New cars in California could warn drivers if they are speeding

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California could eventually join the European Union and require all new cars to warn drivers when they exceed the speed limit. This proposal aims to reduce traffic fatalities, which would likely impact motorists across the country if it becomes law.

The federal government sets nationwide vehicle safety standards, which is why most cars now honk when a seatbelt isn’t fastened. A bill in the California Assembly — which passed the Senate on Tuesday in a first vote — would go even further, requiring all new cars sold in the state to honk when exceeding the speed limit by 10 mph or more by 2032.

“Research has shown that this has an impact on people driving slower, particularly because some people don’t know how fast their car is going,” said state Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat and the bill’s author.

The bill narrowly passed Tuesday, an indication of how difficult the road ahead could be. Republican Sen. Brian Dahle said he voted against it in part because he said people sometimes have to drive faster than the speed limit in an emergency.

“It’s just a nanny state we’re causing here,” he said.

While the goal is to reduce traffic fatalities, the legislation would likely impact all new car sales in the United States. That’s because California’s auto market is so large that automakers would probably just make all of their vehicles comply with the state’s laws.

California often uses its influence to influence national — and international — policy. California has set its own auto emissions standards for decades, rules that more than a dozen other states have also adopted. And when California announced it would eventually ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars, major automakers soon followed with their own announcements to phase out fossil-fuel vehicles.

The technology, known as intelligent speed assistance, uses GPS technology to compare a vehicle’s speed to a set of applicable speed limits. Once the car is at least 10 mph (16 km/h) over the speed limit, the system would “emit a short, one-time visual and audible signal to alert the driver.”

It would not require California to maintain a list of posted speed limits. That would be up to the manufacturers. It is likely that these maps do not include local streets or recently changed speed limits, which would cause conflicts.

The bill states that if the system receives conflicting speed limit information, it must use the higher speed limit.

The technology is not new and has been used in Europe for years. Starting this year, the European Union will require all new cars sold there to have the technology – although drivers can turn it off.

The National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 10% of all car crashes reported to police in 2021 were related to speeding — including an 8% increase in speeding-related deaths. This was particularly a problem in California, where 35% of traffic deaths were related to speeding — the second-highest in the country, according to a legislative analysis of the proposal.

Last year, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended that federal regulators require all new cars to warn drivers about speeding. Their recommendation came after a January 2022 accident in which a man with a history of speeding ran a red light at more than 100 miles per hour and struck a minivan, killing himself and eight other people.

The NTSB has no authority and can only make recommendations.