California Senator Scott Wiener is introducing a new set of bills to make streets safer across the state, including one that would change how you drive.
You’d be amazed how many problems can be solved when the people involved have legal liability. My first GPS unit was out of date from the moment I bought it. It wasn’t because keeping a map up to date was hard, it was because they didn’t care, you’d already bought the GPS and it was better than not having one at all. This isn’t a technological problem.
Your car’s GPS-localized speed map is wrong because no one cares enough to make it right, not because it’s an unsolvable problem. It’s a gimmick to get you to buy the car, and you already bought the car.
Apple and Google also have problems with speed limits being updated, and they actively attempt to keep their maps updated. Even Waze has incorrect data sometimes, and that can be corrected by anyone. So I don’t think it’s quite as simple as you think it is.
Again, they don’t have any liability or financial need to be right. It’s a free tool that’s better than not using the tool. No one is going to get in trouble if it’s wrong, you’re not going to buy a competing brand if they’re wrong. It’s a neat add-on. I don’t know why people assume that just because they’re a big company they’re especially dedicated or competent at managing minor features of free apps. Apple and Google apps are regularly worse than third party developed apps. They’re not bad because this is a hard problem, they’re bad because they don’t care.
And all this “but sometimes they’re wrong” is for exceedingly rare errors. 99%+ of roads are right, for the simple fact that permanent speed limit changes are rare. Maybe a database doesn’t update for temporary construction speed limits, but in that case we’re no worse than we are right now, where your car is perfectly capable of going as fast as you want if you ignore all the posted signs. The only time a limiter impacts driving is when the speed limit goes up, which almost never happens, and simply means people drive a little slower than the maximum while lodging complaints to the repository.
If it’s not a hard problem, it wouldn’t happen.
You’d be amazed how many problems can be solved when the people involved have legal liability. My first GPS unit was out of date from the moment I bought it. It wasn’t because keeping a map up to date was hard, it was because they didn’t care, you’d already bought the GPS and it was better than not having one at all. This isn’t a technological problem.
Your car’s GPS-localized speed map is wrong because no one cares enough to make it right, not because it’s an unsolvable problem. It’s a gimmick to get you to buy the car, and you already bought the car.
Apple and Google also have problems with speed limits being updated, and they actively attempt to keep their maps updated. Even Waze has incorrect data sometimes, and that can be corrected by anyone. So I don’t think it’s quite as simple as you think it is.
Again, they don’t have any liability or financial need to be right. It’s a free tool that’s better than not using the tool. No one is going to get in trouble if it’s wrong, you’re not going to buy a competing brand if they’re wrong. It’s a neat add-on. I don’t know why people assume that just because they’re a big company they’re especially dedicated or competent at managing minor features of free apps. Apple and Google apps are regularly worse than third party developed apps. They’re not bad because this is a hard problem, they’re bad because they don’t care.
And all this “but sometimes they’re wrong” is for exceedingly rare errors. 99%+ of roads are right, for the simple fact that permanent speed limit changes are rare. Maybe a database doesn’t update for temporary construction speed limits, but in that case we’re no worse than we are right now, where your car is perfectly capable of going as fast as you want if you ignore all the posted signs. The only time a limiter impacts driving is when the speed limit goes up, which almost never happens, and simply means people drive a little slower than the maximum while lodging complaints to the repository.