Slashdot Mirror
EU Proposes To Fit Cars With Speed Limiters
schwit1 points out a new EU road safety measure to fit cars with devices that would stop them going over 70mph. "Under the proposals new cars would be fitted with cameras that could read road speed limit signs and automatically apply the brakes when this is exceeded. Patrick McLoughlin, the Transport Secretary, is said to be opposed to the plans, which could also mean existing cars are sent to garages to be fitted with the speed limiters, preventing them from going over 70mph. The new measures have been announced by the European Commission's Mobility and Transport Department as a measure to reduce the 30,000 people who die on the roads in Europe every year. A Government source told the Mail on Sunday Mr McLoughlin had instructed officials to block the move because they 'violated' motorists' freedom. They said: 'This has Big Brother written all over it and is exactly the sort of thing that gets people's backs up about Brussels.'"
My Navigator knows the speed limit and gongs if I pass it, why not just link it with the maximum speed of the cruise control in the same fucking computer?
I'd pay for that, since it would save me many tickets.
I can't wait to see the first 'hack' that puts something over a speedlimit sign so that instead of 70 kmh it's 10... ... gosh... I do hope it won't 'slam on the breaks' in that case.
Not gonna happen
Even if this were a panacaea for stopping roadway deaths, do you think the government (any of them) is looking to give away all of the revenue created from speeding tickets? (Especially in Europe, where speed CAMERAS get you without a police officer even being on scene. We have a few in the Ststes, but nothing like the prevalance abroad.) Maybe they think they'll get back the revenue from ticketing those who have illegally disabled the controls.
1. Cars will fail to read the road signs correctly
2. Someone will hack the road signs, leading to mayhem
3. Only a certain percentage of road fatalities are caused by people exceeding the listed speed limit
Why not fit cars with a voluntary limiter that users can enable themselves?
And the general population is against having such a speed limit. So this is not going to happen.
It will cost just a hundred billion euros and will make 2% of the fatal accidents non-fatal, only crippling.
I think speed limiters for most people's cars are a good thing. They would prevent a lot of people from screaming by on the interstate and prevent a surprisingly large number of accidents. However, I think 70 is too slow. They need to be limited to about 5 mph above the fastest speed allowed by law. Here in the US, I believe that would be a limit of 80 mph. The reason for that is it is enough headroom to allow for emergency maneuvers on the interstate but not so fast to be dangerously faster than surrounding traffic. In a perfect world, I'd love to have speed limit signs broadcast the speed limit and have the cars follow the SL+5 rule for maximum speed.
A Government source told the Mail on Sunday Mr McLoughlin had instructed officials to block the move because they 'violated' our cash cow of speeding fines
to just not let anyone go anywhere. Less speeding, less security leaks, less crime, no need for surveillance. The overlords could just pack up a box of sustenance & toiletries & deliver it every week. No more loud motors, no need for night lighting making the sky so much prettier to the eye. Sounds like a big improvement to me...
Once this happens, there would be a big incentive to find out the device that finds you MPH, and make it read you're going 50% of your actual speed.
God spoke to me
So how do they plan to mitigate accidents caused by tired and overworked drivers? Do they also plan to install heart monitors in case people have heart-attacks? Those happen. What about drunk drivers? What about steering and breaking faults. How many people die because of those?
The thing is that these bastards can't provide roads that have enough capacity to support the current and future car traffic so they try to impose half-assed measures like these instead of figuring out how to make vehicle travel both faster and safer. I've got an idea. Ban all vehicles and go back to riding horses and horse pulled carriages. Those go nice and slow. Awesome!
Fucking bureaucrats.
Actually a lot of the autobahn now has speed limits. And yes it has cut the amount of deaths there by a lot.
I in fact like this idea.
My life should not be put at risk because some rich jack ass in a merc wants to go 90 while everyone else is going 65-70.
I would love to see someone installing a 30km/h sign on a highway, making all cars apply brakes, slowing from 100km/h, crashing into each other. Blood, death and gore - that would be awesome video in YouTube!
Seriously, though, this is incredibly stupid incentive even for EU.
I don't understand this obsession with "70mph."
