All new cars must have the devices from 7 July, adding fuel economy as well as safety. Will mpg become the new mph?
In the highway code and the law courts, there is no doubt what those big numbers in red circles mean. As a quick trip up any urban street or motorway with no enforcement cameras makes clear though, many drivers still regard speed signs as an aspiration rather than a limit.
Technology that will be required across Europe from this weekend may change that culture, because from 7 July all new cars sold in the EU and in Northern Ireland must have a range of technical safety features fitted as standard. The most notable of these is intelligent speed assistance – or colloquially, a speed limiter.
The rest of the UK is theoretically free, as ministers once liked to put it, to make the most of its post-Brexit freedoms, but the integrated nature of car manufacturing means new vehicles here will also be telling their drivers to take their foot off the accelerator. Combining satnav maps with a forward camera to read the road signs, they will automatically sound an alarm if driven too fast for the zone they are in.
Will mpg become the new mph?
No because Europeans use neither mpg nor mph. 🤭
This sounds like blown up bullshit.
How does this speed limiter work exactly, I don’t see that mentioned anywhere.
If I drive Autobahn it’s not the same as driving passed a school in the city. How does the speed limiter know the speed limit?
To know that accurately, sounds like a somewhat expensive mandatory piece of equipment.
And how come I have heard absolutely zero about this from either car reviewers or local news media?
I looked it up for my country (Denmark), these are NOT mandatory that I can find, and they can ONLY be installed by public authorized shops, and from the paperwork required, it seems like the installer decides the limit, there are no mandatory limits.
So it seems like the whole story is bullshit.
EDIT:
Intelligent speed assistance seems to be a thing, but this is a pretty crucial part:
The ISA system is required to work with the driver and not to restrict his/her possibility to act in any moment during driving. The driver is always in control and can easily override the ISA system.
From the OP the Guardian article:
Drivers of most new cars will be familiar with similar features already installed, but they are currently easy to override.
Yes and that’s how it will continue to be with Intelligent speed assistance.
Article is bullshit these are NOT speed limiters, which is a completely different thing, despite that I can see numerous articles in English erroneously calling this speed limiters, when it’s nothing of the sort.
Otherwise, what’s an ACTUAL speed limiter called? You know like what is popular in many new cars, that have speed limiters that prevent you from driving faster than for instance 160 km/h.
In Canada we call them engine governors and they’ve been around for decades (mostly on semis/tractor trailer units).
I know most Mercedes cars have had speed limiters for many years, but those were traditionally at 250 km/h.
An engine governor sounds more like preventing revving it to high.
“Combining satnav maps with a forward camera to read the road signs, they will automatically sound an alarm if driven too fast for the zone they are in.”
“From now on, however, cars will be designed with systems that are impossible to permanently turn off, restarting each time the engine does. Will car lovers see this as pure progress?”
It doesn’t sound hard to disable… speakers only have 2 wires. Snip-Snip.
You aren’t disabling the system, that still works fine, it just has no output.
IIRC it’s not an audio alarm, the car will push back on the pedal so that if you push past the limit it will need a bit more force.
And even if they were just speakers, they would most likely be the main speakers, so you’d be taking out your sound system.
Just quoting the article:
“Combining satnav maps with a forward camera to read the road signs, they will automatically sound an alarm if driven too fast for the zone they are in.”
Well it will be harder to argue against fines etc. you where warned and either ignored the warning or disabled the warning and accepted the risk.
With the height of fines in some countries…
I’d imagine the next step will the even stricter measurements, harsher fines and more SPECS.
The one thing nobody is fixing is the constant phone use in cars. This issue is far more common than speeding and creates jams and dangerous situations all the time. Makes me hate being a part of traffic. I tend to speed by about 10% on highways but never in 30 and 50 zones. The very idea of a “smart” car taking control of my brake, throttle or steering makes me wanna barf.
Cars are, themselves, the problem. We’ve created a two ton rolling death machine and now we’re stuck adding more and more features to address the original sin of unleashing them across the country to begin with.
The very idea of a “smart” car taking control of my brake, throttle or steering makes me wanna barf.
