It shouldn’t be approved at all.
this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2026
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Agreed. I think choosing this issue to hang on is silly, because there are so many better ones.
Occasionally going faster than the speed limit to fit the flow of traffic can be the safer choice. Ignoring child pedestrians and forgoing LIDAR are not. Making your handles aerodynamic at the cost of the easy use of the door in a car with a dead battery is not. Turning off self driving moments before a collision to avoid a ding on their record is not. I could go on…
Have you ever driven in Sweden? Going the speed limit is never unsafe there, as this entire argument rests on the majority of drivers being shitty assholes.
That’s objectively not true. You can end up in accidents easily if wildlife gets in the way, and that can happen in a split second.
We don’t just have other drivers to account for on the roads.
You misunderstood my comment.
The argument (mostly coming from US drivers) is that it's unsafe to go the speed limit, because everyone else goes faster than the limit and will then pass you dangerously.
So the safe thing to do would be to also go faster than the speed limit.
In Sweden, that's just not the case.
Ah, I understand. Thank you for the clarification.
That’s fair, I haven’t ever driven in Sweden, but I was thinking more in terms of all European countries because Sweden is making this case to the rest of Europe. I’ve driven in Germany for more than five years and it is the case here.
Germany is obviously a special case regarding the unlimited sections of the autobahn, but even on speed limited roads, there are sometimes large knots of traffic that travel faster than the limit over roads with one or two lanes. A driver encountering them would make conditions more dangerous if they followed the speed limit exactly instead of adjusting to traffic.
In Spain you often have 20km/h limits, which seemingly no one really cares about
In Italy the limits at highway constructions are a complete joke
Going that slow suddenly would actually produce dangerous situations - but mostly, because nobody gives a shit and just drives 110/130 in the 40-60km/h construction zones anyway
So, it's not just Germany at least, is what I want to say
I do drive in Germany a lot, and I stick to the speed limit out of principle.
(GPS speed, not what the speedometer shows)
It's a lot more relaxing not to worry about speed cameras at all.
And in my experience, it's not an issue at all. Certainly not less safe.
There are some assholes who will tailgate and pass dangerously, but they also do that when I'm going 10 over.
You are correct.
The entire argument feels like a "want a cigarette?" because if you're smoking yourself you won't be bothered by other people's second hand smoke... Drive the speed limit when there is one, it is the only reasonable thing to do. People annoyed by that have a problem, not you.
Damn, I wish it was like that here. We don’t have a lot of speed cameras locally, which probably contributes, but it’s almost like the actual speed limit is about 10 kph higher than it is, with how the other drivers treat you, even in the right lane.
If Germany doesn’t even have a uniform tailgating culture internally, I imagine it’s even more varied throughout the region. Another person mentioned people regularly going 70 kph over the speed limit in Italy, which is first of all, wild, but also means that someone going the speed limit out of principle in that situation could potentially contribute to an incredibly deadly accident.
It would still be the people going too fast who cause the accident, even if there's many of them.
I fucking hate this reversal of responsibility.
Also, Germany does have a universal tailgating culture, but it's limited to BMW drivers.
It would still be the people going too fast who cause the accident, even if there's many of them.
Yes, morally. Physically, they have to hit something for there to be an accident. If you’re not there, you can help prevent an accident. That doesn’t mean it’s your fault if you’re following the laws and that is a non-proximal cause of an accident, it just means that defensive driving best practices and the laws are in contradiction.
BMW drivers are the worst. Along with Audi and Mercedes drivers.
Thats part of why we have speed limits. Because it also accpunts for "safe stopping distance" because the people settings the limits know "a car going X speed can stop in Y distance which is likely enough for many factors, including wildlife.
Especially if its a robot car that, if it wasn't a shitty Tesla, and was using LIDAR style systems, would see that animal coming from a mile away and slow down if it anticipated an encroachment on the road.
Also because, its not driving drowzy, or distracted.
"Machine should break the law because other machines are breaking the law" is not a good argument. All new cars should come with speed limiters and every old car going past the speed limit should be turned into a cube at expense of the driver.
I agree, because isn't accountability a huge issue? I haven't read up on it but I feel it would be.
Unfortunately, politicians largely don't have accountability, either ...
I think anything related with Elon should be removed from eu. His cars, companies, x. If I’m to critique a politician, I’ll thrown in jail, this guy can show up on giant screens and be a fat racist orc without having and repercussions.
I really don’t want and of that disgusting musk rat in eu. Him and his buddy thiel are just diseases to humanity
There’s plenty of reasons to flat out ban anything related to Elon in Europe.
Why would it even have that feature.
The entire point of robot cars is to create safety by removing the chaotic lawlessness of humans.
At some point, if we reach 99% saturation of autodriving cars, we can revisit raising speed limits.
I mean it probably has that feature so the car is driveable and useful in that mode? If it always drove at the speed limit you'd be a huge traffic nuisance, at least in America -- maybe European speed limits are better set
Other people breaking the law is not your problem though. The speed limit is the max. Its not you or the car's job to "keep up."
maybe European speed limits are better set
I don't know what you mean by better. But here in Finland everybody always drives +10km/h over the limit, whatever the limit is. Because that's about the limit where you do not yet get fined.
To be honest I don't see the issue when we are staying within the scope of this news article. The news is about a speed offset setting that the driver can set beyond the speed limit. How is that worse than the right foot of the driver in a normal car that can reach speeds close to 200 km/h.
Intent.
While people drive faster all the time, there is no real option to prevent it that wouldn't be a big risk to everyone if it malfunctions (the automatic cruise control from VW for example breaks to 70 on some occasions because there was a construction site when they first catalogued the speed limits. Suddenly breaking without reason increases accident risk massively). That's why newer cars indicate that you are over the speed limit but allow you to override it.
Teslas feature on the other hand is designed from the beginning to break the law. There is no other use case for it.
Half the point of self driving is to make things safer by removing the human from the equation of driving.
That’s like asking if I invented cancer tomorrow, would you be cool with that?
I could see a legal-ish argument that Level 2 systems with a human accountable should do what the human instructs it to do, and that level 3+ systems with the machine and its creators accountable will strictly follow the law when it is able to.
But I could also see more practical safety arguments that when surrounded by traffic the autonomous vehicle should be able to at least match the speed of traffic in the slow lane, otherwise it creates a hazard. Then I'd look forward to the videos of people tricking the cat into driving 3x the speed limit through a school zone.