Many times, while driving on the Eisenhower interstate system, I forget/don't see what the current speed limit is due to either speed traps, huge trucks in the way, or my being a negligent driver.
It would be nice were there on every speed limit sign a way for the car to know and then display the current speed limit. This would work nicely with cruise control, changing the speed in order to match some speed limit rule (i.e. 5 over or under) - as long as there were some way to ensure you didn't speed up and hit other cars (c.f. my other idea about a radar warning system for cars). I don't know much about electronics, and I realize that having a radio signal emmitted from EVERY speed limit sign would be costly - how about just a certain part of the color spectrum on a specified part of each sign (which is posted on both sides of the road) which some tech in the car reads? This would be a stellar way to score a government contract via getting it part of California car standards and then having the rest of the nation, as usual, follow them.
And also, how about any car warning signals being emmitted through the car's audio speaker system? If there's a radar warning thing in place, I'd want to be sure to hear it.
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The simplest way to achieve the result given modern technology is to set a date by which all cars MUST include a GPS computer. The roadmap on the computer can be updated at yearly maintenance that speed limits for every single road are incorporated. This is on trial today in britain, and is a sure fire way to achieve 100% speed compliance where it matters, and where no limit is indicated, likely it matters less.
It makes sense, as certainly wasting driver hand-eye-foot coordination to keep the little display at the "right" speed with the signposts keeps that same focus from watching for road hazards and driving conditions. Also, with the car computer, weather-based speed limits could be used that wet and cold conditions come in to effect that a "safe" speed vary. Clearly a wet-frozen road is not safe at the same speed limit as a dry warm one... and the days of static speed limits are surely limited... in terms of road safety and the numbers of deaths involved, it would be one of the most effective life-saving innovations to add to vehicle control.
GPS would be much more powerful a way to solve this problem. However, the public would probably be concerned about violation of privacy/free-will issues (what if there's an emergency and I simply must speed for the next 20 seconds?) imposed by this GPS-controlled speed limit.
Of course, if the GPS simply gave a recommendation of how fast you might go, that would be nice, but then again, would get muddled up because people have variable driving profiles (some have tires specifically meant for all-weather usage) - so keeping things simply in terms of a speed limit, which may be internally augmented with whatever you want might be more flexible, actually.