It's far more dangerous to go a couple of miles per hour over 30mph in a built-up and busy area where 30mph is the speed limit (pedestrians, cyclists, dogs, cats, vehicles stopping, turning using junctions etc.) than going 5 or 10 mph over a 70mph speed limit (on a dual carriageway or motorway).
I'm not trying to justify speeding, I'm just very cross at the number of ill-considered populist laws that are being proposed these days in the name of safety, whether it's safety from terrorists, safety from perverts or safety from anything else.
When all the traffic is traveling at the same speed in the same direction, the risk of collisions is negligible. That's why motorways can be so safe... but nowadays we have different speed limits for different vehicles on the motorway so lorries jockey for position at ~50mph, old grannies do 45 in any lane they please and the PHBs and salesmen do 100+ in their Mercs and BMWs (also in any lane they feel like, changing without warning, without looking and without signalling).
My driving is the best in the world. Everyone else is rubbish.
One day I will rule the world!!!! Be afraid all ye who read this warning.... Muhahhaha!!!!!!
Stick Men
According to the Guardian: New cars would have to feature systems capable of detecting limits through cameras or satellites and automatically applying the brakes.
So it would seem to be more localized.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/01/uk-fights-eu-speed-limit-devices
Germany still has stretches of autobahn that are unlimited. I can't see this idea going over well in Germany.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
No rights at all.
Tyranny is guaranteed.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
. . . a different one than the one where Germany is a member . . . ? Because that EU isn't going to put any speed limits on the German Autobahns. Actually, nobody else is either.
That is about as likely as the NRA leading a campaign to repeal the Second Amendment to the US Constitution (the right to bear arms).
Germans like their cars, like Americans like their weapons. That's an actual SAT analogy question.
And they like to drive them very fast.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
How long before a prankster prints a sign reading 2 kmh and posts it on a highway?
Or, for fun with fuzzing car firmware, posts a sign reading "-1 kmh" or "1/0 kmh" ?
People die because they are shit drivers, make the damn driving tests count for something so that not every idiot gets on the road.
...the speed limit (or the law) while enjoying the priveledge of being allowed to operate a vehicle. If you cannot do it safely (speed, wreckless or drunk), then you lose the priveledge. Driving is is not a freedom. Speeding is not a freedom. My Corvette will limit the RPM of the engine once I hit 141MPH, I've tried it twice a very long time ago. I was young, drunk, wreckless and speeding. Fortunately, no one was hurt. If we had provided this technology when cars where becoming mainstream no one would know the difference.
Currently cars use several other technologies to prevent 'stupid' and everyone is ok with it.
1) The engine will shut down if oil pressure to low.
2) You can't put the car in drive unless you press the brake pedal.
3) You can't full brake the tires when trying to stop on snow, ice or gravel.
There are many more features working there way into all cars, all the time.
We can try al we want, but we can't fix stupid.
Cheers,
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
Autobahns are the safest roads around the world now.
Somehow, I think that proper maintenance of the roads, good, well placed signs have much higher impact on reducing the casualties than speed limits. But that would cost government money, not citizen money with next to no middlemen, so actually fixing the roads won't happen.
I can actually sort of understand this cutting off the accelerator - figure out what the maximum safe speed on any road is (and give maybe a 10mph buffer for evasive manuevers - I've nearly been in crashes that I only averted by speeding out of the way), and have the accelerator cut off at that point.
But apply the brakes? That give you sudden deceleration - exactly the kind of thing that would cause an accident. If you're having trouble envisioning this, imagine someone tailing you a bit too closely when the speed limit changes from 55 to 45 - instant recipe for being rear-ended. I would think the risk from people exceeding the speed limit simply by coasting downhill is far outweighed by the risk of perpetual pile-ups on any speed limit change.
That's the other thing - using cameras to spot speed limit signs seems absolutely retarded. Does Europe not have the "school zone - speed limit 25 from 8-9am and 3-4pm" signs we have? Those will trip up computers pretty handily. Or construction zones with temporary speed limits. Or hell, assholes painting a fake speed limit sign on their tailgate (I will admit to being an asshole who would probably do this). No, I think the way to do this is either a simple "there is no situation where you need to exceed this one speed on any public road" limit, or have radio transmitters along the roads broadcasting the speed limit in a format that computers can easily work with (and possibly more information - road name, coordinates, etc).
