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My mother came to visit a few weeks back and part of her journey was on a bit of motorway with enforced average speed limits.  She told me that it was a lovely way to drive, everyone doing exactly the same speed, nobody racing up behind her, most important - no aggression.

She's very lucky then (& not just that she's your mum). My experience of average speed cameras in roadworks is that keeping any sort of distance goes right out of the window, particularly HGVs. If your speedo over reads (as most do) then someone with an accurate one (e.g. in a sat nav) will be right up your arse in case you delay them for a second or two in a 3 hour journey.

They do help reduce accidents according to stats (e.g. A77, A9) but I wish there was some way to enforce safe distances).

If someone is "right up your arse" just slow down. They will eventually back off or overtake and you can resume your journey. This is the recommended course of action on a speed awareness course.

Or they'll just try and drive over you because they have a Right To Drive (allegedly...).

OnYerBike wrote:

I really don't see why the speed restrictor should allow the driver to override it - why would we deliberately allow people to break the law?

The technology is not there to enforce the law, it's more of a 'driver aid'. It's not perfect, so on the occasion it gets it wrong, it needs to be easily overridden.

There may be occasions where exceeding the speed limit can be justified. Such as driving someone to hospital in an emergency or to avoid a collision.

I wasn't aware that the law granted provision for those who are not driving EMS vehicles to break the speed limit. As for "avoiding a collision", it seems to me that the effect of governors on reducing the potential for collisions by preventing dangerous driving likely to result in a loss of control would far exceed that of these spurious cases that are cited every time about needing to accelerate to avoid a collision.

I believe there is a provision for exceptional circumstances you can claim to allow you to break a speed limit,though obviously the clue is the name "exceptional" its not carte blanche to just drive over the speed limit.

But Im not a fan of the idea of limiting vehicles speeding like this as I dont feel the technology in the GPS accuracy and handling is mature enough or safe enough to have that kind of control in a vehicle, hands up who would trust their bike computer to govern the speed of their car ? anyone who has used one has experienced the random crashes, the loss of signal, the inability of it to work out which road you are even on sometimes, those are annoyances riding a bike, they could be lethal in a vehicle.

and it drives a set of behaviours, the like of which we are already seeing as a flaw in the self driving cars,and with lorry drivers currently, drivers pay less attention, concentrate less because they have less to focus on to drive, they just put the foot to the floor let the speed limiter sort things out for them, their mind wanders, maybe they start playing with their mobile phone more, tailgate more because they are all doing the same speed, try those overtakes at 0.1mph faster, all of which when something unexpected they need to react to means their reaction times will be greater. plus there are considerations that its perfectly safe to drive near the speed limit in perfect conditions, but same road with ice, fog, heavy rain ?

ultimately this really isnt a problem needing a tech solution,thats just the polticians/bureaucrats solution to everything more tech, often after theyve been lobbied by tech companies selling such solutions. But we already have the solution, its give more funding to the police to carry out more traffic related crime prevention.

people habitually speed in vehicles not because they arent all driving some modern equivalent of a Knight Industries Two Thousand , its because they know the chance of the being caught doing it, is tiny, and everyday they speed and dont get caught it reinforces that message to them.

Awavey wrote:

But Im not a fan of the idea of limiting vehicles speeding like this as I dont feel the technology in the GPS accuracy and handling is mature enough or safe enough to have that kind of control in a vehicle, hands up who would trust their bike computer to govern the speed of their car ? anyone who has used one has experienced the random crashes, the loss of signal, the inability of it to work out which road you are even on sometimes, those are annoyances riding a bike, they could be lethal in a vehicle.

and it drives a set of behaviours, the like of which we are already seeing as a flaw in the self driving cars,and with lorry drivers currently, drivers pay less attention, concentrate less because they have less to focus on to drive, they just put the foot to the floor let the speed limiter sort things out for them, their mind wanders, maybe they start playing with their mobile phone more, tailgate more because they are all doing the same speed, try those overtakes at 0.1mph faster, all of which when something unexpected they need to react to means their reaction times will be greater. plus there are considerations that its perfectly safe to drive near the speed limit in perfect conditions, but same road with ice, fog, heavy rain ?

