Crap driver tells Jeremy Vine to “Fuck off”; Geraint Thomas's season over; Demare wins again at Giro; 100 miles at 42.6mph (while drafting); Car tech preventing speeding mandatory in EU from 2022; Muddy Classics; + more

The technology exists to automatically restrict your vehicle's speed to the road's speed limit. This was available, definitely in 2007 when Transport for London mapped all the roads (I think in the whole UK) for this purpose. Boris Johnson scrapped the project when he became Mayor in 2008.

I've got a '63 Triumph Herald Coupe and a '67 VW Beetle that likewise lacks those mod cons

They're both speed limited though

So on the first paragraph, you never have a mobile phone, sat nav in your car or on your bike, or any other GPS enabled trackable device?

AlsoSomniloquism wrote:

So on the first paragraph, you never have a mobile phone, sat nav in your car or on your bike, or any other GPS enabled trackable device?

I do, but on the mobile phone front, I get to choose who has access to the GPS data, and as far as I'm aware, if you want to track mobile phone locations via phone masts, that has to be done with a court order/warrent with resonable ground to suspect a crime has been committed. I can also choose not to carry a mobile phone if I wish, or turn it off. On the bike front, I actively use GPS tracking as a safety feature when riding alone so my other half or chosen person knows where I am in case of emergency. 

WRT numberplate recognition, again, thats used by law enforcement agencies. Insurance companies aren't law enforcement, but are publically traded corporations, and your data is a valuble tradable commodity. I also question the motives as another way in which they can find a reason to decline paying a claim. 

Maybe it's irrational, but if I recall we still had a choice as to whether we want people tracking us or not, albeit privacy is an increasingly difficult concept in the modern age. Maybe I just have an entrenched distrust or dislike of insurance companies, who knows, those were just my opinions on the matter, right or wrong. 

So I would guess you will be against I.D cards, DNA database etc? Me, i dont give a rats arse. If you don't do anything wrong, you dont have anything to fear.

"They" already know where your car has been - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition_in_the_...

Very true. ANPR cameras are everywhere. If the police are after a particular vehicle, all they need to do is punch in the registration number and the ANPR cameras will tell them exactly which roads the vehicle has used. I think it's a great tool for catching the bad folk.

MoutonDeMontagne wrote:

We are, after all, adults who are responsible for our own actions and their consequences.

Whilst that is true, it is also true that it is not the motorist that has to live with consequences of their actions. 

So yeah, I'm all for this. 

TheLonelyOne wrote:

MoutonDeMontagne wrote:

We are, after all, adults who are responsible for our own actions and their consequences.

Whilst that is true, it is also true that it is not the motorist that has to live with consequences of their actions. 

So yeah, I'm all for this. 

I appreciate this and I agree. My point was if the laws are enforced and applied as they should be, the motorist would have to live with the consequences - i.e. the realisation that their actions took a life and as a result they spend a life sentance at HMP, without the freedoms they took for granted. 

I'd sooner see no one having to learn that  lesson, expensive as it is to the victim and wider society

[quote=MoutonDeMontagne

I appreciate this and I agree. My point was if the laws are enforced and applied as they should be, the motorist would have to live with the consequences - i.e. the realisation that their actions took a life and as a result they spend a life sentance at HMP, without the freedoms they took for granted. 

[/quote]

I think it's much better if the life doesn't get taken and society doesn't have to spend a small fortune keeping someone incarcerated.  Win, win for speed limiting.

I agree with you in principle, but it may turn out to be the most effective way of preventing speeding.

In general, I don't like using technology to prevent bad behaviour as the tech can always be thwarted if it goes against what people want to do - the way to prevent bad behaviour is to provide a disincentive (fines etc) and make it likely that people will be caught.

hawkinspeter wrote:

I agree with you in principle, but it may turn out to be the most effective way of preventing speeding.

In general, I don't like using technology to prevent bad behaviour as the tech can always be thwarted if it goes against what people want to do - the way to prevent bad behaviour is to provide a disincentive (fines etc) and make it likely that people will be caught.

That's very much my feeling and more eloquently put than my rambling. Although I'd go a little further in saying I don't like using technology, nor sweeping government interference to curb peoples actions beyond enforcing the laws as written as there's always a 'but' or a case that falls into a grey area. Speeding is a case in point. Why are we desperate to prevent speeding, when speeding in total isolation (read as 75mph on a totally empty motorway as an example) isn't really an issue? It's the consequence that speeding can contribute to that we're trying to prevent, such as road deaths, collisions etc. 

Cracking down on excessive speed may help counter one of the contributing factors to RTC's but will not stop them all. Arguably, bad driving is the root cause of most collisions, and bad driving is just as prevalent within the speed limit as it is above it, and thus automatic speed limiting wouldn't prevent this. An automatic life sentence for anyone found causing death/life changing injury by dangerous driving would IMHO be much more of a discentive, as would an automatic 6 month ban for using a mobile phone while driving, or being fined a % of your salary along with points (as is the Scotland rule) for speeding. People generally don't go around murdering people, partly because it's seen as a henious crime and the consequences are severe. Why should killing someone with your actions be seen differently? 