Brussels should just FUCK OFF actually.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
But in America I am sure the real reason not to lime a cars speed to the speed limit is that they would rather have the revenue from the speeding tickets than the lives saved. The proof is we write more speeding tickets now than ever. So tickets have never worked at anything other than getting money.
"Under the proposals new cars would be fitted with cameras that could read road speed limit signs and automatically apply the brakes when this is exceeded.
That sounds like the most dangerous proposal I've ever heard of. A car that randomly steps on the breaks? What could possibly go wrong?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I have a Unichip in my car. It plugs in between the car's computer and its sensors, modifying the signals to influence performance. Undetectable and takes 10 minutes to install. It's programmable, too, via USB, and might work for what you're proposing without any new hardware.
First, you have to ensure that speed signs are authenticated (so can't be forged),
this means not using visual recognition, but fitting every road in the country with a reliable radio based system or something...
Have they seriously thought this through or is it more mindless health and safety [alternative male cow produce]...???
John_Chalisque
Really, if they would just think of the children, they would set the speed limit and speed limiter devices at 15MPH everywhere. On bicycles too!
If you're going to cap the maximum speed, then you should also cap the minimum speed. There is nothing more annoying in the world than all lanes going the same speed because some idiot decided to plant himself in the "fast lane" going slower than the speed limit.
If a highway speed limit is 100km/s, people shouldn't be allowed to go slower than 90km/s. Anyone who wants to go slower should use the service lane.
The rich jackass doesn't kill people by driving fast. People die because they're too stupid to use their mirrors and get in front of the rich jackass who is a lot faster than they are.
They let people drive on snow, ice or gravel?
relevant quote from EU spokesman:
“There is a currently consultation focusing on speed-limiting technology already fitted to HGVs and buses. “Taking account of the results, the Commission will publish in the autumn a document by its technical experts which will no doubt refer to ISA among many other things.”
Somehow, I think that proper maintenance of the roads, good, well placed signs have much higher impact on reducing the casualties than speed limits. But that would cost government money, not citizen money with next to no middlemen, so actually fixing the roads won't happen.
While proper maintenance and signage are important, the driver is the most common fault in any accident, not just those with injuries, and it's quite often by willful choice.
I guess, in the end, it's computers who are our new overlords.
You are kidding me, right?
90 mph isn't fast where there is no speed limit on the Autobahn. I've been driving that ten years ago in an old Renault Clio and my parents' VW Sharan maxed out at about 112 mph.
If you want to keep up with a Mercedes that's in a hurry, you need to drive at least 130 mph.
Don't even try to use the third lane if you want to drive at 70 mph.
on speed cameras. When I started out I didn't see the harm in speeding on our UK motorways (although I was vehemently against speeding in residential areas), and was largely opposed to the average speed cameras seen round the M25 and M42.
However, after so many miles of experiencing idiots driving erratically - speeding up/slowing down - some doing 90+ others doing 50mph, and having to continually be on the look out, overtaking, changing lanes just so I could drive with a consistent speed, I've decided average speed check cameras are the way to go. They stabilise the whole traffic, and generally everyone ends up driving almost exactly 70mph. There is a lot less stress, fuel economy is better than at 70, and there's much less slowing down and speeding up, which is also good for economy and safety.
If average speed cameras work - why use electronic limiters? There are very rare occasions when you need a bit of speed to do something safely, particularly at slower speeds (i.e. overtaking a cyclist or slower moving vehicle), and if there are any errors in the system, it could put people's lives at risk. Better to let the driver weigh up safety versus a speeding fine in those situations.
I find in my commute (Everett Turnpike in New Hampshire) that a person who goes slower than everyone else is more dangerous than someone going faster.
That slower person (like 50 in 65+ mph traffic) forces everyone behind them to merge into faster traffic which seems just slightly more dangerous than those damn race car wannabes swerving from lane to lane. My personal strategy of going the same speed as the person in front of me is broken down by those slow people.
