A bill introduced in the California legislature would require certain vehicles starting with the 2027 model year to include speed-limiting technology to prevent them from reaching more than 10 miles per hour over posted speed limits.

Introduced last week by state Sen. Scott Wiener, the bill if passed would affect passenger vehicles, motortrucks and buses made or sold in the state, exempting emergency vehicles. Violating it would result in a criminal charge.

The bill follows calls by some national traffic safety groups to require such technology in new models to help slow a rise in traffic deaths that they attribute in part to an increase in aggressive driving.

This past fall, the National Transportation Safety Board and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and other organizations that are part of the Road to Zero Coalition called for automakers, regulators and fleet operators to promote technology known as intelligent speed assistance, or ISA, and speed limiters. The institute says speeding causes more than a quarter of annual crash deaths, or more than 12,000 deaths in 2021.

The California bill would require an intelligent speed limiter system using a vehicle's GPS locator compared to a database of posted speed limits and electronically limiting the vehicle’s speed to not more than 10 miles per hour over those limits.

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