states. This is an extension of that same legal principle. Road access is a privilege (as evidenced by the requirement to have a driver’s license and vehicle tags).