Man, I so wanna steal a residential speed sign and hang it out my back window on the highway. It applies to police cars as well, right?
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
You've obviously never been here. The Autobahns are in atrocious state. If you cross the border from the Netherlands or Belgium to Germany, this will be one of your first visual queues of being in another country. It isn't as bad as some of the other places I've seen, but it's hardly in good state.
All the cars should be automatic. Then all the fatal accidents will be caused by bad programmers instead of bad drivers.
I had thought of this before, too bad I didn't patent it. Heh.
But seriously, I really hope they go for it full steam. Or at least, if there's a nationwide speed limit, lock the cars to never go beyond that. If speeders got no one but themselves killed, I'd be all for that "motorist's freedom" shit. But since that's not the case, fuck them.
Circumcision is child abuse.
How many people die each year because of health issues (cancer, heart failure, diabetes) that are related to pesticides, fast foods, artificial sweeteners, corn syrup and many more?
Why not fix the drinking water? The food? The air we breathe?
Car accidents are really insignificant.
What is this trash doing on Slashdot? Seriously the whole article is utter crap, there are no plans for any kind of speed limiters to be fitted to vehicles.
Here's the full quote from the EU commission in question:
The Commission has not tabled – and does not have in the pipeline – even a non-binding Recommendation, let alone anything more.
The Commission has supported past research into ISA. There is a current stakeholder consultation and study focusing on speed limiting technology already fitted to HGVs and buses. One aspect of that is whether ISA could in the long-term be an alternative.
This is just standard right-wing anti-EU drivel. I think Reddit user Dwilip put it best:
Standard Tory playbook by unknown junior minister looking for some cheap column inches.
Find EU report
Make up something ridiculous
Claim you are going to block it
Get your mate at the Torygraph to write about
It never happens
Say you personally stopped it
Print it in you leaflets, cite Torygraph article as evidence
The good old EU, the highest-paid bureaucrats in the world, working hard at uniting Europe under one flag...because the one thing everyone from the Finns to Greeks, and the Portuguese and the Romanians all agree on is that the EU is run by a bunch of ivory-tower morons who are busy finding new and expensive solutions to problems that nobody really cares about. Meanwhile Rome is burning...at least if you're under 30 and live in southern Europe.
But on to more important problems, next it will be hairnets for fishers, cube-shaped tomatoes, minimum-curvature bananas, or banning the Germans from printing "made in Germany" on things they make... oh wait, they've already tried all that. Maybe now they'll go back to trying to force local communities to give their drinking water infrastructure away to multinationals such as Nestle in the name of "improving competition and service." They've never really given up on that idea. But we know who the EU-comissioners really work for. The EU is a phenomenon, and give it another 20 or 30 years and it will be something our kids read about in the history books.
A slow driver is a bored and inattentive driver. If you take away from the driver even the task of monitoring his speed, drivers are just going to get even more bored and inattentive.
This awful system would turn all any situation where someone would be cut off due to a blind spot into a sure accident.
My personal strategy of going the same speed as the person in front of me is broken down by those slow people.
And is also broken by the fact you will only go the same speed as the person in front of you if you disagree with their speed.
Amen!
Cars getting better mileage, safer and so on can be regulated, because drivers actually want these things. Electronic nanny that is not 100% right all the time? Good luck with that.
This is a stupid idea. Sometimes, a real quick burst of acceleration OVER the speed limit avoids accidents. Take this control away from the driver, and you end up with this:
"The crew applied full power and the pilot attempted to climb. However, the elevators did not respond to the pilot's commands, because the A320 computer system engaged its 'alpha protection' mode (meant to prevent the aircraft entering a stall.) Less than five seconds later, the turbines began ingesting leaves and branches as the aircraft skimmed the tops of the trees. The combustion chambers clogged up and the engines failed. The aircraft fell to the ground."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296
Why stop there? Let's implant a chip into brains of every citizen to stop them from swearing. The device will be designed to administer a mild electric shock to prevent any upcoming curse words as well as negative throughts of EU ruling body. Here's a short demonstratioin.
