Speed governor
Note the devices do not store any information regarding location, time or any other variable, including driver speed over the length of a journey.
Yeah. how long before it will i wonder?
London government plans for self-adjusting speed governing kit, capable of automatically keeping a vehicle below the local speed limit, are advancing. Trials in the capital will take place this summer. The equipment in question is known as Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA), and has been under development since at least 2007 …
Yer basic GPS is not accurate enough for safety-critical uses.
My speed camera detector warns me of 30mph mobile camera sites along-side the M6, and the last time I used it the Tom Tom thought I was driving through fields rather than on the M4. The camera detector also still thought there was a 50 mph SPECS site in non-existent roadworks on the M5.
In those cases I called it a stupid piece of junk and ignored it. If the GPS was hooked up to the car's throttle and brakes, it would have thrown out the anchors and I'd have been rammed by anything without a limiter.
Having said that, a GPS-based limit warning system could be useful. The Tom Tom has this, but a lot of the limits are wrong so it bongs at you for no reason.
Alan.
Cutting the throttle on a car without having any information on the surrounding environment would be possibly one of the most insane concepts put forth.
Last time I looked on a motorway 90% of cars we going 80. Imagine tripping choker (one would guess there is a 10% leeway on the regulator as there is on speedcameras) and the trafic bend you smashing into each other, or overtaking and having to give it a bit more peddle and the choke kicking in.
Potentially fatal system on a motorbike. Riding a bike round a corner relies on the ability to add a bit of extra throttle to keep the bike at the right angle to complete the corner. Shut the throttle off and you will simply fall over, probably sliding towards the outside of the corner, and promptly getting run over by the bus coming the other way at a legal speed.
Completely misleading, as you'd expect from Clarksonite idiots.
What reduced speeds give you is shorter braking distances, both because of reduced kinetic energy, and because you travel less far in the available time.
In other words, you can STOP before you hit the object in question and damage/kill it and/or your vehicle.
"reducing fatal accidents, noting that most such occur in areas with a 30mph limit"
So what they're saying is that the existing speed limits don't do the thing that they're intended to do... at least they realise that.
Seems like a shitty idea to me - formula 1 used to have traction control, which meant that drivers just planted their foot and let the electronics sort it out - this seems to be the same idea. It was scrapped in F1 and should be scrapped here!
Also, they're making the assumption that people can reach the limiting speeds while travelling in central london!
However, like most gubermunt initiatives, it will be forced upon the public irrelevant of whether or not it's a good idea, so I would suggest an improvement would be to give the driver a 10/20/30 second warning before it cuts the throttle, so that overtaking etc isn't affected.
And.. we're driving nicely at 40 in the outskirts on a cloudy day and the bus/cab/my car goes over a 20mph zone on a bridge - the satnav gets confused - your nose gets real friendly with the windscreen.
Nice idea but nobody thinks things through these days - obsession with getting new technology out there before it goes stale or mouldy is the death of common sense.
"The transport authority believes that it would have significant effects in reducing fatal accidents, noting that most such occur in areas with a 30mph limit or less. "
And how many fatal accidents are caused by vehicles travelling over the speed limit? I am sure the trial will show an improvement as the figures will be cooked but I doubt there will be an statistically significant drop in deaths.
I knew how I zombified when I was using cruise control systems, so I don't use them any more. I've driven all over Europe and vehicles from mopeds to a period when I drove 7.5 ton trucks for a living. When everyone is in a long stretch of 50mph restriction enforced by SPECS, the result is bad enough ... but everyone driving like that, on all the roads, all the time ... f**k me sideways with a broom if I don't hand in my licence should this turn in to reality.
If they want to know what this is going to do, all they have to do is get a crowd of Vectras all together, say, twenty to thirty of them on the M4 at the same time all drivign from London to Cardif, get the up to 70mph and kick in cruise control; that'll show the pillocks what will happen. it'll probably make the evening news!
..emergencies, where people HAVE to go beyond the speed limit?
How about my pregnant wife can't make it to the hospital in time to have her baby, or god forbid, trying to outrun a natural disaster (though Britain itself seems to be a natural disaster recently).
In before we all become automatons...
a nice, recent, fully updated Tom Tom has a real problem in Milton Keynes that would stop me allowing one of these to be fitted to my car.
we have these beautiful National Speed Limit roads. But tom tom can't work out what speed you're allowed to do on them so it thinks they are 30.. bugger that for a lark.
Then there's that new dual carriageway thats a "70" but Tom Tom (dick dick) seems to think is still a single carriageway.
