According to the city, two people are either killed or suffer serious, life-altering injuries every week on Oakland’s roads. In 2023, 33 people died from collisions and the biggest single cause of this carnage is speeding. In a community meeting in Fruitvale last year, Mayor Sheng Thao said that a quarter of all fatalities in Oakland “involve unsafe speeds.”
In the last few years, spearheaded by the Oakland Department of Transportation and the city’s Safe Oakland Streets initiative, new street designs have added car-slowing features to various roads. But the danger continues. National and state lawmakers appear to be searching for new and more effective ways of making roads safer.
State Sen. Scott Wiener, who represents San Francisco, made waves last month when he introduced Senate Bill 961, which would require every car or truck built or sold in California to have speed governor—a technology that would prevent the vehicle from traveling faster than 10 miles per hour above a road’s speed limit.
Some auto manufacturers already include speed governor tech in their cars, including 18 makers that Wiener’s office identified and has been in touch with. But there’s a lot of conversation about how willing American drivers are, especially in car-loving cities like Los Angeles and Oakland, to accept this kind of regulation.
We sat down to talk with Sen. Wiener about his proposal, the problems it could solve, and the potential issues that arise with this technology. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Oaklandside: What was the impetus for this legislation? Was it that the National Transportation Safety Board recently recommended this kind of technology in new cars? What about the current political environment makes you think this law could pass?
Sen. Wiener: More than 4,000 people a year are dying on California roads and speed is a huge factor. We have technology to make our roads safer and to have fewer people die and be seriously injured. So we should utilize that technology.
The National Transportation Safety Board has recommended that governors be required in all new cars and you know, this is not an unreasonable approach under the bill. People would be allowed to drive 10 miles an hour over the speed limit.
The idea that people should be able to drive 90, 100, 110 miles an hour on a freeway or drive 60-70 miles an hour on a residential street, I just don’t think that’s reasonable. It’s dangerous. And we should move in this direction. I understand that it’s controversial. People have a lot of opinions and I respect that. We’ve got a lot of constructive feedback since we drew the bill and if the bill can move forward, it’ll be a work in progress and we look forward to continuing to work on the issue.
Are you looking at other cities or countries to see what they’ve done? What have you learned?
The European Union has required passive speed limiters, which means that when you exceed the speed limit, the car starts talking to you or vibrates irritatingly. This encourages you to slow down. New York City is gradually transitioning its municipal fleet to having active speed governors. And from what we have been told, it’s going very well. They’ve had very few issues.
We also know that autonomous vehicles, scooters, and e-bikes have speed governors. So this is a technology that’s being deployed today. When you have a technology that exists today and that the NTSB recommends, that is an important idea to have a conversation about.
I’m guessing that you’ve probably spoken to car manufacturers. What do they say? I’m sure their lobbyists will look at costs, complexity, and liability.
We sent the bill to the manufacturers before we introduced it. We’ve not gotten feedback yet. I’m sure we will, and we look forward to it. You know, I don’t see cost as an issue here. New cars are so complicated already and this is a technology that’s not that big a deal. We’re not requiring this, but you can retrofit your existing car with this technology. So this is not rocket science. We definitely are looking forward to getting feedback from the manufacturers.
It looks like you’re requiring an active speed governor instead of a passive one, which is what the European Union uses. This active governor could push back the accelerator inside a car, as you describe in the text of the bill, or it could prevent a car from going more than ten miles per hour over the speed limit. A passive system would just make it really hard to speed, with bells and stuff going off and shaking the wheel. Do you think California residents are ready to accept that more stringent governor?
Yeah, we’re requiring the active speed governor. That’ll certainly be a topic, that’ll certainly be a topic of discussion, active versus passive and we’re happy to have that conversation.
At The Oaklandside, we report on traffic violence through a systemic lens, revealing how poorly designed roads incite bad driving behavior. But that doesn’t absolve responsibility from people making those bad decisions. Do you think this potential law puts more responsibility on the government and manufacturers as opposed to the persons driving the car? Will it put more pressure on cities to improve conditions?