What Happens if I make some 10KM/h signs and post them on really fast roads? Would the comuters slam on the brakes and cause the cars to crash?
Or if the sign out of a town is knocked over, will it force you to drive on the highway at a slow speed until it sees the next sign?
And how will it learn to ignore exit speed limit signs? Some of them are really close to the highway
When I was in Holland last year, we had a car with a GPS and speed limit display. Only problem was, if you were on a main highway and passed over a local road, the speed limit would often switch to something like 50km/h as it briefly became confused about which road you were on.
Needless to say, having every car hitting the brakes at that point would probably be a bad idea.
But the speed limit signs really make no more sense, since they can trivially be 'hacked'; I've seen local kids in Britain turn speed limit signs around for grins, so you'd end up with a sixty mph limit in the town and a thirty on the road leading out of town.
All in all, it's a really stupid idea. Which is what you'd expect from the EU.
Not really, if the maxium speed limit is 70mph, which seems odd in the EU since it's supposed to be metric, but if the maximum speed limit is whatever, then setting the sensor to go off when you go above the maximum won't be impacted by side roads or the like. It will only kick in if you go over the maximum speedlimit. In the US, for most states that would be 70mph, although there are a few which allow faster.
Giving a warning when one is breaking the law isn't taking away one's legal freedoms, just their illegal freedoms, which by definition, they aren't free to exercise in the first place.
Of course, there is a much simpler method than using computers and the like. Go back to putting appropriately sized engines and gear ratios in cars and they will be able to accelerate quickly, get good fuel economy, and limit their top speed to about 1.25 times the maximum speed limit allowed. After all, why manufacture cars with a top speed of 150-200mph when the maximum legal speed limit is 70mph? It seems that if the state can revoke your license for dwi because you might hurt somebody while driving while intoxicated, the same rational would work for driving well above the posted speed limit.
According to the summary, 30,000 Europeans were killed in car accidents, it doesn't say how many were high speed, but even if only 10% were, that is 3,000 people, about the number killed on 9/11 in the US. The US went to war because those deaths were viewed as being for no good reason. Are traffic fatalities because of reckless high speed driving any better?
(Disregarding for a moment the anti-EU UK tabloid origin of this discussion)
A 130 kilometers per hour speed limit in every car would be a great idea. But please add an unlock mechanism that forces you to justify yourself with road safety authorities.
Ever drove on a road after it endured consecutive rain, frost, snow, thaw and more frost?
..this might be kinda OK..maybe
Speed limits are set artificially low for political reasons
There are several possible speeds for a given road
The one that most drivers chose for themselves, based on road conditions
The limit imposed by the laws of physics
The legal limit should be somewhere in between
But, even if speed limits were reasonable, this is still kinda bad. What if you need to go fast to avoid an accident?
Imagine you are passing a vehicle with a big trucking approaching from the other direction and you pass a speed sign which reduces the speed limit .... car auto brakes putting you in risk of a head on collision.
Dumb.
Maybe... but many of those decisions wouldn't have put anybody in danger had the roads been designed well and properly maintained.
But he is rich, and therefore his life has a far higher value than your own, so there should be no reason why he cant do what he wants.
Hes rich, you are just a 99%'er.
Nuff said.
I don't like the idea of any outside influences messing with how my car drives. Limits built into the car are fine, but not outside forces. This includes police cars that can remotely disable vehicles with the push of a button.
We're hearing more and more about security problems with cars and wifi. Does anyone seriously think that cameras looking for road signs and changing the car's behavior will be secure and reliable?
Warn the drivers, but never take control away from the driver. These are not go-karts at an amusement park.
Autobahns are the safest roads around the world now.
A culture where people follow rules religiously helps. You won't find a German jaywalking. You won't even find a German crossing the road in the middle of the night when no one is around if at the crosswalk the man is red.
So is this a pilot project, to see if it will fly here?
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
A "proposal"? A "plan"? "Announced" "new measures", i.e. already decided? Make up your mind.
Where I live, when rain starts splattering on the windscreen, everyone slams on the brakes like a baby just fell onto the road or something. It's ludicrous and infuriating!
