So, California just killed a bill that would have required speed limit warnings on all new cars. While some enthusiasts are taking it as a win, the veto really happened because Governor Newsom thinks it might muddy the waters if California has its own regulations. Oh, the irony!
Personally, the only thing that concerns me about speed limit warnings is the fact that some of the cars with speed limit sign readers just sort of suck at their job. During the summer, I had a Ford F-250 press loaner and there were several times when the truck displayed the wrong speed. I’m with Stef Schrader here:
I mean, gosh, just take it from anyone who’s driven a car that puts the speed limit on the dash: sometimes they get it WILDLY wrong. Like, 30 on a big road, 50 on a neighborhood cow path kind of wrong.
Ford was considering a feature where fleet managers would be notified when the driver of a fleet Super Duty exceeded the speed limit, but how can you trust it when the truck can’t even figure out the speed limit correctly?
This morning, Matt wrote about how European automakers are having a darned hard time selling cars because nobody wants them. EmotionalSupportBMW gives a good explanation as to what could be happening:
This really wasn’t touched on in the article. But, the European home market has trended towards a situation that’s growingly not ideal if you happen to be in the business of selling expensive automobiles such as; anything with a star, roundel or four rings on the front. Namely, your home market is increasingly living in a more dense urban spaces, where do to investment in things like public transport, and multi-modal transportation. Your core audience either does not want your flagship, or is going car free. From Millennial and on-down, people and specifically wealthy young people are moving to denser and denser areas. Suburban and rural Europe, is dying. You have estimates of upwards of 80% urban population by 2050. This was the six-foot hoop market for the German lux-brands. MBZ may not be able to move an S-Class outside Shanghai, but Hans the investment banker living 32 kms outside of Frankfort was always there to trade his old one in for a new one. Now, Hans is riding his 12k euro e-cargo bike 2 km home to his loft, and stopping at Aldi every other day. Just for example, take a look at the show Industry. One character is shown owning a car. So, with that, Stellantis, because they seem like the only one that gets 1990’s Europe no long exist. And decreasing size is likely your best path to forward on home court.
Jason wrote a piece about how flooded EVs can sometimes go up in flames. It’s less than ideal, but AlterId has a real nightmare situation:
…if you see a Bolt or a Tesla or a Ioniq 6 or F-150 Lightning submerged nearby, maybe wade in the other direction.
BUT WHAT IF THE OTHER DIRECTION IS TOWARD A SHARK!!!!!
Don’t worry, I got you covered: Lure the shark into the submerged Bolt, enjoy tasty fried shark later.
Speaking about flooding, I feel we should end on a serious note. If you haven’t been paying attention to what’s been going on down south, you really need to. Entire towns hundreds of miles away from coasts have been entirely wiped from the face of the Earth in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
There are people who haven’t had electricity, a cellular signal, or an escape path since the storm hit. To them, they might as well be on another planet. When the storm hit, I saw notifications from the state of North Carolina to consider all roads in the western portion of the state to be closed.
I have a feeling the nation will be hurting from Helene for years to come. If you wish to donate, the New York Times has an excellent list of ways you can help. Stay safe, everyone.
Top graphic base image: Ford
> the six-foot hoop market
What does that mean
I believe it’s a reference to basketball. The hoop is barely bigger than the ball, which makes it tough to make a basket. If that ball is being shot into a 6 foot hoop, you’re bound to not miss.
I see, thanks!
My Hyundai does a pretty good job reading speed limits and on the heads up display it makes the speed limit red if you are speeding. Google maps on the other hand is terrible and telling you what the speed limit is.
My Mazda’s do a fairly good job as does Apple with their CarPlay. Also does the red line on the speedo
These speed gadgets are like self serve checkout lines. Sometimes it just nicer/easier to have a human help you. Like, say a friendly officer stop to tell you that you are going to fast. /s
Since cars are so smart now, let’s see them identify a driver holding a phone, and then ram a red hot poker up their butt. That’ll learn um.
I’ll preface this by pointing out I’m all the way over in the UK so my geographic knowledge of the USA is patchy at best.
I recall that Torch is in… one of the Carolinas?
I assume no news is good news?
Not to belittle how bad it is for everybody else, though.
Him and SWG are more towards Eastern NC so they are ok (I have read it in some articles and comments on here)
Thanks for that Mercedes – My Sis and her Husband are near Boone, NC, where they have had limited cell service, no power and a road into their neighborhood has washed out, but is being repaired temporarily today.
Meanwhile, my parents near Augusta have had no power either.
It’s amazing that both of them purposely moved inland this past year to avoid such issues – yet here we are.
Meanwhile – what have they been using to charge their cell phones to stay in touch with the outside world?
Their cars.
Yes! Not long ago, I was driving my wife’s Accord on an interstate and was suddenly told that the speed limit was 35 mph. We had just driven past Exit 35…..
My 2024 CR-V reads speed limit signs. It’s mostly right but there are plenty of times when it shows nothing. My 2024 Outback pulls the speed limit sign data from the awful built-in navigation and it’s wrong more often than it’s right.
The speed limits shown on Apple Maps are usually spot on, but still not 100% but it’s definitely the best of the three.
