I drove a Gen 5 Prelude (cheap!) which was in nice condition. It is a very pretty car… fantastic cornering…a joy to drive… but not fast.

This was in an affluent Toronto neighbourhood where it was common to extremely fast cars everywhere… even exotic supercars were a common sight. Lambos were not unusual. I even saw Bugatti’s twice in the wild [the VW headquarters was nearby].

In this context, random guys would compliment me on my old Prelude. Toronto is a pretty friendly city but this was weekly. At the corner store, a guy pulls up in a top-end crazy-fast Genesis and gushes about how nice my car was. Another guy in a Civic R-type rolled down his window in a traffic jam and offered to buy it. The old guy at the hot dog stand told me it was the car he always wanted. My older neighbour said the same. This happened all the time. Almost always guys… only got a complement from a cute girl once. :-(

Eventually I give the car to my son. Now he’s the cool young guy driving a car as old he his is getting the random complements from people he doesn’t know.

Gen 5 2001 Honda Prelude had a throttle cable. I know my 2008 Mazda 3 did not. So I’m guessing the switch was somewhere in that time range.

I see two issues:

1. I live in a country [Canada] where the speed limit isn’t the enforced speed limit. They are artificially low and driving above the speed limit is fully expected. Even the police discourage driving at the speed limit in anything but the right lane. So, some automated enforcement of the speed limit sounds like a horrible idea.
2. I also live in an area where there are numerous “default” speed limits with no speed limit posted on major streets. On the street I live on, the car speed limit detector magic has no idea of the speed limit and will falsely read other signs [like parking lot signs]. It sometimes thinks the speed is 30kph. If you automated this, it would be a safety hazard and people would probably get hurt.

Another idea. The first car I ever owned was 70hp and could barely squeeze out 120kph [75 mph]. Today, all of my cars are 160hp+ and will do well over 200kph today [and I’m not suggesting this as a good idea]. These are average cars. Performance cars will go far faster than this. The point is, modern cars are stupidly fast. Faster than anyone needs.

So… maybe instead of inventing ridiculous Orwellian computerized controls we set reasonable regulations on car performance limits and make performance modifications illegal and subject to vehicle seizure. This last statement is controversial but I think it is inevitable for many reasons.