In heavy rain, they slow to a crawl, turn on their hazard blinkers and continue to drive in the fast lane! Meanwhile, I could be safely passing at three times their speed without even having my wipers on, thanks to Rainx. It's enough to make Mother Theresa homicidal!
. . . 70mph! Nonsense!
That's well under the base speed on the QEII or Highway 63 on a Friday night (Alberta).
FYI: Notes for the understandably confused -
--- QEII is the fast pipe between Edmonton and Calgary which, every weekend, appear to exchange urban populations at a rate limited only by asphalt, wind resistance, and whatever protective limits are programmed into engines.
--- Highway 63 is the deadly route between Edmonton and Ft McMurray (oil mines)
The RCMP set up speed traps but it's a bit like swatting snowflakes in a blizzard.
70mph same same 113 km/h
In Alberta, you can usually travel at 10km/h over the limit (100 or 110 on most highways) without getting a ticket. On the QEII where the limit is 110, if I travel at 120 km/h then I have to stick in the slow lane while vehicle after vehicle passes me rapidly.
Alberta has the second highest provincial fatality rate in Canada but pales in comparison with Saskatchewan which is 50% higher.
Yukon T. and NWT have double Alberta's already high rate.
but if it somehow comes to be, then it ovbiously *must* also apply to all government and emergency vehicles as well.
Whilst this is only partly relevant to the story, I thought it might be interesting to some non Europeans.
A popular trend in the UK at the moment for young drivers is to have their car fitted with a "black box" by the insurance company. The idea behind this box is that it monitors the "g-forces" it is exposed to, to gather an idea of how safely the owner is driving the vehicle. Throughout the year, the owner is graded on various aspects of their driving based on this telemetry. Also, I believe that the insurance companies can penalise the owner for driving at certain times, e.g. after 10pm on a friday night. The idea behind this is that the insurance company can charge the owner less, and if they do well after one year, the price drops dramatically.
Additionally, if the black box experience a very high braking force, it will automatically trigger the insurance company to ring your mobile to ask if you're okay, and if you need any help exchanging insurance details with any other drivers involved.
Anyway, back on point, I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to add GPS facilities to these devices, and receive speed limit information based on location similarly to have satnav's currently do so. Obviously, for various reasons already mentioned by other posters, you would not want any restrictions to be physically enforced, but it could serve as a guide, or notice, to the driver.
a) The laws were applied equally to ALL vehicles (ie cars, trucks and motorcycles) with exceptions for licensed emergency vehicles.
b) Excessive fines for tampering/removing said device
c) Proven to be 100% reliable and be installed by an authorized dealer.
d) A speeding ticket requires towing the vehicle for a mechanical inspection for evidence of (b). If the device is at fault, the vendor pays the ticket, towing and inspection fee. If evidence the device has been tampered with, the vehicle owner (not driver) pays the fee.
Yup. Tell you what, I'll be all for these things if they enforce minimum speed, too. Let's see how the Daily Mail reading Rover drivers like being forced to do at least 65 on a dual carriageway for once.
Going into a 30 mph zone? Set the speed limiter for 30.. then you can watch the road, not your speedometer. 50 mph average speed cameras? No problem.. set the speed limiter to 50 and you won't go any faster. Going down a motorway in France? Set it to 80 mph. Taking it on a track? Leave it switched off. Bloody marvellous.. all cars with cruise control should have it fitted. But a surprising number of people who DO have it fitted don't know how to use it.
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
Cars getting better mileage, safer and so on can be regulated, because drivers actually want these things. Electronic nanny that is not 100% right all the time? Good luck with that.
It's not like we get what we want. Do you think that we in the US -- or the rest of the world, for that matter -- want all-knowing surveillance included with our telephones, computers, etc? But we get it, you know, because terrorism
Actually, the car thing might really be a better tradeoff in terms of lives (and money, injury, suffering, lost work and property damage) saved vs. cost, inconvenience and intrusion into our privacy, our lives and our rights. As in Europe, US auto deaths are in the tens of thousands a year (I just read ~34000). But I think it's safe to say that this wouldn't be any more popular in the US than Europe. I also seriously doubt that this sort of thing will actually be enacted anywhere. Human rights is one thing, people's cars is another.
