I wrote:
A car that is capable of 100 mph maximum on a level road will probably go much slower up a steep hill. It does make sense to have a car capable of going 80 or 90 mph even on a steep hill, because in rare instances you have to have that much speed to avoid an accident.
Note that the Prius is controlled by computer rather than mechanically. In aviation terms it is "fly by wire." The Prius computer limits the car to 96 mph. The car has enough engine power to go faster, but this limitation is set because it is the maximum safe speed for the tires.
I expect that all future automobiles will be fly by wire designs and therefore they will all be capable of high-speed passing steep hills, while at the same time they will not be allowed to go faster than ~90 mph, which is a reasonable limit.
In the more distant future, I hope that cars will be limited in speed depending on where they are driving. They will be equipped with GPS units or some kind of road sensor that tells them where they are and what the local speed limit is. For example in an urban neighborhood surface road the car will not go faster than 35 mph, even if you floor it.
And finally, perhaps 100 years from now, I hope that all cars are entirely self driving, as I explained in the book. These cars will never exceed the speed limit, and the number of passengers and pedestrians they kill per year will be roughly equivalent to the number of people killed in commercial aviation today.
I doubt that it is possible to have cars moving through surface roads with zero pedestrian casualties per year. Even with artificial intelligence as good as human intelligence for the limited purpose of driving, and even limited to running and bicycling speeds (10 or 20 km/h), pedestrians in collisions will be killed. This will happen so infrequently it will be front page news.
(Not that we will have "pages" or newspapers -- yesterday for the first time some national newspapers announced that they are limiting delivery to three days per week and they are encouraging readers to read online. This is the beginning of the end of paper printed newspapers. It is another small step toward the inevitable.)
- Jed