Now imagine if the maps are controlled by the government, how long will it take for updates to filter across?
"Micheal, there is no road here at all so I'm very sorry but I can't let you drive more than zero miles an hour"
[sound of boot hitting gps]
....lucky I don't live near London.
1. Speed limits are often wrong. For example a road by me is 70mph, yet SatNav thinks it's 30!
2. You over take a bus (you know them f**king things that constantly hold up traffic, don't feed me the Green bullshite) and you realise someone is suddenly coming the other way. Do you a) hit the brakes leaving on the wrong side of the road or b) floor it and get out of harms way. mmm tough call......
3. London has it's own speed restrictions. It's called London! "What I have a 4th and 5th gear?"
Im all for this... Ill have the original unit fitted to my car, then in 15 years time, when the roads have all had their limits slashed ill be happily 'tearing' about using the current 2009 speed data...
will all these systems automatically update themselves with limit changes and new roads?? or wll it suddenly become an offence to not update your box with the latest data??
"2. You over take a bus and you realise someone is suddenly coming the other way"
If you can't stop safely in the distance you can see clearly, you're not driving safely, in fact you're not fit to be on the road.
If a bus obstructs your vision such that you can't safely overtake then FFS DON'T OVERTAKE.
To any other idiots thinking as this gentleman does: please take a defensive driving course . Better to arrive late than never arrive at all.
"The system has no braking authority."
Which obviously sounds like a good thing but also raises the question of notifying the driver behind you that you're slowing down. You go from a national limit to a 30 zone and the car restricts power, how fast you slow down depends on the car model, if it's quite quick at slowing down should you not be using your brake lights or just open the boot and let the person behind in.
I'm with the other posters about the obvious drawback of using more power to get out of harms way.
Another issue of a more technical nature, your driving a turbo diesel, how do you limit the engine without engaging the turbo if the driver is just going to plant their foot to the floor and rely on the device to restrict the speed. I can see a lot of blown turbo's if they don't address this issue (it ain't cheap I can tell you).
Obviously there must be a way to update these units, and it will probably really secure like MiFare/Oyster.
So I'll just fit a device to my non-limited motorbike that does an update to any unit I pass that will either set all roads to 100mph limits, or 0mph limits, depending on how I am feeling today :)
You could be driving legally and have the road say one thing and the device think another (think the TomTom cases). What about intersections of two roads with different speed limits? How about two closely-aligned roads with differing speed limits? A recent issue with my GPS unit on divided motorways is that it thinks I'm on the opposite side of the road and notes me going in the opposite direction (GPS accuracy can vary). It also gives me trouble on reversible carriageways.
"I love all the complaints which ultimately boil down to "What if I'm driving like a retard and breaking the law when it suddenly kicks in?". Great reading."
They clearly don't all boil down that! If you care to take notice, some people have genuine concerns over the current limitations and accuracy of GPS systems!
Lets face it, they're not 100% accurate and definitely not foolproof!
Or read the article first...
If I lived inside the M25, and used a car to commute, and someone offered me a car that was limited to speed limits when inside the M25 i would probably ignore it, and walk on by.
If it was cheaper, either through initial subsidy, cheap/free tax, cheap insurance and congestion charge exempt i would definately be interested.
I'd be more interested if it only limited me when in 30 or 40 mph areas, but didn't bother me on a dual carriageway/motorway.
I'd be more interested if I knew it couldn't "phone home", or at least I couldn't be forced to let it...
I'd be really interested if it made the car fly /invisible / had machine guns in the indicators... oh, sorry!
Paris, cos i'd be most interested if they could trial it there first!
Please note the " " here...
Arguments supporting a control society are very convincing, they sound like "common sense," as a nation we "know" people engage in behaviour that increases the chance of harming others (eg. extreme porn and the chance of violent abuse, price of alchole and alchole abuse, drawings of children and child abuse, speeding and road deaths, anti-social behaviour and the reduction of respect.)
As this is all "common sense" a "common sense" approach seems to make sense,
A DNA database that means people do not commit crimes as it is easy to put a name to a crime. Also combined with mass compulsory registration scheme.
CCTV becouse it allows for "rapid responce" and adds to the DNA evidence.
A traffic control system becouse it stops unlawful behaviour on the roads.
Internet censorship to stop people viewing "dangerous" material.
Internet monitoring to locate those engaegd in socially unacceptable behaviour.
Tougher prison sentances.
More police on the street.
