Overspeeding is a public safety threat in the United States. The number of road crash deaths blamed on speeding, over 100,000 from 2010 to 2019, plus the estimated 41 million speeding tickets issued by traffic enforcers every year, as reported by Yahoo! News, are enough proof of the risk posed by such reckless driving.

The National Transportation Safety Board is promoting one remedy to the problem and to protect lives. The solution is to require automakers to install technology called intelligent speed assistance in every new vehicle they sell.

ISA uses a global positioning system to automatically register the posted speed limit on any given road. It then intervenes to either prompt drivers to slow down or force them to, according to Yahoo! News.

While American authorities have yet to adopt ISA, the European Union is moving in that direction and plans to require ISA installed on all new cars.

India may also have to adopt the ISA, though not necessarily for road vehicles. With the recent incident of an apparently overspeeding freight train, the ISA may come in handy to prevent disasters arising from such a situation.

A video showing the train zooming past several stations without stopping while en route from Kathua in Jammu and Kashmir to Hoshiarpur district in Punjab state on 23 February went viral on social media.

Netizens and later Indian officials saw the viral video and were shocked to learn that the 53-wagon train loaded with stone chips had no driver as it sped at up to 100 kilometers per hour on the tracks.

Reports said the train was in Kathua to replace its two-man crew when it rolled down a slope on the railway tracks after the train driver and his assistant got off, BBC News reports.

Authorities closed railway crossings along the driverless train’s path to prevent it from colliding with other trains. Wood blocks on the tracks slowed down the speeding train until it eventually stopped.