The technology is there and it's robust. For autonomous vehicles it's not quite there as the lack of human interface cannot replicate unexpected occurences. What is being discussed is limiting the speed, which, while it may be a step towards autonomous driving we are not talking about taking car control from a driver, attention would still need to be paid to the road, but in theory you wouldn't need to add in the extra thought process about what speed they were doing, if anything I think that would make people more attentive, rather than less attentive.

You need not 'rely' on GPS to track speed limits, my car 'reads the road signs' and uses GPS alongside it, the speed limit for that road is displayed upon my dashboard, it's quite clever and I often find myself testing it, I reckon it's easily 95% accurate. http://www.kceed.com/speed_limit_information_function_slif_-544.html

Luca Patrono wrote:

I wasn't aware that the law granted provision for those who are not driving EMS vehicles to break the speed limit.

The police have discretion on whether to apply the law or not. They may choose not to enforce a speeding offence if there's a justifiable reason.

The technology isn't quite reliable enough yet for it to be used as an enforcement tool. But that doesn't mean there's no benefit in having it as a driver aid.

HoarseMann wrote:

The technology is not there to enforce the law, it's more of a 'driver aid'.

Why not use it to enforce the law? If we can prevent people from breaking the law, surely doing so is the right thing to do?

HoarseMann wrote:

It's not perfect, so on the occasion it gets it wrong, it needs to be easily overridden.

If it can be overridden, then I believe in the vast majority of cases that feature will be used to override the device when it is working properly, rather than due to the device being wrong. If the device is wrong and restricts you to slower than the speed limit, you don't "need" to override it; it's just an inconvenience.

HoarseMann wrote:

There may be occasions where exceeding the speed limit can be justified. Such as driving someone to hospital in an emergency or to avoid a collision.

If someone needs to get to hospital in an emergency, phone 999. You should never "need" to break the speed limit to avoid a collision - if you find yourself in that position it's almost certainly because of a preceeding lack of judgement and impatience. Finally, such situations where speeding is "justified" are likely to be exceesingly rare in comparison to the very regular deaths and injuries that are caused by breaking the speed limit.

Umm, the initial press report was about a decision whether a beep/flashing light or a pedal feedback was the most appropriate driver warning.

I just wanted to share my personal experience from using both methods. Not have a debate about zero tolerance speeding enforcement!

(I did once phone 999 in an emergency and they had no ambulances available, the dispatcher advised driving the casualty to A&E!)

I know what the initial press report was about, my comment was that if you're going to introduce tech with this sort of capability why not use it to its full advantage?

There's a big difference between zero tolerance policing and using tech to prevent law breaking in the first place. I'm all for not prosecuting every Tom, Dick and Harry for the slightest misdemeanor, but I question the logic and morals of deliberately undermining technology that could prevent criminality, especially when excess speed is a contributing factor to a huge number of collisions.

It is unfortunate that ambulances aren't always available. Of course there's a legal argument that driving to A&E still doesn't give you an excuse for speeding but I think the stronger argument is still that such incidents - and any benefit from getting to A&E a few minutes sooner - are easily outweighed by the harms from speeding.

OnYerBike wrote:

I know what the initial press report was about, my comment was that if you're going to introduce tech with this sort of capability why not use it to its full advantage?

My opinion from having experience of driving a new car with traffic sign identification, is the technology is not reliable enough for the driver to relinquish total control of the vehicle's speed (I accept you have a different view, but you did ask the question and I replied).

I would welcome a future where all cars are self-driving, there are zero-road death/injuries and a racetrack is the only place a human can get behind the wheel. I'm sure it will happen, but the steps to get us there will be small and incremental.

Soft limiting cars at the maximum speed permissible on a motorway without prosecution will not prevent people from speeding in residential areas, which is the major problem. Localized speed restriction will also force people to obey 20mph limits, as well as removing the need to trash suspensions with speed humps everywhere.