I actually do not favor extremely intrusive car monitoring or communications monitoring. Not that this disclaimer will help, it'll be tl;dr for some slashdotter. I do wish to point out that far more serious government intrusions into liberties can -- and are -- be justified by leaders for far less serious threats to human life.
I am not a crackpot.
Cars in the UK going over 70mph are typically on motorways and are not the cause of deaths.
The deaths are on residential roads caused by cars going over 30mph on 20mph and 30 mph roads.
I'd bet this is true through most of Europe.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
What's that in furlongs per fortnight?
Have gnu, will travel.
http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/reports-of-brussels-big-brother-bid-to-impose-speed-controls-are-inaccurate-beyond-the-limit-2/
--
Reports in the press today suggest that the EU intends to bring forward “formal proposals this autumn” to introduce automatic speed controls -known as “Intelligent Speed Adaptation” or ISA, into cars. This is quite simply not true and the Commission had made this very clear to the journalists concerned.
The Mail on Sunday for example, uses a quote from a Commission spokesman but chooses to leave out the first and most important sentence given to the paper’s reporter, which was this:
“The Commission has not tabled – and does not have in the pipeline – even a non-binding Recommendation, let alone anything more.”
For the record, the rest of the quote supplied said this:
“The Commission has supported past research into ISA. There is a current stakeholder consultation and study focusing on speed limiting technology already fitted to HGVs and buses. One aspect of that is whether ISA could in the long-term be an alternative.
And a second consultation on in-vehicle safety systems in general. Taking account of the consultation results, the Commission will publish in the autumn a document by its technical experts which will no doubt refer to ISA among many other things. That is all. (NB such “staff working documents” are not adopted by the Commission at political level and have no legal status.) Nothing more is expected in the foreseeable future.
It is part of the EC’s job – because it has been mandated to do so by Member States, including the UK – to look at, promote research into and consult stakeholders about new road safety technology which might ultimately save lives. This is done in close cooperation with Member States and the UK has generally supported such efforts.”
It might also seem strange to some that the UK government -if the press reports are accurate at least in that respect – apparently objects so violently to even being consulted about a range of future ways in which lives could be saved on Europe’s roads.
--
"You know you want me baby!" - Crow T Robot
I have a better idea ... make cars that can go over 70mph illegal. There.
90MPH is 145KMH. That is slight over 130KMH that is allowed in many places in Europe. And you do not need a Merc to drive that speed. Almost any recent car is able to get up to that speed.
I drive it on a regular basis with my 1400CC 8 year old Beetle.
When you drive in Europe, you should also switch lanes to the right if you passed somebody. That way when somebody is passing you at 250KMH (155MPH) on the German Autobahn, they can. That way when somebody drives 90KMH (56MPH) like big trucks, they drive on the right lane (left in some countries) and people can easily pass.
The speeds differences of 20-25 MPH (30-40 KMH) you panic about are already standard in Europe and using speed limits on the cars will do nothing to change that.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The vast majority of these 30,000 causalities are in the former eastern block countries on roads dangerous by design.
In the more developed countries the number of fatalities per km driven is very low and setting the max. speed to 70mi (~113 km) would not change anything.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/tra_tra_acc_inc_car_cra_fat_rat-inc-car-crashes-fatality-rate
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Road_safety_statistics_at_regional_level
Motorway density and risk
Statistically, the numbers of road deaths are particularly low for many regions with high traffic volumes. This is true especially of many regions in western Germany and England, in particular around major cities, and of most parts of the Netherlands. Especially around major cities and transport hubs (e.g. seaports), high traffic volumes cause congestion, which reduces average speeds and, therefore, also the likelihood of fatalities when accidents do occur. A closer look at this phenomenon also reveals that many of these regions tend to have high motorway density. In general, motorways are much safer than secondary roads. Furthermore, mainly transit traffic uses existing motorways, thus keeping the number of road fatalities in these regions relatively low, despite high total traffic volumes. In fact, the quality of the roads in these countries is especially high, contributing to the low number of accidents. By contrast, fatality rates are high in regions with low motorway density, such as all of Romania, Hungary and the Czech Republic except their capitals, the whole of Bulgaria, Poland, the Baltic Member States, some of the eastern federal states of Germany and many rural areas in France and Spain. These data strongly suggest that the high proportion of traffic using motorways is an important factor behind the low number of road fatalities in many regions.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
And have never travelled in Europe.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
From a human rights perspective driving is a right not a privilege. And speeding is relative. Everyone has their own sense of what "too fast" is. There will always be people who feel safe driving at higher speeds than you and people who don't feel safe unless they are driving much slower than you are. This might not even be fixed in a given individual. Their idea of a safe speed at 17 would likely differ from when they are 95. So who gets to decide how slow is "safe" enough?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Soon there will be GPS spoofers that tell your vehicle it's on the Autobahn.
