Federal Agency Recommends Installing Speed Limiters in New Cars

Automobile traffic jams Route 93 South in Boston on July 14, 2021. Charles Krupa/AP Photo

The federal National Transportation Safety Board has asked automakers and regulators for “new technology” that can “reduce speeding” in every new car made in the United States.

In a news release Tuesday, the NTSB cited a crash in Las Vegas that left nine people dead that “highlights need for intelligent speed assistance technology and countermeasures including interlock program for repeat speeding offenders.”

In the January 2022 crash, a river of a Dodge Challenger with a long record of speeding ran a red light at 103 miles per hour and slammed into a minivan. The motorist was driving at an excessive rate of speed and failed to obey both a stop sign and red light, officials said, adding that the state of Nevada failed to seriously punish the driver after he was charged with five speeding violations in the 17 months before the crash.

“This crash is the latest in a long line of tragedies we’ve investigated where speeding and impairment led to catastrophe, but it doesn’t have to be this way,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said in the release. “We know the key to saving lives is redundancy, which can protect all of us from human error that occurs on our roads.”

The agency claimed the crash and similar ones could be prevented by carmakers implementing intelligent speed assistance (ISA) systems, which can make it more difficult for drivers to go faster than the speed limit. It uses a car’s GPS data and links it to a database of the locations of posted speed limits.

“Passive ISA systems warn a driver when the vehicle exceeds the speed limit through visual, sound, or haptic alerts, and the driver is responsible for slowing the car,” said the NTSB. “Active systems include mechanisms that make it more difficult, but not impossible, to increase the speed of a vehicle above the posted speed limit and those that electronically limit the speed of the vehicle to fully prevent drivers from exceeding the speed limit.”

Last year, the European Commission mandated that all new vehicles have to be equipped with the technology as part of a sweeping new series of regulations in the European Union.

The NTSB said it also discussed pushing states to install active systems that make it harder for a repeat offender to speed, or limit speeding altogether. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group representing automakers, said technology can play a role in reducing speed-related crashes, but the group has long backed policies focusing on education, enforcement, and infrastructure investment.

About 12,330 people died in speeding-related accidents in 2021, or about a third of all U.S. traffic deaths that year, according to the NTSB.

Criticism

A European auto trade group in 2018 warned that the ISA systems may be “promising” in the future, but they “still show too many false warnings due to incorrect or outdated speed-limit information.”

“Digital maps are also not fully populated with speed limit information for all roads, and data are not always updated. Moreover, camera-based systems cannot anticipate all scenarios, such as when traffic signs are covered up,” said the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA).

Other critics, including car manufacturers, have previously expressed concern that some types of speed limiters could take control of the vehicle away from the driver. But some active ISA systems have a provision that allows a driver to override the controls, and those are recommended by the European union.

Other Issues

Despite its recommendation this week, the NTSB did not elaborate on how the ISA technology would prevent the 2022 crash in Nevada. Notably, according to the agency, the driver of the vehicle was under the influence of drugs, including cocaine and PCP, a powerful hallucinogenic drug that can cause violent behavior.

From 1992 to 2017, the driver was convicted of 11 traffic violations including three speeding violations. Yet at the time of the crash, his official state driving record had only one moving violation listed, for speeding in 2017, the NTSB said.

“The state of Nevada must do better about removing the silos of adjacent courts and sharing information,” board member Michael Graham said, reported The Associated Press. “The state of Nevada failed to hold the driver accountable.”

The North Las Vegas crash on killed the 59-year-old driver with a history of traffic and criminal offenses and his 46-year-old male passenger in the Challenger that investigators found accelerated before it ran a red light and slammed into the minivan. Three other vehicles were damaged in chain-reaction crashes at the busy multi-lane crossroads. In all, 15 people were involved.

Just days before the crash, the driver, Gary Robinson, pleaded guilty in Las Vegas to speeding, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. He was fined $150.

NTSB staff members said the problem of one court not knowing what another has done with a repeat traffic violator happens in other states as well. They said that unless court data is distributed widely, it will be hard to impose punishment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.