The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is calling on “intelligent speed assistance technology” (ISA) to be mandatory “in all new cars” after a fatal accident in Nevada killed nine people.
In a press release last week, the federal agency outlined how ISA “uses a car’s GPS location compared with a database of posted speed limits and its onboard cameras to help ensure safe and legal speeds.”
“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,” the agency explained. “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.”
The NTSB board issued the recommendations last week after a 2018 Dodge Challenger rammed into a minivan at 103 mph in North Las Vegas in January 2022. The driver, however, was high on cocaine and PCP.
“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 last week’s press release. “We know the key to saving lives is redundancy, which can protect all of us from human error that occurs on our roads. What we lack is the collective will to act on NTSB safety recommendations.”
While legal speed limits are capped at 85 mph in the U.S., vehicles are designed to go far faster to allow safe passing and escape in emergency situations. The capacity to go faster also puts less strain on vehicles at lower speeds.
The NTSB released the proposal weeks after the Republican House majority helped Democrats preserve their “kill switch” mandate for new vehicles earlier this month. All cars produced in 2026 and onward will be required to implement technology that can automatically disable the vehicle “if impairment is detected” after 19 Republicans joined Democrats to kill an amendment defunding the mandate.
The NTSB’s ISA mandate, combined with the “kill switch” requirement embedded in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, lays the groundwork for corporate and government access to monitor and interfere with personal movement.
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In California, activists have cited climate change as justification for new standards limiting transit. The California Air Resources Board released new regulations last summer banning the sale of gasoline-powered cars by 2035. The following week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom begged residents not to charge electric vehicles during a heat wave so the power grid would not become overwhelmed.