NTSB in favor of new speed limiting system

The National Transportation Safety Board is recommending new speed limiter technology.

According to a CNN Business report, an electric car equipped with this intelligence speed assistance program knows the speed limit wherever the particular car is traveling.

A video demonstrating this speed-limiting program on the CNN Business website showed New York City Deputy Mayor of Operations Meera Joshi is driving a vehicle equipped with the program.

While demonstrating the speed limiter program Joshi, formerly FMCSA’s acting administrator, said, “I’m pressing the pedal, but you see actually the number is going down.”

New York City is the first city in the country to test this speed-limiting technology, and is doing so in 50 of its fleet vehicles, said the CNN report.

“We need to be at the forefront,” Joshi said. “There’s no reason today, with so much technology and so much awareness, that anybody should die at the hands of an automobile.”

CNN cited data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which estimated more than 20,000 traffic deaths in the first half of 2022 as a key component in NTSB’s call to incentivize manufactures who include this technology in new cars.

The technology works through Telematics, which uses a database of local speed limits along with a vehicle’s GPS. An alarm or “dead pedal” (which stops the car from accelerating) results when the car reaches the speed limit.

An override function is built into the system. This allows a drive to accelerate above the speed limit for 15 seconds with the push of a button should they need to merge or keep up with the flow of traffic.

Karl Brauer, an executive analyst for iSeeCars.com, told CNN the average consumer may view this speed limiter technology as an overreach by the government.

“I think a move like this is certainly a sign of the future, and probably an unavoidable one,” Brauer said. LL