Who came up with this stupid idea?! Just seize the car.
That's big-brothery. Like OP said just take away their license and make the penalties for driving without a license so astronomical that the problem will fix itself?
this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2026
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USA is so dystopian that not having a car can very easily fuck your life up. Tbh the big brother solution is still a better idea than cutting off a person (or even a household) from transportation to jobs/groceries/healthcare.
You can’t take people’s cars away or they will have no way to make money and live in America
Just the truth sorry
And speed is highly correlated to the lethality of car wrecks. Also, it sounds like the devices would be installed in the cars of people who... speed frequently.
So, it is directly addressing the problem without asset seizure or jail time. Sounds like an ideal solution, actually.
Revoking drivers licenses would probably be more appropriate than seizing vehicles. The upside to that is revoking licenses, I'd wager, is a whole lot cheaper than installing and monitoring speed trackers.
So long as the person with the speeding problem is paying for that I guess it's acceptable. But then we have yet another example of people without much money getting a raw deal. Means testing? Everything gets complicated when it gets to the implementation details.
Plus a lot of people with revoked licenses just continue to drive anyway with a vehicle insured under someone else's name.
Both options are potentially bad for low-income earners. If you force them to pay for a speed limiter they lost the money for that, which they might not able to afford. If you take away their license they will have difficulty getting around and might lose their job.
So from that perspective the speed limiter might be the less dangerous choice.
Pattern of excessive speeding and low income doesn't seem like it's going to have a lot of overlap.
Those tickets add up and insurance rates spike so if they are a low income driver they're already wasting far more money on their bad driving havens than what this device is going to cost.
Sounds like someone has never had to beat traffic to get to a second job... or a doctor's appointment because your boss kept you late... or pick the kids up from school on time because you can't afford childcare/after school activities... or get home to let a spouse drive the car because you can't afford two cars or...
Being poor is expensive, time consuming and dangerous.
This is not targeted at people who have been caught speeding once or twice. It's targeting habitual and wreckless drivers. If they can afford the cost of these tickets to keep their license from being suspended, they can afford this device.
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Yup the rich will get around it by hiring a driver and paying them to speed. Or just swapping to one of their other cars that is not limited.
In the UK, you can get your license revoked for speeding. You can lose your license if you’re going a lot over the speed limit. If you’re going a bit slower you can get 3 or 6 points and if you get more than 12 points you also lose your license.
It doesn’t seem to do a huge amount to discourage speeding in my experience.
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Sure would be a shame if they ended up homeless, then in prison as free labor for any number of companies!
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Is this even that big of a problem?
If so, take away their license and plates. Bus pass or bike from now on.
They already do this with people who keep getting caught driving hammered. Just slow the fuck down, Andretti. Would be a non-issue. You take the car, they can't go to work like good little indentured servants. 🤣
The only answer I can come up with is, if you take their license than they just drive with no license.
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How is the device going to detect what the speed limit is to be able to limit it? A speed limit isn't the same everywhere.
GPS Data. Most dedicated navigation systems have the speed limit data in their maps for the last decade or so. They're probably also going to add the Road sign information systems that newer cars have.
That's a great question but I imagine it will be similar to my Honda- its lane sensing camera "reads" speed limit signs and displays the current speed limit on my speedometer. Flashes it if I'm doing a certain amount over the limit, which I can customize up to 10 over.
Because ticketing is a revenue stream.
What, you thought police ticket people to... protect the general public?
This will be another revenue stream, where the serial speeders have to pay for the install of the device, and likely an ongoing monthly fee for its continued operation.
I knew someone who ran a similar program for DUIs.
It probably wouldn't be a revenue stream for the government.
A private company would buy the equipment and charge the government AND the speeder for the costs, maintenance and monitoring.
Usually when there is a big push for these kinds of enforcement systems, the person pushing for it already has a friend of family member who just happens to do exactly that.
Oh.
Wonderful.
Even better.
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they’ll charge folks for the usage of this too. profit will be had.
also if the normal fine is affordable by rich folk, something like this is worthy of consideration except that rich folk typically have lawyers.
I would say that this directly targets the people that can already clearly afford the fines easily enough that they keep speeding enough to get caught. Someone that is severely hurt by the fines are already likely to be deterred from speeding by the fines. This addresses the people that eat the fines and keep speeding again and again.
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Is the plan to store these cars they're seizing in your plan somewhere? To sell them?
How much is the cost of seizing and storing a vehicle? How much is the cost of building a place to house these seized vehicles?
Who pays that cost?
Where is such a facility going to be built?
Even if you did sell the vehicles, who gets the proceeds? What stops the person from suing the state or municipality for selling items that don't belong to them?
That's even before we think about the economic impact of these people living in a very car dependant place where that vehicle makes the difference between being able to have access to food and transportation to get to work.
Is the state going to provide shuttles to get these people groceries and to and from work? Who pays for that?
I have a lot of questions about why you'd want it to be okay to seize the property of a person just because they broke the law.
Police can and do already seize and sell assets whether you have committed a crime or not. Usually people want to end such overreach but now you're all the sudden siding with the gestapo in order to seize people's assets because you feel self righteous?
The math doesn't math on this.
What if the car doesn't belong to them? Are we going to suddenly start seizing the assets of someone who leant them the vehicle?
Much better to spend tax payer money to design and implement road features that inhibit speeding.
I don't necessarily disagree with your point. But:
Is the state going to provide shuttles to get these people groceries and to and from work? Who pays for that?
Typically most places call these buses.
I think that most of your point could be alleviated with more and better public transport. Then removal can be a realistic punishment without preventing people from living.
Buses cost money to run, and rural upstate New York (just like a lot of rural areas that are car dependant) do not necessarily have the infrastructure to implement them. Which is exactly why I said shuttles, not buses.
Public transit isn't going to pop out of the ether to fix the problem so that we can just take away people's personal property because they broke the law as if they no longer own it. Civil forfeiture is already a broken law without us making it worse for poor people while rich people continue to get a pass.
They'll buy new vehicles. You can legally purchase a car without a driver's license in most states. You just have to have someone who can legally drive it off the lot of deliver it. Which is simple for a rich person, but not for a poor person.
Like it could be if we were willing to spend the amount of money it would cost to build and upkeep that infrastructure. But that would also likely mean civil forfeiture of land. Because bus stops and side walks and depots don't just show up because you want to take people's cars away.
The cost of all that, plus the cost of implementing the ability to store or sell these vehicles is going to be problematic and more costly than the proposal, which is more fair than the alternative because it treats people regardless of the economic situation the same.
I don't like the proposal, but I can certainly understand why it's being proposed as a better way to fix the problem.
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Because a seized car does not generate speeding ticket fines.
And a car that cannot speed can? You might not have thought that one through.
Its a speed limiting device, unless its gps tracking tech it will just have a maximum of 60-80 mph. So you can still speed in a 50 or 30 zone.
The article states that the "Intelligent Speed Assistance devices" are supposed to prevent drivers from driving more than 5 mph over the speed limit. So I'm fairly certain GPS and/or Road Sign Information systems will be used.
This doesn’t seem unreasonable, it’s like interlock devices for repeat drunk drivers.
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