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Stephen J Wood's avatar

The speed limiting feature can be useful when driving in an unfamiliar area. A lot of driving in Germany is on country roads through small towns. The speed limit is often not labeled with numbers. There is the town speed limit and country road speed limit. When you enter a certain zone, you don’t always see a sign with a number showing the new speed limit. Instead, there are cryptic signs that denote what type of zone you are in. The towns loooove setting up speed traps, so unless you are vigilant, it is very easy to get blitzed by a speed camera (I speak from personal experience).

Having the GPS system help control your speed could be useful if you are driving in these kinds of areas where the speed limit is constantly changing between 50 and 80 km/h and where the speed cameras are merciless.

But forcing this feature to be on cars is silly, especially considering the reasons you quoted. I personally prefer being in control while driving and I don’t like the slippery slope of requiring additional features on new cars.

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Peter Imanuelsen's avatar

I have no problem with the car having a feature that shows the speed limit where you are, that can be very helpfull.

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Hans Brinker's avatar

Outside every town in Germany is a bright yellow sign with the town name. That sign also

indicates that you are now entering a 50kph zone until you leave the town and pass an identical sign with a red diagonal line across it indicating the speed limit is no longer 50kph. Nothing cryptic about it. Obviously if you learned German road rules this wouldn't be an issue. https://routetogermany.com/drivingingermany/city-driving

And given the fact American police like to hassle people when they pull them over for minor speeding fines, I'm quite happy with a blitz (flash) now and then. If you are speeding, you see the red flash, and about 10-days later a letter arrives in the mail. The speeding infraction doesn't go on your record unless you're going 30kph over the speed limit. And 90% of speed cameras are fixed anyway, so everyone knows where they are.

And fines here aren't that expensive. For example, speeding up to 10 km/h over the speed limit costs 10 Euros out of town/city limits. On rare occasions they have police pull people over randomly, but they are polite and never threaten to seize your property like they do in America with "Civil forfeiture".

Keep your wild west speed enforcement. Where cops threaten you, search you illegally and can legally steal your property.

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Peter Imanuelsen's avatar

Only 10 euros?

In Norway, if you drive between 10-15kmh above the speed limit, you get a speeding ticket of over 400 euros...

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