All of these make perfect sense, and would quite likely lead to a significant reduction in crime especially if combined with a paramilitary police force, a reduced burden of evidence and steamlined beurocracy.
However what is the flip side?
More innocent people sent to jail.
High levels of paranoia and social tension.
A reduction in risk taking.
An increase in complacency.
An over reliance on automated and dogmatic protection mechanisms.
An ever increasing desire to increase the role of the state in the management of society.
A return to the policies of the early 20th century of neutering those with mental defect?
Controls over diet? Return to rationing?
How about measures to deal with "environmental" issues?
For all intense of purpose we end up living in a highly controlled environment, much like an open air prison or an old style insane asylum. Very safe, but not very fuffiling.
What kind of psychological impact would result?
How would the prison guards be controlled?
Question is where does it end? When do you stop applying the "common sense" answer?
"If you can't stop safely in the distance you can see clearly, you're not driving safely, in fact you're not fit to be on the road.
If a bus obstructs your vision such that you can't safely overtake then FFS DON'T OVERTAKE.
To any other idiots thinking as this gentleman does: please take a defensive driving course . Better to arrive late than never arrive at all."
Nobody said anything about not being able to stop in the given distance. An "emergency stop" is often NOT the best way to deal with a developing situation; evasive manoeuvering including acceleration and/or change of direction can often be far more effective, safer, and cause less disruption to other road users.
In the given example, what about a car emerging from a parking space on the opposite side of the road ahead of you (because the other driver hadn't looked properly before setting off). Stopping would simply block the entire road until the bus moves off. However, IF IT IS SAFE SO TO DO, you could accelerate and pull in ahead of the bus before the oncoming car blocks your path. In the right circumstances, this would be the better option.
Retards who's only weapon in their arsenal to deal with unexpected situations is to stamp on the brakes are the ones who ought not to be on the road.
And if proof was supplied it was on and working at the time, automatically negated any speeding tickets, or better still made the supplier of the device liable for the fine, I might consider one!
Actually, making the supplier liable for mistakes might mean sat-nav suppliers suddenly sharpening up their update policy and making their maps more accurate.
"Sorry, officer, was I really doing 120mph!?!? I hadn't bothered looking at my speedo, I just had my foot on the loud pedal and was relying on that lovely TfL limiter device. I've got so reliant on it I never realised it had gone faulty...."
</hiding over-ride hacking kit under the driver's seat> ;)
My one concern would be on what happens when I leave a 30 zone with the pedal to the floor, would the car suddenly accelerate up to 60? Certainly having some sort of warning if you exceed the limit is a good idea as driving with your eyes on the speedo is not terribly safe. For those that don't like this idea, or cameras or whatever, please suggest some other way of reducing road deaths. Would we turn a blind eye if terrorists killed 3000 every year or protest about their human rights?
"Nobody said anything about not being able to stop in the given distance."
Actually, the Clarksonistas did, with their daft assertion re reaction times and reduced speeds. Distance = speed x time, remember? Reduce the speed and keep the reaction time unchanged and you inherently increase the margin of safety! But don't let details like that trouble you. Not until you or someone you know has been in an avoidable accident, eh?
Anyway, what about a parked car emerging ?
If it's "wrong" for the parked car to emerge, it's wrong also for the vehicle behind the stationary bus to emerge, not that there's any real concept of "right of way" (rightness/wrongness) in those circumstances in British traffic law, and even if the law prescribed it, how many drivers would know or care?
Do the defensive driving thing. Listen to those who know. "Accelerating out of trouble" (and in doing so exceeding the speed limit) is extremely rare. Parked cars emerging into what they *ass*u*me* is a clear but "wrong" side of the road is not rare in the circumstances described.
Staying away from predictable trouble in the first instance is more likely to guarantee getting there in one piece than "accelerating out of trouble" once you've made a mistake is. It may take you and others a few seconds extra, but it may save someone's life. Patience *is* a virtue.
reduce road death/injuries
I once spent 4 weeks in hospital and 6 months learning to walk again(with some discomfort/disability) because I dared do 30 mph in town on my way to work.
The fact that some ****hole decided he wanted to do 30 mph in the opposite direction on my bit of road had something to do with the above,but we were perfectly safe since we were both doing 30 mph...........................
It is BAD DRIVING that causes 95% of accidents, and improving driver education would reduce that number of accidents by a % far more than slapping a 30/50/20 limit over everything and everyone
But imagine the results when the GPS decides you are not on the motorway when you join one and wont let you go over 30..... Lack of speed kills <g>
One second. Just before the tinfoil headgear goes on... why would they, the sinister lizard alliance or whatever (yeah, I don't trust that Gordon Brown's jelly face either) *need* to make this mandatory?
