That’s pretty lame. Fast cars can be fun to drive, and the acceleration is the fun part, not their top speed or whatever. Note that this limit they’re proposing is more of an annoyance - it’s something you have to manually disable each time you start the car. It’s the same frustrating nonsense we saw with mandatory start stop that you cannot disable permanently.
Other parts of the proposal relating to better battery safety and warnings on battery issues seem like a positive change.
But then there’s this:
> The draft also addresses driver assistance systems, requiring vehicles with such features to verify through biometric recognition or account login that drivers have completed proper training before allowing continued operation.
This just looks like a surveillance tool. Soon we’re going to see cars normalizing facial recognition and uploads of that information. In China, this will be abused by the CCP for all their usual oppressive stuff. But I worry that this will become normal in cars sold elsewhere too.
zakary•2mo ago
Definitely a lot of potentially very serious and important downsides to this.
I’m trying to think of any possible upsides to this.
- harder for unlicensed people, eg kids, to drive a car and hurt themselves or someone else.
- harder to steal a car if you’re not an approved driver, regardless of what you do with a copied key fob.
- potentially easier to resolve insurance disputes
- harder for people to commit premeditated crimes using cars (eg getaway driver to a robbery)
That said, these things only really happen if almost all cars on the road have this “feature”. Which means if all new cars in china must have this, then for at least 20 years after introduction, people wanting to skirt the law/surveillance will just use older cars.
So then in the end everyone loses out except for the people this is purportedly target towards, who just go around it.
rasz•2mo ago
On one hand 5 seconds is 1991 Acura NSX acceleration, plenty for everyone, on the other its a typical nanny state adhoc knee-jerk overreaction to the wave of "I swear I didnt press accelerator car just started driving on its own" sudden acceleration accidents in China.
SilverElfin•2mo ago
Other parts of the proposal relating to better battery safety and warnings on battery issues seem like a positive change.
But then there’s this:
> The draft also addresses driver assistance systems, requiring vehicles with such features to verify through biometric recognition or account login that drivers have completed proper training before allowing continued operation.
This just looks like a surveillance tool. Soon we’re going to see cars normalizing facial recognition and uploads of that information. In China, this will be abused by the CCP for all their usual oppressive stuff. But I worry that this will become normal in cars sold elsewhere too.
zakary•2mo ago
I’m trying to think of any possible upsides to this.
- harder for unlicensed people, eg kids, to drive a car and hurt themselves or someone else. - harder to steal a car if you’re not an approved driver, regardless of what you do with a copied key fob. - potentially easier to resolve insurance disputes - harder for people to commit premeditated crimes using cars (eg getaway driver to a robbery)
That said, these things only really happen if almost all cars on the road have this “feature”. Which means if all new cars in china must have this, then for at least 20 years after introduction, people wanting to skirt the law/surveillance will just use older cars.
So then in the end everyone loses out except for the people this is purportedly target towards, who just go around it.