Cycling UK Forum

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47715415

A possibility or pie in the sky?

The AA's mask slips as it argues that speeding helps one join motorways (it doesn't, as the nearside lanes are mostly tachographed lorries) and King added: "Dodgem cars are all fitted with speed limiters, but they still seem to crash." Ignoring that the speed limiters limits the severity of those crashes.

Dodgem cars are meant to crash!

Speed limiters do sound like a good idea -- perhaps in time they'll even get rid of the 'push harder to overcome limiter' feature and make it a hard limit -- but they can and will be bypassed (just as the tachographed lorries or your teenage FS1E). Probably more significant in the long run IMO will be the trackers. The 'enhanced' emergency braking will be a saver in emergencies (apparently even with ABS many drivers don't press hard enough on the brake pedal in an emergency) but won't do anything to avoid those situations occurring.

The linked article is the usual garbled nonsense that results from trying to inject some sensationalism into the facts.

Road safety: UK set to adopt vehicle speed limiters

To me, that headline suggests that vehicles will be incapable of exceeding speed limits, when that is not so. Technology which alerts drivers to speed limits will be made compulsory, as will so-called black boxes recording data about aspects of driver behaviour, notably speed.

So if you have an accident, the police and your insurance company will know whether you've been going too fast. If you've been keeping your foot down and routinely ignoring the car's warnings, they may take a very dim view of your actions.

While this information would obviously be useful to all concerned following a crash, it's hard to imagine that it will be restricted in that way. There's already at least one insurance company that offers discounts to drivers who use its driver bahaviour app. Also, if info is being recorded, it's hard to see it not being available to the police in one form or another without waiting for a crash.

To put this another way, a lot of people now use dashcams fitted with GPS technology to record what happened, including things like their speed. There may be some who use that info for bragging purposes but I believe the majority are happy that their own driving should be recorded. This is just extending that to those who would rather their antics were not recorded.

How will these cars measure the speeds?

Our car - when compared to our TomTom - reads thus:
70mph indicated is actually 65mph by GPS
30mph indicated is actually 26mph by GPS

Given that GPS speed is susceptible to spurious errors, maybe they can't use it or rely on it.
Considering that our car's odometer seems spot on with GPS and one mile takes one minute at 60mph(GPS), it must be that the speedo reads rather pessimistically .................... by design.

(I've carried out experiments, so I know the facts)

As a general rule speedometers are up to 10% fast.

By far the funniest thing about this is the outrage on the brexitear sites; "nanny state", "we voted to leave the EU two years ago!", "I never voted for this".
It's an endless but amusing list.

I might suggest that just like those who stocked up on tungsten light bulbs they stock up on old cars...

kwackers wrote:By far the funniest thing about this is the outrage on the brexitear sites; "nanny state", "we voted to leave the EU two years ago!", "I never voted for this".
It's an endless but amusing list.

I might suggest that just like those who stocked up on tungsten light bulbs they stock up on old cars...

As suggested in the other thread, it's very naughty of some publishers to report this as an EU decision foisted on us because the UK government has said it is in favour of adopting it even after Brexit. However, it does show you which publications still like to perpetuate Euromyths.

It is an EU decision, probably in the role it has taken over/inherited from UNECE. It also has support from UK. Finally, it's not purely about road safety, there is also an element of market protection and differentiation in it. Although many of the individual elements have been used in other markets for many years, for instance speed limiters in Japan and black boxes in USA.

Presumably all those who have spent the last 20 years whinging that speed cameras are just a method of extracting cash from motorists will be loudly proclaiming their support for this technology that will bring this revenue stream to an end.

Mick F wrote:How will these cars measure the speeds?

Our car - when compared to our TomTom - reads thus:
70mph indicated is actually 65mph by GPS
30mph indicated is actually 26mph by GPS

Given that GPS speed is susceptible to spurious errors, maybe they can't use it or rely on it.
Considering that our car's odometer seems spot on with GPS and one mile takes one minute at 60mph(GPS), it must be that the speedo reads rather pessimistically .................... by design.

(I've carried out experiments, so I know the facts)

Limits are that, the absolute maximum speed in the very best conditions with zero hazards in eyeline, they are not targets, so if in your case your speedometer reads 70 and you're actually only doing 65, where's the problem? If your very maximum indicated speed is 70 then that means you're with the maximum limit at any given time if your comparisons are correct, I'm not seeing any downside to that?

As it is, IF your speed is only an actual 26 and it's indicating 30 on the dial/readout then that's a fair old chunk out at such relatively low speeds, are your tyres the correct size?

Re this news, it's not actually been voted through yet AIUI, in any case it's three years off at the earliest AND importantly is yet more fluff as it can be over-ridden simply so is basically a load of pony. It will also have no bearing on the tens of millions of existing vehicles and their operators in this country never mind elsewhere around Europe, nor will it for decades to come until all 'old' motors are scrapped.
Government if they had any gumption or really wanting to do something useful regarding road safety would push through having all vehicles retrofitted with devices at the cost to the owners of the vehicles at the next MOT AND have max speed limits hard wired so that vehicles cannot exceed them no matter how hard the operator pushes on the pedal.
It would generate a lot of jobs in the industry, it would likely push insurance costs down overall so the money for the units would be reclaimed even if in part over time anyways, it would save on fuel costs too AND the big one save on lives and injuries to all road users as well as making the road experience much less rubbish.
But that like segregated infra is pie in the sky

So as it is I'm not impressed by yet more fluff

kwackers wrote:By far the funniest thing about this is the outrage on the brexitear sites; "nanny state", "we voted to leave the EU two years ago!", "I never voted for this".
It's an endless but amusing list.

I might suggest that just like those who stocked up on tungsten light bulbs they stock up on old cars...

And remainers keep moaning, do you think that the majority of remainers aren't against this also?? Can we keep non cycle related political comment away from the cycle section please, there's simply no need to introduce it here!

I use my cruise control to limit my speed to just below the limit anyway. That way you don’t accidentally stray over the speed limit.

One of the reasons given for not adopting this is that you may need to accelerate away from danger. I can honestly say in 40 years of driving that I have never had to do this.

Speed limited vehicles are something I have wanted to see for a couple of years now. As someone who has accidentally incurred the wrath of a speed camera (in a minor way) I would love to have a car incapable of exceeding the speed limit. It would be a relief. One less thing to worry about. And imagine the harmony of a motorway on which no vehicle is capable of doing more than 70. It would actually make motorway traffic flow better, I think. The only downside is that this will only be available on new cars at first, and I don't buy new cars.

The fact that this is coming at us from the direction of the EU is neither here nor there. The technology is now established so it was coming anyway, sooner or later.

TrevA wrote:I use my cruise control to limit my speed to just below the limit anyway. That way you don’t accidentally stray over the speed limit.

One of the reasons given for not adopting this is that you may need to accelerate away from danger. I can honestly say in 40 years of driving that I have never had to do this.

I think it was one of the Google self-driving engineers who was asked to comment on this, who said 999 times out of 1000 the more appropriate response was to hit the brakes.