Any law, including a speed limit, has unforeseen consequences. In my part of the world, there is a 4km stretch of the road with good visibility, low pedestrian traffic, and which takes you either 10 minutes to go through if you follow the limits, or 3 minutes if you drive at +5km/h.

Other than lost time (which compounds, but also increases traffic congestion, so those 10 mins might turn into 20-25), the fuel use and pollution are greatly increased.

Interestingly, there are speed cameras there, and enforcement is not done on these slight violations: without this flexibility, I'd need to ask for traffic lights to be adjusted so they work well for driving under speed limits, and that is slow and an annoying process.

But without an option to "try", I wouldn't even know this is the case, and I wouldn't even be able to offer this as a suggestion.

Whether that accounts for consequences being "grave and terrible", probably not, but very suboptimal for sure.

> would the consequences really be grave and terrible if the enforcement was enforced by a robot

The potential consequences of mass surveillance come to mind.

Yeah, I'd have to go slower????

Anyway. I come from the UK where we've had camera based enforcement for aeons. This of course actually results in people speeding and braking down to the limit as they approach the camera (which is of course announced loudly by their sat nav). The driving quality is frankly worse because of this, not better, and it certainly doesn't reduce incidence of speeding.

Of course the inevitable car tracker (or average speed cameras) resolve this pretty well.

For one thing, the speed limit is intentionally set 5-10mph too low, specifically to make it easier to prove guilt when someone breaks the "real" speed limit.