Like to drive fast? Virginia has anti-speeding device for you​on March 27, 2025 at 4:25 pm

Virginia is set to become the first American state to require some reckless drivers to put devices on their cars that make it impossible to drive too fast.

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D.C. passed similar legislation last year. Several other states, including Maryland, are considering joining them. It’s an embrace of a technological solution to a national problem: Speeding contributes to more than 10,000 deaths a year.

Under the Virginia legislation, a judge can decide to order drivers to install the speed limiters in their vehicles in lieu of taking away their driving privileges or sending them to jail. It takes effect in July 2026.

Del. Patrick A. Hope (D-Arlington) said various advocacy groups, including Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the National Safety Council, gave him the idea. He drove a car outfitted with the technology and was impressed. “It was easy to use, and once you’re engaged it’s impossible to go over the speed limit,” he said. “It will make our streets safer.”

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He thinks the device is preferable to suspending drivers’ licences, a punishment that people frequently ignore because they have no other way of getting to work or the store or taking their children to school. It’s an approach similar to using an interlock device that requires a person convicted of drunken driving to pass a Breathalyzer test to start their car.

“This provides the judge an option to try to change human behaviour, which is very difficult,” said Mike Doyle of Northern Virginia Families for Safe Streets.

Hope wanted anyone convicted of reckless driving after going 100 mph (160 km/h) or more to be required to use a limiter for two to six months, but Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) struck that part of the bill, leaving all use of the limiting technology up to the state courts. Hope expressed concern about the governor’s amendment but will urge the General Assembly to accept it, as the legislature typically does when the bill’s sponsor signals support.

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“I’m worried about [with] those type of offenders, could we regret giving the judge the option,” he said. But, he added, the legislation is just a start: “I think the main thing is to get the program up and running.” The District’s program is scheduled to be in place by September.

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Drivers must pay for the speed limiters themselves. (As in D.C., indigent defendants are exempt from paying.) The limiters won’t be used in Virginia on commercial vehicles. Attempting to evade the speed limiter by tampering with it or driving a different car is a misdemeanour punishable by up to a year in jail.

“Intelligent speed assistance,” which adjusts to posted speed limits using either GPS and digital maps or a car’s sign recognition ability, has been around for about two decades. The basic ability to cap a vehicle’s speed has been around much longer, in use on school buses and on Metrobuses.

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Wesley E. Marshall, an engineering professor at the University of Colorado Denver, wrote in his book “Killed by a Traffic Engineer” that bills to force speed limits on car manufacturers were first introduced in the early 20th century, not long after cars themselves.

Marshall’s work focuses on road engineering as leading people to speed — sprawl and wide roads encourage it. But he believes speed limiters, also known as governors, would be an effective countermeasure. “The problem with speed governors isn’t that they wouldn’t work,” he said. “It’s more that we’ve been unwilling to try.”

In Europe, new vehicles will soon be required to have speed assistance that warns drivers when they surpass speed limits. But a California version, which would have required new cars to give automatic warnings for driving more than 10 mph (16 km/h) over the speed limit, was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) last year.

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The National Transportation Safety Board has recommended requiring intelligent speed assistance in all new cars, and the Biden administration proposed a regulation mandating vehicles that weigh over 26,000 pounds — a category that includes freight trucks and intercity buses — be governed by limiting technology. A top speed of 68 mph (110 km/h) was suggested but not settled on after pushback from the trucking industry.

Ian Reagan, a research scientist at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, tried out an after-market speed limiter of the kind Virginia would require last summer. He said he thought he would be stressed by drivers tailgating or passing him quickly, common experiences on his Annapolis-to-Arlington commute. But, he said, “once I sort of shifted my mindset … I found it to be sort of relaxing compared to the way I drove previously.” The device caught changes in speed limits between jurisdictions before he did, something he said could help people avoid traffic camera tickets. Instead of jockeying around other drivers, he stuck to the middle or right lane and “let the system do its thing.”

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