Bear in mind that the current plan is for SPECS average speed devices on most roads where the government actually cares about having the speed limit enforced.
Give Mr and Mrs Joe Average a SPECS-enforced piece of road, and a button in their car which says, "automatically stay below the speed limit", and odds-on they will press it. Yep, that's right, J. Random Speedmerchant - the government don't give a shit about you all the time you're not crashing into stuff and negatively impacting their road safety statistics. What's the point in mandating a permanently switched on device (with all the "false positive" problems) when all they'll create is a healthy black market for dodgy eBay switchoff kits? Far better to let you exceed the speed limit where appropriate and all the other usual Performance Driving(*) schtick, and take advantage of the extra fuel duty and speeding fines you'll generate.
After all, you're a better driver, so you're not going to hit anything, right?
Making it a voluntary device removes a large proportion of the potential objections, certainly many of the safety-critical ones, and what that means for your typical MP is a lot more time to stick their snout back in the public-funded trough.
(*) - A "Performance Driver" in 95% of cases being one who's just as bad as everyone else on the roads, but significantly faster and more self-righteous about it. Don't get me wrong, I love cars and driving, but there are a lot of things going on out there that'd be best left for the racetrack.
If they were mandatory on all cars (in the far distant future) and couldn't be hacked (never going to happen). Then it would do away with the old argument that they won't increase motorway speed limit to 85 because all the people driving safely at 85 would start driving at 100.
One more point, if the government did this, surely they would need to make up to date, accurate Ordnance Survey maps available freely to all - thus we could do away with shite TeleAtlas (can't map the back of their hands) maps - again never going to happen. You would need to have maps which knew about all changes to roads and speed limits as soon as (if not before) they happen - probably not all that difficult, but still never going to happen.
...suppose you are on a single lane road, the speed limit is 80km/h (22,2 m/s), and the knobhead in front of you is doing 70km/h (19,44m/s). If you want to overtake him, you should take some distance from him, speed up to 108km/h (30m/s) and pass, on a convenient (as legal) spot, so the whole process won´t take more than 3 seconds.
He moved in 3 seconds = 3 x 19,44 = 58,3m
You moved in 3 seconds = 3 x 30m = 90m
Total distance (head to head) = 31,7m
Assuming 5 m length cars, you must overtake front-to-end, so take 10m of that = 21,7m of distance on both sides, taking in and taking out.
Assuming you want to take the same distance before and after, you have 10,8m on both sides of distance.
So you had plenty of room to fit him inside a classic wave-out wave-in overtake. And you put more than 10m of distance between bumpers at all times! Assuming both cars are 5m long you overtook with 2 car lengths both ways.
With said speed limit you can´t do that, and must wait behind the slug drivers for more room to overtake.
Now with 80km/h limit enforced: (22,22m/s)
3 seconds = 58,3m
3 seconds = 66,7m
you cant pass him, you would have only 8,36m of distance ahead, not 31,7...
4....
= 77,8m
= 88,9m
so you have 11,1 m ahead, you can pass the car, but only bumper-to-bumper... not good. The other guy could be scaried with you jumping in front of him.
5 seconds then should do?
= 97,2m
= 111,1m
= 13,9m which leads to 1,95m both sides.
That's only (less than) half a car ahead, you took almost 2 times more to overtake, and moved 21 meters more on the oncoming traffic lane than at 108km/h.
Which one is the most dangerous pass? The one that took you only 3 seconds, and put 2 cars lengths between both cars, or the one that took 5 seconds, forced you to move 21m more on the wrong side of the road, and only gave you half a car, or less of distance, bumper to bumper?
This limit enforced, you can only do such an overtake if you take more than 7 seconds and 150m of clear road in passing conditions, which you don´t have in winding roads.
Thats the limiting condition, how long piece of straight passable road you have ahead of you. Otherwise enjoy the trip with your nose glued to other car's back.
Unless I screwed on the math above, the numbering sound just about right, you really must travel 100m or more on the other lane when passing at very close relative speeds.
>> "The system has no braking authority."
>>
>> Which obviously sounds like a good thing but also raises the question of notifying the driver
>> behind you that you're slowing down.
