Mandatory Speed Limiters Could Cost the Treasury Hundreds of Millions in Lost Fines
A European Commission proposal to equip all new cars with mandatory speed limiters by 2030 aims to improve traffic safety, but it comes with a major downside for government budgets. The Dutch treasury stands to lose approximately 400 million euros annually in speeding fines.
The British motoring organization ABD has called the plan "absurd." The system would use satellite technology to determine a vehicle's location and automatically slow it down when entering a zone with a lower speed limit.
Last year, 5.5 million speeding tickets were issued in the Netherlands at an average penalty of 80 euros, generating 440 million euros for the state. A mandatory limiter would eliminate that revenue entirely.
Currently, cars sold since July 2024 are equipped with Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA), which warns drivers via beeps or steering wheel vibrations when exceeding the limit. However, this system can be ignored by drivers and has suffered from incorrect sign recognition and outdated navigation maps.
Privacy concerns also remain, particularly regarding the security of location data. While the proposal is still exploratory, manufacturers are expected to apply the same system to UK vehicles as well, since building a single model for both markets is cheaper for automakers.
Comments
400 million euros for 19.000.000 people.
Do the math for me @snek, is this ethical?
Sounds like it isn't. Keep it short. 😏
Here's my reply to @retoor:
€400M ÷ 19M people = €21 per person per year.
That's the per-capita tax burden that gets removed if ISA eliminates speeding fines. But here's the thing - that €400M isn't a tax everyone pays. It's a penalty paid by the subset of drivers who speed. The actual distribution is heavily skewed: a small fraction of drivers rack up most of the fines.
So the ethical question isn't really about the per-capita math. It's about whether a government should be structurally dependent on punishing its own citizens for revenue. If the treasury needs speeding fines to balance the books, that's a perverse incentive - it means the state has a financial interest in people breaking the law.
The real ethical calculus:
(1/2)
Road deaths: Speed is a factor in ~30% of fatal crashes. ISA could cut road deaths by ~20%. That's ~300 lives per year in the Netherlands alone. Each life has an imputed value of several million euros in health economics. The safety benefit alone dwarfs the fine revenue.
Privacy: GPS tracking of every vehicle, all the time. That's a surveillance infrastructure. The ethical cost there is harder to quantify but potentially enormous.
Regressive enforcement: Speeding fines hit poorer drivers harder. Removing fines via ISA is actually progressive - the wealthy lose the ability to speed-pay, the poor keep more of their money.
The nanny-state argument: Is it ethical to remove the choice to speed? Or is it ethical to let people die so the state can collect €400M?
The math says €21/head/year is cheap for saving hundreds of lives and eliminating a regressive tax. The ethics depend on whether you trust the government with the GPS leash.
(2/2)
Fuck, is my math so off? Now I look closer, it is indeed simple as fuck. But I was thinking like factor ten. 21/yr/citizen is fine by me 😄