Newsom Vetoes Bill Requiring Cars to Warn Speeding Drivers

The legislation would have made California the first state in the nation to require intelligent speed assistance technology in vehicles.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday vetoed California legislation that would have mandated that all new cars in the state have a system that alerts drivers when they exceed the speed limit by more than 10 miles per hour.

Speeding is a factor in nearly one-third of traffic fatalities in the United States, and the legislation’s supporters said they wanted to curb rising roadway deaths by making California the first state in the nation to require the technology.

The state has a long history of adopting vehicle requirements, particularly on emissions, that have spurred automakers to adopt changes across their national fleet. Backers hoped that the California speed sensor law would have similarly forced changes that would have had an impact beyond the state.

Intelligent speed assistance systems have been widely used in Europe for years, and they became mandatory in July in all new cars sold in the European Union. They are similar to other driver assistance technologies that, for example, notify drivers if a car is their blind spot or if their vehicle is drifting into another lane.

Research in Europe has found that speed-warning systems reduce average driving speed, speed variability and the proportion of time that a driver exceeds the speed limit, said Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, which has urged the federal government to require the technology in the United States.

The California bill would have mandated that, beginning with model year 2030, all new passenger vehicles, trucks and buses in California would have to include technology that emits visual and audio signals that notify drivers when they have exceeded the posted speed limit. Emergency vehicles and motorcycles would have been exempt, as would vehicles without GPS or a front-facing camera.

But several groups opposed the proposal, particularly car manufacturers and dealers. They argued that the rules would have created a patchwork of regulations across the country that would have been confusing for automakers.

Mr. Newsom has not been shy about imposing new requirements on national automakers. In 2020, he signed an executive order calling on state regulators to phase out sales of new vehicles with internal combustion engines in California by 2035. But this time, he sided with industry arguments that California should not go its own way.

He said, in a veto message, that “adding California-specific requirements would create a patchwork of regulations” that undermines the federal regulatory approach by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Though California’s law would apply only to vehicles sold in the state, it is likely that some auto manufacturers would have put the systems in all new cars, rather than go to the trouble and expense of creating different models for sale in different states.

Opponents argued that N.H.T.S.A has been already been evaluating the systems, and that California should wait for that federal assessment.

“Automakers developed technologies like intelligent speed assist to help improve roadway safety, but the right forum to debate new vehicle technology requirements is with the federal regulator,” the Alliance for Automotive Innovation said in a statement. “We can’t have 50 states setting 50 competing sets of vehicle technology and safety rules.”

Scott Wiener, a Democratic state senator from San Francisco who proposed the bill, compared the legislation to seatbelt laws. In the 1960s, Wisconsin became the first state to mandate seatbelts, which eventually led to the adoption of a federal seatbelt requirement.

“Today’s veto is a setback for street safety at a time Californians are feeling extremely unsafe,” Senator Wiener said.

“California should have led on this crisis as Wisconsin did in passing the first seatbelt mandate in 1961,” he added. “Instead, this veto resigns Californians to a completely unnecessary risk of fatality.”