Its that, or people will be forced to endure the unlimited nightmare indignity of taking the train/bus.
My car lets me set a threshold - currently +7mph. I can see on the dashboard when I’ve exceeded my self-imposed threshold, vs when I am between that and the actual speed limit. Actually I wish it would do a bit more, like turn yellow.
I also ignore it in crowded areas, and pedestrian crossings, school zones, construction zones with people working, etc.
Although I’m really pissed at whoever thought the wide straight parkway leading through the woods up to my workplace is 15 mph. That’s the reason people ignore speed limits
However it is not set by anyone but me, never limits the vehicle, doesn’t make noise, and doesn’t get reported to anyone (as far as I know).
Governors aren’t anything new. It’s not taking control, rather just limiting speed.
They wont be new when most people have used and adapted to them. Limiting speed is taking control. I can imagine situations when having the ability to speed up can save your life or avoid a crash (think overtaking, avoiding falling obstacles or percieved danger from other vehicles with distracted drivers). Theres’s a lot more about this then just limiting speed.
Or it could just be a limiter on top speed. I know there are a few Chevrolets (like the volt) that limit top speed to around 90mph. I’d argue that’s pretty reasonable, as I don’t believe there is a public road where the speed limit is that high in the US. However, I do agree that the bigger issue is phone use and how no one seems to have a simple answer for fixing it (probably need a mandated mode which limits functions when the GPS detects you going over a certain speed, but which would require a large amount of industry cooperation which probably isn’t available).
If it limits your speed, it’s taking control of your speed, otherwise it’s not really limiting your speed.
Basic logic 101.
Governors don’t “take control”. You don’t get to 101mph and it goes oh better reduce his speed. It prevents you from getting there.
Regardless, I re-read the article and it’s far more advanced than a governor. This article is indeed talking about something that takes control (uses technology to try and determine speed limits for example).
My comment on US plans to make impaired driving detectors mandatory also applies to these speed limiters.. I admire the desire to make it safer, but holy shit are car manufacturers going to jump on this opportunity to sell out all of your driving data to insurance companies, causing your rates to randomly double and removing any semblance of privacy, and it will also involve additional parts and sensors that will be as closely corner cut as legally allowed such that it breaks as frequently as possible.
a “safe” idea, sure, do I want it, absolutely not, and I will never trust a corporation to implement it ‘correctly’.
They already sell you all that data sorry to tell ya. Never allow your car to access your contact list unless ya want the manufacturer to sell that data off too
Is it a little beep or a constant alarm? I can’t imagine that many drivers would tolerate having a constant alarm.
I’m in the USA and my impression here is that currently safety advocates are happy to set very low speed limits, drivers are happy to ignore those speed limits, and so everything works out. If speed limits were actually consistently enforced, I imagine there would be a lot of push-back against the politicians responsible.
We need to breed a new generation of drivers who find driving in a more relaxed manner can be just as rewarding.
I don’t see that happening.
Road engineers are happy to design streets to encourage higher speeds than is safe as well.
Come to my town. If you obey the speed limit you hit almost every light on red. Do 5-10 mph over and you hit most on green.
If you are at a red, the light will not change most times until there is a decent amount of traffic coming from another direction. When they get closer, they will get a red and you get a green. Making them stop.
I want to meet the idiots who designed this system.
Sounds like it should be the exact opposite. In a road in a city near here they have leds installed in the streets and everything set for a green wave. If you drive in the green zone of the LEDs, you will have all lights green. It was a proof of concept and pretty cool imho.
The speed limits are low because nobody respects them anyway. You could make actual meaningful speed limits if everyone would drive them.
I think people drive at speeds their comfortable with not some arbitrary number over any posted limit. In my state, they limit freeway speeds to 65MPH but I’ll usually do 75-80MPH in a big chain with all the other people commuting. Last time we were in Montana, the posted limit was 80MPH and I still only drove 75-80MPH because I feel comfortable at that speed.
Yeah in one of my previous cars you could set a speed above which the car would warn. I tried it and above the set speed the alarm would constantly sound. This was probably the initial implementation. The car also had an assist camera to avoid low speed collisions. So all the tech was already in the car… that was a Skoda from 2013.