I think it’s a shared responsibility. Government has a responsibility to design safe roads but we also know that road design has its limits. Especially because redesigning California’s roads, even if we have the political will to do it, will take a long time. But the government has a responsibility. And that’s what SB 960 is about.
However, manufacturers also have a responsibility and manufacturers have, over time accepted regulations. We first required the installation of seat belts, and then we required the installation of airbags and other safety features.
It’s important to have safely designed roads and to have safely designed cars. And then it’s important for people to drive safely. And we require people to wear seat belts. We have speed limits. We have rules of the road. So it’s a shared responsibility.
I was speaking recently with an engineer in Detroit and he said there might be a difference between how good car governor tech might be at consistently working on the highways versus local roads. That’s because highways are more consistent, obviously, and local roads have variability. You have a lot of people walking around, there are a lot of different signs, some roads don’t have signs, and there are terrible potholes.
That doesn’t make any sense to me. A speed governor does not change a person’s ability to accelerate and brake the way they do now. All it’s saying is that if it’s a 25-mile-an-hour speed limit on a city street, you can drive up to 35 miles an hour, but not above that.
There are cities, including New York City, that have been transitioning thousands of cars over to speed limiter technology and it’s been going well. We’ve gotten very positive reports from New York City. They’ve already transitioned thousands of cars and they’re going to be transitioning thousands more, and it works.
What other potential laws and regulations are being discussed that could help slow cars down on highways and local roads?
Street design is very important and that’s why we introduced SB 960 this year. It would ensure that state-owned roads that run through cities are designed in a safe way. Right now, a lot of state-owned roads that are really city-surface streets don’t even have sidewalks or crosswalks, let alone a bike lane. So we’re trying to focus on street design too.
Bills similar to SB960 have been vetoed. It’s going to be really hard to get speed governors approved, no?
We will see. I had a similar bill that the governor vetoed in 2019, SB127. And when I spoke to the governor about his veto his response to me was, “Hey, give my departments a chance to do this on their own.” And Caltrans did issue Complete Streets design guidelines so there’s been some progress.
But it’s not been enough, and it’s not been fast enough. That’s why we think a bill requiring speed governors is needed. So there’ll be a process, but we have a huge coalition behind the bill. Fundamentally, SB 960 gives people the ability to be able to walk and bike around, and safely drive around their own communities without being at serious risk of death and injury.
Do you have any personal experience with a collision or a close call because of unsafe road designs, speeding, reckless driving, and other hazards?
I’ve been very fortunate that neither I nor anyone in my family has been injured in traffic collisions. I have an aunt who, when I was a child, was killed by a drunk driver. So, my family did have that severe impact. But in terms of speeding, my family and I have not been personally impacted.
I know many people in the community who themselves have been injured, people caring for family members who have been incapacitated because of traffic violence, and people who have lost family members. All these deaths are all avoidable. It doesn’t have to be this way. It’s this way because we have made bad policy choices to prioritize speed over everything else.
Finally, let’s talk about self-driving cars, a technology that is everywhere in the news. Considering the fast innovation that happens in the Bay Area, how do you make sure companies deploying this technology do a safe job and don’t make traffic violence worse? Some of the manufacturers still actively promote autonomous features when they’re not safe to do so, and some car operators take these not-fully-baked features and exploit them to the max.
I don’t pretend to be an expert in all of the technology [but] I just think that safety is very, very important. Autonomous vehicles do have the potential to improve safety. We know that so many safety problems on the roads are caused by human error and people being distracted. I know every time there’s a safety issue with an autonomous vehicle, it makes the front pages. But what doesn’t make the front pages are the many times a day that a human-operated vehicle hits someone. So, they have the potential to improve safety.
We obviously need to make sure that the technology is completely up to par, and that’s a work in progress. This is all about safety. Technology that we can put into human-operated cars, like speed governors, we know saves lives.
