Paying lip-service to curbing pollution?
The BBC reports (my emphasis in the following quote):
There are calls for the European Union to ban the making of cars that can go at more than 101mph (162km/h).The proposal is from a British MEP. I think it is strange that Germany, which has a very high traffic density, doesn’t have any maximum speed limit (although in practice a large number of Autobahn kilometers do have speed restrictions: at accident blackspots, to reduce noise, because of roadworks, or sometimes simply because the road surface is falling apart). Maximum speeds, which would obviously need to be enforced, could help lower pollution.
The proposal comes in a report to the European Parliament on EU plans for a law to curb CO2 emissions from cars.
However banning the manufacture of “high-speed cars” is hardly likely to solve any problems related to pollution.
It will simply encourage moving the production of pretty well all cars to non-EU countries (How many models produced in the EU have a top speed lower than 162 km/h? Even the cheapest Fiat Panda you can buy does 150 km/h). This is something that would probably have happened to a lesser degree anyway due to the pressures on production costs. The result will be just as many heavy, fast cars polluting Europe and an accelerated movement of manufacturing jobs away from the EU.