Breaking the speed limit to overtake is still breaking the law. Speed restrictors are the only way forward, optimally based on GPS data with various fallback measures, as driverless cars will inevitably be. Then in the cases where people speed, analytics can be performed on the car, and if there was interference, a specific charge can be introduced of tampering with the safety features of a motor vehicle, which helps to remove the "But for the Grace of God Go I" mindset from driver-juries, as most people won't tamper with the car.

It's disappointing to see the car lobby trying to push for a useless measure (light + beep) to "warn" people that they're speeding. The kind of people who speed don't give a single damn that they're speeding, and it will be [disabled/ignored/bypassed] as soon as they have the opportunity.

Presumably the car lobby are absolutely terrified that people will no longer buy cars with performance far in excess of what is legal or useful on any UK road if speed restrictors are introduced. I'm sure they'll bring their might to bear and we'll get useless beeping garbage, though!

Back in the 80s Japanese sports cars had beeping speed warning chimes above 100kph, they're seriously annoying and one would hope with modern ECUs much harder to disable than they were back then. I had a Japanese import for a while and the first thing I did was pop the instrument cluster out and desolder the chime. On some cars it got progressively faster as speed increased which was surprisingly effective. Personally, I'd like cars to have those "whoop whoop whoop pull up" loops you hear on cockpit voice recorders.

I don't think that the driver should be warned of themselves breaking the speed limit, I think that everyone around them should be warned of the illegal and often dangerous driving.

Toffee wrote:

Not sure how I feel about that speeding tech. For one, if it's basing speed limits off sign recognition, it's going to be massively innacurate. It'd probably be easier to soft limit cars to 78mph or the likes.

There will be positives, for sure, but it'll also lead to a lot of misjudged overtakes, when the car refuses to accelerate.

The car I've got at the moment does sign recognition and has a pedal based speed restrictor - but the two are not linked up!

I actually really like driving with the speed restrictor, there's a bit of a flat spot in the accelerator travel as you hit the speed limit, but if you continue to push the pedal down it then overrides it. So no problem with overtakes - if you're flooring it, then the limiter is completely disabled.

For the speed limit recognition, it's generally really good, using a combination of GPS database and image recognition of roadside signs. There are just a couple of junctions, where the speed sign is at an odd angle to the road where it's picked up the wrong limit. But it reverts to the GPS database limit value if you keep the speed (or if linked, the pedal pushed) past the override point for a few seconds.

I too have one of these systems on my car. As you stated you can push through it but the pedal offers resistance so it like pushing a still button, you can't do it subconsciously, and if you do go over it will start beeping at you.

It isn't a full blown automated system, you have to set it, but there is functionality to set it your the recognised speed limit with a double press of a button and a volumn style toggle button that can move the limit up and down. Overall both me and my wife really like it and use it whenever we are driving, it removes the stress of constantly checking the speedo once set and allows you to stay focused on the road. The car is an EV which I'd say these systems are a must, the lack of engine noise does give a distrubed sense of speed, and the response of the vehicle means it doesn't take much to be speeding unintentionally in a 30.

The one limitation I do see with the system is that it can get a bit confused with the road you are on if you have adjacent roads, so being able to manually set it useful for me personally, so there is some developement required until this is ready as a standard system.

Totally agree with you. The only reason to look at the speedo is to make sure you're not over the limit. Having a restrictor means it's one less thing to look at and you can concentrate more on the road ahead.

It won't stop a determined speeder, only those who drift over the limit unintentionally.

It will also help with 20mph limit habit breaking. It's tough to keep at 20mph if you are used to driving down that road when it was a 30. There's a road near me that used to be 60mph, but now has a 40mph limit. It feels so slow, so I find the limiter (or cruise control) helpful in keeping within the limit.

I'm undecided too. I certainly think that cars have no need to be capable of going over 70. In addition torque and output could also be limited.

Variable limiters though encourage pedal to the metal, and give an excuse that "the car made me do it" where it is not engaged

Quote:

Oliver Carsten from Leeds University trialled the “Intelligent Speed Assistant” accelerator pedal and said: “It gave us a massive improvement in speed compliance with UK drivers, especially on urban roads.

So the best way of improving compliance with speed limits is to physically stop the drivers being able to break the speed limit?  Who would have thought it!