I have seen bumper stickers to that effect on some fleet vehicles; that the vehicles have a speed limit &/or max speed restriction; typically along side a “How’s my driving? Call 1-800-#######” & a vehicle ID #.
Yes, I can see some people wanting a device which lets some outside authority, like the government or a vehicle owner, setting a maximum speed which the driver can’t change. But the OP specified that it would be the driver themselves who would be setting the speed limit.
Except that for the most part there is no single “speed limit” you could preset (or have preset) to keep yourself driving legally. There are many different speed limits and sometimes, if you don’t know the area you are driving through, a single missed speed limit sign, or a semi-hidden speed limit sign, or a speed limit sign that drastically drops that limit so fast and so far that foreknowledge is almost required etc. can really screw you over.
That happened to me a few months back. I was staying in a town where the town speed limit was 45 mph. Except there was one street where it was 30 mph. No idea why; the street didn’t have a school or anything like that on it. My guess is that it existed to give the police a place where they could catch “speeders”.
And I was one of the ones they caught going fifteen mph over the speed limit (because I thought I was driving at the speed limit). I was lucky and the officer let me off with a warning.
Yes, so if I’m going on a long journey, I may want to make sure that my car doesn’t ever go over 75, for example. Optimally, the driver would be able to change it as desired.
How is this different than cruise control?
Cruise Control would do the job if you can leave it set at your desired speed. But you often have to override the cruise control when there’s traffic, change in speed limit, etc. Even with the cruise control on, you can use the accelerator to go faster than the set speed.
With a max speed option, I could set it so that there’s no way to surpass. say 75 mph, no matter what (until I shut off this hypothetical Max Speed option, or reset it to another mph).
I took a cruise on I-5 between Portland and Seattle yesterday for a Norwescon picnic. I think there were six different speed limits (but maybe I missed one or two) and no diversions through any towns-just off ramps. What should my car speed limit be pre-set at?
Teslas have this feature. It’s not exactly like an inverse cruise control, though. Cruise control you engage while driving to lock the car to a certain speed. The maximum speed feature is something you configure ahead of a drive to limit the car’s top speed.
It can be used to limit the maximum speed of a particular driver, a teen for example, or to limit the car’s top speed when in valet mode. It can also be used as a blanket limit for any driver of the car.
When he first got his Tesla, my father-in-law set his at 75 so he wouldn’t speed too much. It was annoying, and he turned it off after not too long.
In my opinion, if someone can’t keep their own top speed in check, then they don’t have any business driving a car.
Round here, they patrol in pairs, so backup is never too far away. So, you see the first one, you take it easy. Get past the second then drive like Hell! 
Our fleet of trucks and vans (ranging from a panel van to a tractor-trailer) all have some kind of speed controls. These set off alarms when the speed limit is breached, but does not physically prevent the vehicle from going faster. It also reports the number of times the speed limit was breached, the maximum speed achieved during the breach, and the length of time of the breach.
If a truck goes 58 in a 55 for five seconds, it’s no biggie. If it’s going 65 for miles and miles, that’s a write-up and can lead to termination. This saves us a boatload on insurance. A lot of commercial fleets do this. There is a whole ecosystem of hardware, software and process to manage this. Not just speed, but lots and lots of driver behavior to ensure that no unnecessary risks are taken.
Of course our drivers are paid by the hour. We are careful to give them no incentive to speed. If they finish their routes early they don’t get to leave. They basically have to sit around the distribution center or hub until their scheduled time.
Owner-Operators have a whole different set of incentives. They are motivated to not only speed, but to exceed safe driving/rest time regulations. The old timers in particular are incredibly hostile to what they consider to be nanny-state regulations. It’s a cat and mouse game with regulators and insurers. Though it’s getting harder for them to evade scrutiny. There’s just too much electronic signature for a truck these days.
Is yours a GPS based system? Can they go over 55 in a 65mph or 70mph highway? Do they get flagged if they’re doing 55 mph on a residential street or in a school zone during school hours?
There are times when you really NEED to go faster, like when passing or to avoid an accident, or taking someone to a hospital, etc etc. Mind you some cars do have governors which prevent very high speeds.
No- cops, at least here in CA, do not have quotas. But let us say on a certain shift in a certain area, most officers write 20-30 tickets per months, and on your shift, month after month, you write only 5-10, The Sgt will want to know why.
Heck, there are frequently times when I NEED to accelerate to get out of a potentially sticky situation, such as when a tailgater comes up on me while I am passing a big rig. Since I hate having the former on my ass and the latter next to me, because you never know when they’ll do something loopy, I’ll typically gun it to get far far away from both.
Yes GPS based. The systems record a lot of information, but only alarm and alert for some events.
We have to act on the notifications, because if we don’t our liability will increase because in case of an accident the data will be “discoverable” by someone suing us.
And test the threshold for speeding is the limit for that kind of vehicle on that stretch of roadway. In many places a panel van can go 65, but a tractor trailer only 55, for example. The system knows this.
I don’t know about temporary or time of day speed limits, like school zones. I do know that the system sometimes does not know about road closures, but often does. So sometimes a driver will be incorrectly flagged for taking a circuitous route. There was recent flooding that set off alarms everywhere because several roads were closed.
There are also alerts when a tractor trailer goes through narrow residential streets and unpaved roads.
Ticket quotas are illegal here.
But it’s not illegal to require a certain number of officer initiated contacts.
If I make 20 contacts in a month and write 15 cites does that look better or worse than if I make 40 contacts and write 8 cites? Which makes me look more proactive? The courts are strict here. We can’t just write picky scripts or they’ll get kicked. At least 15 over, stopngo runners, dangerous stuff.
A patrolman is as busy as he/she makes themselves. If there isn’t some kind of standard officers will just find a straw box some shifts and only do something when dispatched on assignment.
Way back in the early 90’s during my first career the Sheriffs Office had a mandate limiting overtime. I took a side gig with a small township to make some extra money. They had a quota of an average of 1 written cite for every 17 hours you worked. Where they came up with that I know not. You’d write a couple of scripts and then slack off. This was before the ticket quotas ban. Had there been a quota on actual contacts We’d of actually stopped more cars and written more tickets.
You do want drivers blowing red lights and driving very fast stopped. Don’t you?
Of course. I work out of south Florida for a few weeks each year. Those cops SHOULD have quotas. Big ones!
My Daughter got pulled over one night, after work, driving people home to places she had never been before, in a snow storm, for driving to slow. I’m 99% certain the cop thought he had a DUI, but nope, she was just off from Chili’s trying to get some co-workers home, in the snow. She said he was very pissed when he let them go, there was nothing to give her a ticket for.
Quotas are illegal in New Jersey.
I’ve only worked in one department. Even before quotas were banned we were not a particularly active with tickets. It is part of the job of a patrol officer so traffic enforcement is expected. But it certainly isn’t the most important part. Most write around 10 a month.
The only time when there was pressure on me to write tickets was when I was assigned as a traffic officer for about a year and a half. But traffic enforcement was 90% of that job.