At 2:16 AM -0400 7/5/01, Declan McCullagh wrote:
On Wed, Jul 04, 2001 at 09:42:48PM -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
If the auto vendor was really concerned about their vehicle they'd install a govenor (like they did on the '64 1/2 Mustand for example) that would limit the RPM's of the engine. Quick, easy, simple. A lot(!!!) less expensive (about $20) and more reliable than a GPS receiver.
Then you'd risk spurious lawsuits from someone who can't accelerate to get out of an accident situation, and you'd also lose the source of income you might get from all these speeding tickets you as the renter would levy.
It apparently already happens, the installation of governors on rental cars. I rented a car at the Baltimore-Washington airport last summer and merrily got on the freeway (er, "parkway") connecting it with the Beltway. It was late at night, traffic was light, so I stepped on the gas. It just ran out of speed at about 65. Couldn't get it to go any faster, even with the pedal to the floor. Now it _could_ be that it was just a late American model, heavily-pollution-control-entangled econobox, but I've driven el cheapo Korean and Japanese models which had no problem reaching high speeds on straightaways. I figured at the time that the rental cars had indeed been equipped with RPM governors. I was only mildly annoyed and I didn't feel my safety was threatened, pace the above point about accelerating. Most traffic acceleration risks are at lower speeds, so a top-end speed governor isn't likely to pose a safety risk. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns