By Jaymie Baxley
Matt Simpson was on a bicycle ride with his wife and two young children when a Volkswagen Jetta barreled through a crosswalk near their Durham home in July 2022.
The car, which was traveling at nearly twice the posted speed limit, struck Simpson, who died from his injuries at a local hospital.
“Matt was brilliant and creative,” his widow, Allison Simpson, said in testimony to state lawmakers last week at the North Carolina General Assembly in Raleigh. “More importantly, he was a devoted husband and father who filled our home with joy.”
She was one of several people who went before a committee of the N.C. House of Representatives on June 9 to express support for a bill that would use technology to prevent habitual speeders from flouting speed limits.
The legislation, House Bill 1199, cleared the committee and now heads to appropriations. Its sponsor, Rep. Mike Schietzelt (R-Raleigh), calls it the SEATBELT Act — short for Stronger Enforcement and Accountability for Transportation Behavior and Emerging Lifesaving Technology.
Its centerpiece is a provision allowing courts to require so-called Intelligent Speed Assistance systems in the vehicles of drivers whose licenses have been revoked or limited because of reckless driving or repeated speeding offenses.
Schietzelt explained that the devices use GPS technology to automatically limit a vehicle’s acceleration once it reaches the posted speed limit. Unlike traditional speed cameras or radar traps, the systems work passively — requiring no police presence or after-the-fact citation to enforce compliance.
“If I have one of these installed in my car and I am sitting out on Jones Street, and I decide as I pull out of here that I’m going to floor it, it’s going to accelerate just as fast as it can until it hits about 19 miles an hour, and then it’s going to ease back on the throttle until I reach 25 miles an hour,” Schietzelt said. “It’s not going to allow me to accelerate any further.”
The technology is not exactly new. Schietzelt said the same systems have been standard equipment in commercial trucking and delivery fleets for decades.
”We have been using these for 20 years in fleet vehicles,” he said. “Anytime you’re driving around and you see a truck that says ‘this vehicle’s speed is monitored by GPS’ — that’s what they’re referring to.”
‘We must do better’
Despite being nicknamed the “Good Roads State,” North Carolina has one of the nation’s highest rates of deadly crashes involving speeding motorists.
A study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that there were 660 speeding-related fatalities on North Carolina roads in 2022. Only Texas and California, states with far larger populations, had more.
Allison Simpson, who spoke at the hearing on behalf of the national advocacy organization Families for Safe Streets, said the man who struck her husband “had been caught driving with a revoked license 28 times” before that fatal hit-and-run.
“Each day in North Carolina, traffic crashes kill five people and seriously injure hundreds more,” she said. “We must do better.”
Ryan Moeller, another speaker from Families for Safe Streets, told lawmakers that his 63-year-old mother, Joan Drake, was “internally decapitated” by a motorist who was traveling 98 miles an hour in Clayton in 2023.
“I don’t believe this was the first or last time they ever drove like that,” Moeller said of the driver, who was sentenced to 18 months probation in connection with the crash. “If they would have had this device, my mom would still be here.”
Schietzelt said Virginia and Washington, D.C., have adopted policies requiring Intelligent Speed Assistance devices. Five other states have passed similar measures, but they have not yet taken effect, he said.
The SEATBELT Act would require drivers to keep the devices installed for one year after their license has been reinstated. That is typically how long it takes for a person to form new habits and change their behavior behind the wheel, according to Schietzelt.
“We’re talking about people who have been documented with a historical problem of not just exceeding the speed limit, but far exceeding the speed limit or driving in a willful or wanton way that’s going to create dangerous situations on our roads,” he said.
It’s not yet clear how much the devices will cost, but Schietzelt said drivers who cannot afford them would have access to the same fee waiver program that helps low-income motorists pay for court-ordered dashboard breathalyzers to deter drunken driving.
Drivers whose income is at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level, or who are enrolled in programs like SNAP or Medicaid, can apply to have installation costs waived. They’ll also receive a 50 percent discount on monthly service fees.
The bill includes explicit limits on what data the devices may collect and share, barring vendors from selling or commercially exploiting driver information. But questions arose at the hearing about whether the state could use the devices to track or penalize drivers for other infractions — concerns Schietzelt attempted to dispel.
“We’re not capturing data on there; we’re not remitting it to the DMV and snitching on you for speeding,” he said. “It simply prevents you from exceeding the speed limit.”
Beyond speed limiters
The speed-limiting devices are the bill’s most prominent feature, but the legislation also makes significant changes to how North Carolina handles drunken driving and traffic enforcement in school zones.
Under current law, ignition interlock devices — dashboard breathalyzers that prevent a car from starting if the driver has been drinking — are required only for drivers whose blood alcohol content registers at 0.15 or above. The SEATBELT Act would lower that threshold to 0.08, the legal limit for impaired driving, aligning North Carolina with 34 other states.
Robert Dalton, the state executive director of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, told the committee that the breathalyzers reduce drunken driving by 67 percent compared with license suspension alone and have “stopped nearly 50,000 drunk driving attempts” in North Carolina over the past two decades.
The bill would also expand the use of automated traffic cameras in school zones. Under the legislation, municipalities and counties could use the cameras to enforce not only speed limits but also stop-sign and crosswalk laws — violations that currently require a police officer to witness the infraction.
That provision, Schietzelt noted, is “permissive,” meaning local governments could choose to adopt the technology but would not be required to do so. Five other states use similar school-zone camera enforcement systems, he said.
A separate provision of the bill would appropriate $9 million to fund the recording of district court proceedings — a change aimed at improving accountability and record-keeping in the courts where most traffic cases are heard.
Questions of fairness
Reighlah Collins, policy counsel for ACLU of North Carolina, was the only speaker who voiced opposition to the bill.
“When laws require drivers to pay fees to have their driver’s license restored, those who cannot afford to pay are more likely to lose their job, take time off from work or be restricted in their ability to find new work,” she told lawmakers. “Even with the partial fee waivers available for some low-income drivers, requiring an ISA system to drive can be prohibitively expensive.”
Collins added that the bill “creates an impossible situation” for residents who don’t own vehicles but need an active driver’s license as a condition of their employment. She further warned that its requirements could ensnare drivers in situations they could not reasonably anticipate or avoid.
“If someone needs to drive a car other than the one equipped with an ISA system in an emergency, their license will be canceled,” Collins said. “Then we are back to the problems mentioned before, related to job loss and poverty.”
Tasha Harrison Springs, meanwhile, told lawmakers she had once been exactly the kind of driver the legislation targets.
“I was a super speeder,” she said. “I would drive 100 miles per hour just to get to work, for fun.”
Springs, who lives in Winston-Salem, said she accumulated 12 failure-to-appear citations, lost her license repeatedly, and was arrested three times before a distracted driving crash left her with lasting physical injuries.
“If I would have had this technology in the car, it would never have come to that,” she said. “These types of crashes are preventable.”
The post Could technology stop repeat speeders? Some NC lawmakers think so. appeared first on North Carolina Health News.