To me it's the same logic as why I get frustrated by alot of the corporate H&S culture thats creeping in everywhere. People should be required to use their own common sense and awareness to perform a risk assessment as to what is a suitable action and be held accountable if they get it wrong. I find that people are often now blindly following the instructions in an android like fashion without any thought as to why something may be a risk. Then, when something happens, the go to response is 'but there wasn't a rule to cover this eventuality' or 'nobody told me this was a risk' even when it's fairly obvious with a little common sense applied. Again, the blame and responsibility is shifted in true slopey shouldered style. 

Any life lost on the roads is a life too many, I just think the responsibility to prevent it should be on the individual, not the machine. Guns don't kill people, wrappers do and all that.

It's also not the job of car manufactures to police the laws, same as bike manufactures or phone manufacturers, but the job of the police. One of those requires government funding however, one is completely free to the state and makes it the private sectors problem! 

MoutonDeMontagne wrote:

I'm totally against manditory speed limiters fitted to cars, not because I'm against safety, or because I want to speed, but it's the whole principle. <SNIP>

I'd much rather speed limits were more rigerously enforced by the police, where fines and prosecution are used to disuade drivers. In Scotland for example, where speeding fines are much more Draconian, even for relatively minor offences, I've found I'm much less likely to speed than in England. If it has to be automatically enforced, I'd rather see it in built up areas only. 

We are, after all, adults who are responsible for our own actions and their consequences. <SNIP>

We've had a hundred years of speed limits enforced by the police already.... how is that working out for us? I'm pretty sure there's some shocking driving in taking place in Scotland as well as England (Wales on the other hand never fails to amaze me, no F's given in Wales, man or boy).

Oh you mean more rigorously enforced..  okay who's paying for that then? 1) how do you propose to catch the speeders? (extra speed cameras*) 2) Who do you propose does the predicted extra administration of said fines? 3) What about all the additional prosecuting admin for those who miss paying their fines.. 4) Ultimately where's the money coming from to do all this? We have a lot of roads.

Drivers cannot be trusted not to speed, so why not turn it on it's head and just stop the vehicles from speeding. (Don't worry, it'll only apply to new cars, you'll still be able to drive an old Capri round like DCI Gene Hunt.)

*Speed cameras – The average fixed cost per site for a speed camera was £12,500 and average recurrent costs were just over £8,500 per annum for each site. – 68% of the fixed costs for speed cameras were met by local authorities and 20% were met by the police service. The police service also met 64% of the recurrent costs associated with speed cameras. (Magistrates’ courts accounted for over 30% of these recurrent costs.) – Each site generated an average of 316 speed related prosecutions per annum, although there was considerable variation between sites. The average cost per prosecution was £27. (86% of these offences were dealt with by way of fixed penalty.) - Referenced from an old Home Office Police Research Group, and I'm pretty sure the costs wouldn't have gone down.

If the political will was there, the money would be found.

Personally, I don't see why you can't fund a lot of the trivial things like speeding cameras with the fines from people caught speeding. If it were privatised, it'd be a doddle for a company to set up some digital cameras, do a bit of average speed calculations, a dash of ANPR technology and there you go - free money.

peted76 wrote:

We've had a hundred years of speed limits enforced by the police already.... how is that working out for us?

It was working quite well in the 2000s when police and local authorities were encouraged and empowered to do it. Then the Tories got back into power and replaced the war on the motorist with a return to the previous licence to kill regime and it all went to shit.

https://www.citymetric.com/transport/why-it-acceptable-kill-someone-myst...

Nice graph, though the y-axis starting at 1,500 is exaggerating the decline.

True, poor representation of the data there, CityMetric should know better.

If the decline had continued at even hald of the 2006-2010 rate they'd have had no choice but to extend the y-axis down to zero.

My point was not that speeding is getting higher. But that a hundred years of the car being limited mainly by sign posts and fines has not made speeding socially unacceptable for most people. Not sure why your graph is depics 1782 deaths on the road a year as a good thing, was your point purely political?

peted76 wrote:

My point was not that speeding is getting higher. But that a hundred years of the car being limited mainly by sign posts and fines has not made speeding socially unacceptable for most people. Not sure why your graph is depics 1782 deaths on the road a year as a good thing, was your point purely political?

My point is that when the police and local authorities were enabled and encouraged to enforce speed limits, the road toll plummeted. That decline stopped when the political stance of the government changed.

So yes, of course there's a political ppoint here: the Tories don't care who they kill as long as they can drive their Mercs around as fast as they like. 

I have no idea where you get the idea CityMetric's graph depicts 1782 deaths as a good thing. The good thing is the huge decline that got the road toll down to that number; it's apalling that the progress was halted and the ministers responsible should be treated as war criminals.

MiserableBastard wrote:

So yes, of course there's a political ppoint here: the Tories don't care who they kill as long as they can drive their Mercs around as fast as they like. 

.... the ministers responsible should be treated as war criminals.

LOL 🤪

Those evil Tories also managed to stop road deaths falling in many other European countries.

Is there no end to their dastardly wickedness?

From your own link

Good point - the article is assuming that it's down to the tories, but the other countries are strangely flattening off at the same time. I'd still blame the tories, though, but that's just me.

Austerity is a worldwide norm.

Bmblbzzz wrote:

Austerity is a worldwide norm.

It's a worldwide something...

Oh no, there are a significant number of people who have no experience of it at all......

I blame Thatcher.  But that's just me...