California lawmakers rein in bill to limit car speeds

A California bill to physically limit passenger vehicles from speeding would now only require a passive warning system under amendments approved Tuesday night.

Sen. Scott Wiener's SB 961 as introduced in January would have mandated "speed limiters" on new passenger cars, trucks and buses starting in 2027 that restricted them from going more than 10 miles per hour over the speed limit.

The San Francisco Democrat amended it ahead of its first hearing Tuesday to require just visual and audio signals that alert drivers when they've exceeded the speed threshold. The mandate would also only apply to half of new vehicles starting in 2029 and all new vehicles by 2032.

"We heard feedback from colleagues that people were not comfortable with an active physical barrier to going above a certain speed," Wiener said in the hearing. "People might need to go at a higher speed. We listened, we heard, worked with the committee and changed it."

The bill passed the Senate Transportation Committee 8-4 along party lines.

The bill triggered an immediate political uproar on its introduction in January, with Fox News and other commenters branding it as a vivid example of California's "nanny state" tendencies.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said in January that he was broadly sensitive to issues like the speed-limiting devices that could be weaponized by Republicans in an election year and said he wanted to discuss the bill with Wiener. Wiener didn't receive substantive input on the bill from Newsom's office, Wiener spokesperson Erik Mebust said Wednesday.

The bill is backed by the National Transportation Safety Board, which since 2012 has pushed automakers to adopt speed-limiting systems, and issued a new recommendation to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that federal regulators should require the technology after a 2022 crash in Las Vegas that killed nine people.

NHTSA has documented a sharp increase in traffic fatalities nationwide, including in major California cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco. Vehicle collisions killed more than 1,000 pedestrians in California in 2022, up from 599 deaths in 2010.

Speed limit warning systems are not new and are now required by the European Union to be installed in all new vehicles starting in July.

New York City is expanding its use of active speed limiters that cap vehicle speeds to its entire municipal fleet, after a successful pilot initially launched with 50 vehicles in 2022.

Wiener also amended the bill Tuesday to clarify that drivers would receive one warning each time they go over the speed threshold. That came after lawmakers raised concerns that a constant warning system could distract drivers or deter them from buying cars with it installed.

“Seems unlikely to me that a lot of Californians are going to buy a car where the speed alarm is persistent, where you can't turn it off,” said Sen. Josh Newman, a Southern California Democrat. “Seems to me that they will either figure out a way to disable that, find this third party to disable it or they won't buy the car.”

SB 961 now heads to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Dustin Gardiner contributed to this report.