The Limit
March 30, 2026
Alex KiersteinStates are adopting laws to give repeat speeding offenders an alternative to losing their licenses. Is that a good idea?
In Virginia, Washington State, and Georgia—as well as Washington D.C.— lawmakers have passed laws that will require certain types of offenders (speeders, reckless drivers, et cetera) to install speed limiting equipment. Other states are considering it and are likely to follow suit. It sounds inherently sensible on many levels; those who can’t be trusted to operate their vehicle safety could be allowed to if one of the most dangerous driving behaviors is prevented. After all, the physics of a collision means speed makes things considerably worse.
The horrendous collisions that helped move these laws forward illustrates the point. I live in Washington State, not too far away from the intersection where an adult and three young children were killed. The speed limit is around 40 mph there, and traffic moves within 5 mph on either end of that usually. In this case, an 18-year-old with a checkered driving history was traveling at 112 mph through the intersection and t-boned a Chevy SUV. The driver somehow lived; all of the occupants of the SUV except one died or had life-altering injuries.
The word “reckless” doesn’t convey how dangerous it is to be moving at triple-digit speeds on a busy arterial in a mainly residential suburban area. The kid had totalled two other cars in incidents involving speeding in the last year. Perhaps he is an outlier, a particularly terrible one. And he won’t be driving for 17.5 years at least, having been sentenced to prison for that long. I will add that speed limiter requirements or not, someone so demonstrably and unambiguously callous should never drive again. Driving is not a right, although in many ways society treats it as such. Public transit in this area is relatively robust. It won’t be impossible for him to live and work after his prison term. It’s absolutely the least society can do to revoke this individual’s ability to move around independently in a massive hunk of metal and its attendant kinetic energy.
Washington’s law, named after the victims of the crash above, will require a speed-limiting device if a driver has their license suspended for reckless driving or excessive speeding. After that suspension, the only way for them to maintain a license is to install one of these devices. Even then it will only allow them to get a restricted license. The device, which is unnamed in the reports I’ve read, will use GPS to verify and limit speeds. And it can be overridden three times per month.
I’m not an expert on Washington law, but the state code notes that “unlawful operation of a vehicle in excess of the maximum lawful speeds” is by definition reckless driving, and that reckless driving can lead to a minimum 30-day suspension. Fine. Not every incident of speeding leads to a fatal collision. But for those that do, I personally think that bending over backwards to find a way to let people drive cars again (with GPS speed limiters) is evidence of our society’s perverse fixation on driving.
I’m also going to raise another concern, which I think is probably more pertinent, and it’s the frequent gulf between the idea on paper and the idea in reality. As a shorthand, consider the Flock camera fiasco. There’s the pitch to the locality, which is probably attractive in terms of aiding law enforcement, reducing workload, et cetera. And then there’s the reality: a panopticon. Misuse. Ubiquity. The sort of stuff you’d imagine were you a slightly paranoid science fiction writer 20 years ago, but it’s real.
So the specifics of the GPS-enabled devices are important. Where does the data go, who can access it, and to what extent can it communicate with the vehicle? Could it be compromised? Sure, people with multiple reckless driving convictions are not the most sympathetic potential victims, but we’re talking about devices that, by being able to access and control the vehicle’s computer(s) to regulate a vehicle’s speed, could be exploitable.
A car-dependent society (overall, obviously there are significant differences in transportation accessibility in different areas) breeds some nonsensical, problematic outcomes. It produces absurdities; how did the kid who killed four people and had more vehicle-totalling, speed-related crashes in a year than he had years behind the wheel even get a license? Only if the licensing process is a joke. And we build a system around this initial absurdity, which often views revoking a driver’s license as a drastic step that has serious consequences for that person.
I like driving. I don’t like the idea of sharing a road with people who can’t contemplate the consequences of their exceedingly, objectively stupid actions. I really don’t like the idea of a system in which licensing standards are so minimal as to not be a practical barrier, at all, to almost anybody. And I don’t like the solution to one aspect of this process being, potentially, more surveillance, just to keep demonstrably irresponsible people behind the wheel.
Maybe these speed limiters are an unavoidable step, and a positive one, for now. But I think there are more significant underlying, structural issues that would be more difficult to solve but would produce a much safer society.
It’s estimatedthat 37,810 people died in traffic in 2025. Not everyone should be able to drive, and I don’t think that should be controversial.
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