In California, there is a plan to make it illegal for some new cars to go faster than ten mph over the speed limit. The bill says that starting with the 2027 model year, cars will have automatic speed limits. However, emergency vehicles will not have to follow these rules. The bill would let the driver briefly turn off the speed limiter. The speed limiter could also be turned off completely by the car manufacturer or, in some cases, the commissioner of the California Highway Patrol. Soon, you might not be able to drive a brand-new car faster than 80 mph in California. That’s because of a new bill introduced this week by state senator Scott Wiener. It would make it illegal for some new cars to go faster than 10 miles per hour. In California, the speed limit is 70 miles per hour, so going over 80 miles per hour would be against the law. Set a speed cap The bill SB 961 was introduced on Tuesday. It is one of several rules in California called SAFER California Streets, which stands for Speeding and Fatality Emergency Reduction on California Streets. Starting with the 2027 model year, all new cars and trucks made or sold in California must have speed controls installed. For these cars to work, they need an “intelligent speed limiter system” that automatically stops the driver from going over the speed limit. Emergency cars would not be safe with the speed limiter in place. It is also written in the bill that the driver can briefly turn off the passive device, but it needs to be clarified when this would be okay. In addition, the law says that automakers can get rid of all speed limits, but only for certain emergency cars. The head of the California Highway Patrol could also choose to turn off the speed cap. “I do not believe that it is in any way an overreach, and I do not believe that the majority of people would consider it to be an overreach; we have speed limits; I believe that the majority of people are in favor of speeding” limits because people know that speed kills,” Wiener said by ABC7 in California. The new law is meant to slow down California’s rising traffic death rate, which rose by 22% between 2019 and 2022, according to sources. A press release about SB-961 says that this is what the national transportation study organization TRIP said. A different study by U.C. Berkeley’s SafeTREC found that between 2017 and 2021, deaths caused by speeding rose by almost 24% across the country and by about 30% in California. California will be the first state in the US to require a speed-limiting device if the new law is passed. That makes me wonder which state(s) will follow.