Do you seriously brake every time the speed limit changes? Fair enough if you drive an automatic, or the change is unexpected, or you are myopic, or going down a hill - but for most speed changes in most cars, braking really isn't necessary just to slow down. Your vehicle slowing should be sufficient notification to the driver behind - assuming they are looking where they are going; and if they aren't, all the brake lights in the world won't help you. All that said, I don't imagine it would be difficult to connect the throttle limiting device to the brake lights.
>> You go from a national limit to a 30 zone and the car restricts power,how fast you slow down
>> depends on the car model, if it's quite quick at slowing down should you not be using your
>> brake lights or just open the boot and let the person behind in.
Tell me, what sort of car slows rapidly when power is removed? Maybe, if it cut off the throttle and changed down a gear, you might have something to worry about.
>> I'm with the other posters about the obvious drawback of using more power to get out of
>> harms way.
So you are saying that there are drawbacks to using more power to get out of harms way? I suppose you could be right. It isn't like power is necessary to get you out of sticky situations - drivers of relatively under-powered cars manage to get by okay.
All very well and good but take for example what happened to me today. I was happily going along on my new motorbike. Bit of a beasty (Yamaha R1) when some doddery old fool was doing 40 down a single carriage national speed limit road in his ford escort. I decided as there was a clear road on the offside I'd overtake, as I did so (trying to keep legal speed and not accelerate to harshly) he sped up. This meant I couldn't move back in with out either 1) braking and getting behind him which with another car behind him would have been a dangerous manoeuvre or 2) bury the throttle and wave good bye. Guess what I gave it a tug on the throttle, the bike responded and I got round him before anything came the other way. So what if my bike and his car had a compulsory limiter each? I'd be a bit snookered really. I could get wiped out by a lorry coming round the next bend and be unable to do much if anything about it.
The BBC London programme has just run an article on the thing. It would seem that it has two modes, one which advises the driver and has a smiley, unhappy, and angry face to alert the driver to their speeding and another which cuts the throttle. The device can't actually use the brakes so no noses on the windscreen or bikers being thrown over the handle bars (yet) but it raises other questions. Will it increase road rage? I think so. I punched and chucked my regular GPS unit out of the window of my car after it got on my nerves. Lord knows what this thing will do. Is it going to be 100% reliable? No and what are the consequences of that? Road rage, driver speeding, further disengaging drivers from the road. I can see at lot of 4X4 school run mums becoming even less engaged with the road. I had one pull up next to me at the lights and told me that what I was doing was illegal. She meant filtering (ok this is a bit ranty) but we have drivers (and riders I shouldn't doubt) who have no idea and now they're going to start relying on nanny too?
Give me a break.
This is all a moot point.
This will not acheive any widespread use. And not from backlash either.
Its use will be limited by the same crooks who are evangelising it in the first place.
Think about it:
If no-one was capable of going over the speed limit ever again, where would all the speed (sorry, saftey) camera revinue come from? Anyone who thinks is just being penalised for doing wrong is an idiot, Speed (sorry, saftey) cameras are structured as a revinue tool.
Crafty PR work can make *anything* look like *anything* else. It doesn't change what it actually is.
This is yet another example of them dishing out saftey propaganda, making it *look* like they're doing something, but in reality, they're just tossing as per usual.
Sure braking the speed limit in London is stupid as the 30Mph limit in some of the areas are for the other people.
And yes a warning system is a good idea, you could even make it so annoying that you have to slow down. But to make it stop you from accelerating is going too far. There are instances where you may need to go over the speed limit (although it may be a rare occurance). And have others have said what ifthe GPS unit gets it wrong, or it crashes or breaks or something then what then?
The most causes of 'accidents' is dangerious driving, maybe the police should go round enforcing the law a bit more in that area. And like others have said who cares if people speed a bit on the motorway I mean it's not like there much different from 70 to 80-90 if the road is clear, as long as you are not taking the **** and going 100Mph+ in traffic.
Again the problem is not speed itself but dangerious driving.
1) How to convince manufacturers of meaty, nob-wagons that do 0-60 in 0.5/sec that they have to fit XYZ limiter to said fanny-magnet? Manufacturer no longer wants to sell nob-wagons in UK, less imports, less new cars, less new tax.
2) No speeders? No need for cameras, so millions no longer coming in from fines!
3) How to stop people going out and buying 1973 Morris that can still reach 65 at any time without limits, cos the system is all mechanical with no electronic components, so limiter cannot be fitted?
4) How to stop government think-tanks coming up with stupid ideas to make it look like they are actually doing something to justify all those swimming pool and lightbulb expense claims!!!
( Heart shaped icon? Well I've never used it before! )