Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill Saturday new cars should beep at drivers when they exceed the speed limit in an effort to reduce traffic fatalities.
California would have come first need such systems for all new cars, trucks and buses sold in the state beginning in 2030. The bill would have required vehicles to beep at drivers when they exceed the speed limit by at least 10 mph.
The European Union has passed similar legislation to encourage drivers to drive more slowly. California’s proposal would have provided exceptions for emergency vehicles, motorcycles and motorized scooters.
In explaining his veto, Newsom said federal law already dictates vehicle safety standards and adding California-specific requirements would create a patchwork of regulations.
National Highway Traffic Safety “is also actively evaluating intelligent speed assistance systems, and imposing state-level mandates risks disrupting these ongoing federal reviews,” the Democratic governor said.
Opponents, including automotive groups and the state Chamber of Commerce, say such regulations should be established by the federal government, which earlier this year imposed new requirements for automatic emergency braking to reduce traffic fatalities. Republican lawmakers also said the proposal could make cars more expensive and distract drivers.
The legislation would likely have affected all new car sales in the U.S., as the California market is so large that automakers would likely make all their vehicles compliant.
California often throws that weight around to influence national and even international policy. The state has set its own auto emissions standards for decades, rules that more than a dozen other states have also adopted. And when California announced it would eventually ban the sale of new gas-powered cars, major automakers quickly followed with their own announcement to phase out fossil fuel vehicles.
Democratic Senator Scott Wiener, who sponsored the bill, called the veto disappointing and a setback for street safety.
“California should have taken the lead on this crisis, as Wisconsin did when it passed the first seat belt mandate in 1961,” Wiener said in a statement. “Instead, this veto places Californians at a completely unnecessary risk of fatalities.”
The speed warning technology, known as intelligent speed assistance, uses GPS to compare a vehicle’s speed against a data set of posted limits. If the car is traveling at least 16 km/h faster, the system gives a single, short, visual and acoustic warning.
The proposal would have required the state to maintain a list of posted speed limits, and it is likely that it would not include local roads or recent changes to speed limits, which would lead to conflict.
The technology has been used in the US and Europe for years. From July, the European Union will require all new cars to have the technology, although drivers can switch it off. At least 18 manufacturers, including Ford, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Nissan, have already offered some form of speed limiters on some models sold in America, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
The National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 10% of all car crashes reported to police in 2021 were related to speeding. This was especially a problem in California, where 35% of traffic fatalities were related to speeding — the second-highest rate in the country, according to a legislative analysis of the proposal.
Last year, the NTSB recommended that federal regulators require all new cars to warn drivers if they are speeding. Their recommendation came after an accident in January 2022, when a man with a history of speeding ran a red light at more than 100 miles per hour and struck a minivan, killing himself and eight other people.
