EU plans to fit all cars with speed limiters

[english si]

Also those pesky Norwegians voted against EU membership (twice) and Leif, being of Norse descent, was born in Iceland (not voted to join) and died in Greenland (which voted to leave).

Plus he went to North America, the hated continent. At least Cook and Magellan did it to export Europe to the world.

[cpzilliacus]

Many of the positions advocated for by the Nordic Greens are certainly very Communist-sounding.  Never mind that the Communist regimes of the Soviet Empire were some of the worst despoilers of the environment - ever.

AKA the 'string shit together and hope nobody notices' school of logic.

To be quite frank, the Scandinavian countries have had a decent environmental record (while being more than a bit socialist), but the former Communist Eastern Bloc and Soviet Union had a very dismal one.  It's a bit of irony, isn't it.

Sure is. I believe the biggest single source of pollution in the entire Baltic Sea watershed has traditionally been untreated municipal sewage from St. Petersburg, Russia. In part a legacy of the former Soviet Union.

There has been some pretty bad environmental damage done in the Nordic nations (usually associated with natural resource extraction, animal fur processing (raising of mink for their pelts is a significant industry in some Finnish municipalities) and railroad construction (large-scale soil contamination by creosote and arsenic at wood processing plants is surprisingly common)), but less since the world became environmentally aware in the 1960's and 1970's.  These days, the environmental laws and rules are probably as strict in Denmark, Finland, Norway  and Sweden as they are in the United States (and they still manage to plan, engineer and construct major highway projects).

It is possible to safely swim in most waters adjacent to or in downtown areas of Nordic cities - at least in the summertime (not such a good idea in February - the water tends to be, well, hard).

[DeaconG]

To the best of my knowledge, no cars currently sold in the US have driver-selectable speed limiters, but it is not uncommon for newer cars in Europe to have this feature.  It competes to an extent with cruise control.  The main difference between the two is that cruise control allows you to set the cruising speed and, when engaged, will maintain that speed automatically, while this type of speed limiter requires you to keep your foot on the throttle and, when engaged, will not allow you to go over the speed limit for the road segment you are on (as determined by GPS) minus a safety offset.  (Years ago I rented a Mercedes C280K with this type of limiter and the safety offset was apparently 5 MPH; this meant that when the limiter was set, I could go no faster than 25 MPH in a 30 MPH area.)

The 1996 BMW 3-series I once drove had a trip computer with a button you could use as a speed limiter of some kind.  I don't know whether it actually prevented you from exceeding the set speed, or just sounded a buzzer if you were going too fast.  I, of course, never used that feature, so I wouldn't know.

My 2006 BMW 750Li has a settable speed limit warning, it won't stop you from going over the limit, it just gives you an alarm and a "speed limit exceeded" warning on the dash.

[kphoger]

...whereas my company's work trucks have GPS devices which alert the drivers' supervisors when they're going too fast.

[Duke87]

A friend of mine works for a small company that has GPS devices in all of their company cars. Don't know if they track speed, but they definitely do track location - the idea is not to enforce safe operation so much as it is to enforce that employees are going where they are supposed to be and not goofing off or joyriding.

The owner of this same company also was planning to install hidden microphones in the office to secretly record employees' conversations... until he found out that was illegal.

[Scott5114]

What a shitty company.

[formulanone]

I once worked at a dealership that installed them on the loaner cars; after all, you're borrowing it. I was too busy to care where they all were at any given time but if you had a custom who was shy about returning the car on time (always 7-14 days later than when the car was due), I'd look them up.

"So, in case I missed your voice mail option, your car is ready."

"Sorry, I took the kids to Disney World. Won't be back for another couple of days..."

"Oh, the computer said your last two stops were on State Road 7 and Commercial Boulevard, and at..."

"...I'll have my wife/husband return the car tonight..."

Worked like a charm...it's kind of an option I wish I exploited more. We had two more weird issues; one customer had a car sitting at our rival dealer's store for three weeks, and he never called back. We finally heard back, and the customer was apologetic; not because he'd been gallivanting in our car, but because he damaged it, and paid for the repair out of his own pocket. (The loaners required insurance coverage, anyhow.) So, we kind of felt he learned his lesson.

Another loaner was sold, auctioned, and the transmitter was left inside. My guess is that there was no record of its installation, but the company offering the service had records, to be sure, because for years, a loaner car was always in the Phoenix area, two time zones way...

[agentsteel53]

MyKey

I'm so glad that the "my" trend in brand names is slowly dying out; this is the first time I've noted something like this in months.

[hotdogPi]

MyKey

I'm so glad that the "my" trend in brand names is slowly dying out; this is the first time I've noted something like this in months.

Especially because MySpace is being replaced with other things.

We still have MyLittlePony though.

[agentsteel53]

I think the worst example was having myflorida.com on the license plates for a while.  icky.