I’ve honestly never had a problem with the speed limit detection/sign reader in my cars. The only time they’re wrong is when you’re passing through a school zone but it’s not active hours. It always changes to 25mph because it doesn’t know if school zone limits are active at the moment.
I get the speed limit displayed on CarPlay with Apple Maps and Google Maps and it seems to work fine. Can’t say that I’ve noticed any errors. Perhaps the data gathering is more accurate than some of the methods the manufacturers use?
My Tesla does okay reading speed limit signs. What it constantly misses are the (IIRC) New York state only signs that say “end XX mph speed limit”. Those signs assume that people paid attention in the licensing course and know that the statewide speed limit is 55 mph unless otherwise posted. The issue is that on rural roads there won’t be another sign for many miles. It’ll happily pootle along at 30 mph or whatever the last sign it read said. Being a rural road, GPS based speed limit data is often wrong too. Luckily it will let me override the sign to set the cruise control at the correct speed.
Speaking of AI, using it to figure out incorrect speed limit data for mapped roads would be great. Maybe correlate fleet GPS data with speed data. Then analyze camera images of the area to determine if it is correct. You’re welcome, Tesla. I accept Dogecoin, a free year of Mighty Taco or a glass of Elon’s tears.
There are state GIS databases freely available for download that include the road class and speed limit (explicitly stated or implied from the road class) for every public road. The Tesla should be able to figure out the speed just from its GPS coordinates without seeing a sign.
New movie pitch, instead of sharknado, EVurricane.
Sounds like Ford’s tech just sucks as usual. My GR Corolla reads all the speed limit signs perfectly. It does display them in red when you’re speeding, which is oddly annoying mostly because I have a hard time reading the red with sunglasses on. The warning is trivially disabled.
My wife & I just returned home from a 3000 mile road trip vacation in her brand new 2025 Toyota Camry XLE and it read all speed limit signs flawlessly. It even read all of the temporary construction zone speed limit signs with no problem. The XLE has the nice heads up display and it showed the speed limit signs there in addition to the main dash. The signs turn red when the car’s speed exceeds the posted limit. But I always drive 5 mph faster on the highway. We both love this car!
The how to help article is paywalled. Classy, New York Times. Real classy.
My daughter is up there and thankfully safe. I’ve considered driving up, but to do what I’m not sure. It seems like the state ends at Asheville right now, Old Fort if you’re coming from my way. As tenuous as the passage was at the best of times, I’d be astonished if it was actually passable right now.
Edit: https://www.bpr.org/bpr-news/2024-09-28/list-ways-to-donate-and-help-flood-victims-in-western-north-carolina-after-hurricane-helene
Blast! The NYT didn’t hit me with a paywall, but maybe I hadn’t yet hit whatever number of free articles they give you. Yeah…a paywall for an article like that isn’t a great look.
I’ve also considered driving down and helping out my southern friends, but like you I’m just not sure what I could do except maybe just cart in tons of water. You’re right that the state basically ends at Asheville right now and even that city is basically only accessible by air or by taking a convoluted path by ground.
Opening a paywall site with an anonymous browser tab seems to work for me.
I’m honored. But that’s not an original idea, as the Edison’s choice between shark and electric vehicle was made in a speech back in June and analyzed on this very website. I suspect that if the speaker is successful the best choice for me would be the electric car, and I also suspect that the shark would choose it as well.
I haven’t been keeping up with the impact of Helene and was surprised when I found out how bad it was. It reminds me of what I’ve heard about Camille in 1969, which wasn’t identical meteorologically but also did a lot of damage far inland with something close to three feet of rain in Nelson County, Virginia, over just a few hours, with something around one percent of the county’s population killed or missing. Google it, or read this multi-part article from the 40th anniversary from back when my town still has a decent local paper, before it was bought by Tribune Publishing. Unfortunately the paywall will kick in after the first article, I think.
There’s also the Washington Post’s piece commemorating the 50th anniversary, which would only be one hit on your free article allowance. I’ve put it in this reply so my initial post doesn’t end up in auto-moderation limbo. And yeah, I get that I’m being hypocritical because decent local journalism might still exist if people were willing to pay for it.
Camille was so so destructive. I had an uncle who owned a pecan farm about 35 miles north. As soon as he could, he contacted family and friends to come help with clean up. I was a little kid, but the destruction I saw will stick with me forever. Uncle’s house had a tree on it, and dozens and dozens of these huge trees blown over. They also owned two stores in downtown Gulfport (the coast), so when the national guard finally began letting people through, what we saw were nothing but concrete slabs and twisted/broken materials everywhere.
Since that time, I’ve twice been to and seen hurricane destruction, it’s devastating every time. May all those impacted by Helene receive the help and support they need.
Sent a donation to the Red Cross this afternoon Mercedes. We have family in NC, they are safe, but others can use the help.
I missed the speed limit reader article, but the problem can be worse than the bad ‘display.’ I had a rental (I believe it was a Jeep Renegade) that would adjust cruise control to the speed limit. So cruising along at speed on the highway, it would see an exit ramp speed limit and suddenly SLAM on the brakes to drop from like 70 to 35 for no obvious (at the time) reason. Basically made the cruise control unusable. Maybe it had a way to turn it off, but in a rental, I didn’t have time to figure that out.