There's a very high probability that there exists no such proposal.
"EU proposes/legislates/forces $obviously_stupid_thing" is a
very popular headline in UK newspapers, and in the vast majority
of cases it's based on an at least highly misleading reading of some
rule, or even an entirely made up one.
The fact that I haven't been able to find any mention of this proposal in the
press of multiple other EU countries (in their respective native language),
and that there is absolutely no source for the claim in either TFA or any
of the other British articles I found, makes me believe that this one falls into
the "made up" category.
The only person quoted is the UK's conservative transport
secretary, most likely just reacting to a question by the press.
Welcome to Silly Season.
Currently cars use several other technologies to prevent 'stupid' and everyone is ok with it.
The problem is that I, and very many people with me, find it ethically absolutely unacceptable to have tools work against their owners. This is exactly the reason why people hate DRM so much. My tools are mine and should listen to me only, and anyone trying to oppose that is evil. Seriously evil.
Also note that none of the examples you posted are an example of this.
The lesson here is that a sufficiently large corporation is indistinguishable from government. --ultranova
There are far more manual cars than automatics in EU. However, I have experienced the "engage brakes before you can engage Drive" when I had to drive an automatic loaner (all that was left). It was number 6 on the list of why I dislike them, with far more irritating reasons getting higher billing.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
They read speed cameras? So I can print out a 20MPH sign and hold it out of my window whenever I feel like making someone else's car slam on the brakes. Or put one of these signs next to a trunk road and cause traffic chaos.
According to the Spanish general traffic department (DGT), excessive speed was a factor in 37% of all fatalities
And how many of those 37% were actually caused by vehicles travelling over 70mph?
A fatal accident at less than 70MPH is easily plausible when you are on a curvy road where the speed limit is 35MPH...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Let's say they do fit cars with limiters that cannot pass 70MPH.
Now suddenly, there are no speed traps on the highway. There are no speed cameras because what is the point?
The brilliant thing is that as a member of the technical elite, I can hack my cars limiter and proceed to go whatever speed I like. There's nothing quite like having everyone else pushed down so you can be raised up in the world...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Is what you would then find me doing otherwise I would not be able to move forward quickly to avoid an accident.
Driving is is not a freedom.
When the fundamental laws of a country enumerate your right to live anywhere within and move freely about the country, driving, by extension, should become a right. I have the right to live in a rural location where there's no public transportation, if I so choose. Without being able to drive, I am forced to remain within bicycling distance of my home or in an urban setting, against my will; my mobility rights are effectively nullfiied and meaningless. Just another clever way that laws are manipulatively crafted to cancel out our fundemental freedoms.
Yes, when convicted of certain offenses, specific rights can be suspended or revoked, but that is supposed to be reserved for the most heinous of crimes commited by the most unrehabitable of people. Making a simple mistake or having the misfortune of crossing paths with an asshole cop should not be justification to abridge the fundamental right of mobility.
I'm continually amazed at how Slashdotters defend liberty with impressive ferocity except where the subject involves driving. Then all bets are off and we join the masses who cower in fear of the boogeyman, clamoring for corporate and government action. Obviously, very few Slashdotters are car enthusiasts.
You are full of shit. You do have those freedoms today. But if you elect to exercise them then you pay the price. And I would sue the fuck out of the EU and automakers if I had an emergency situation where I needed a temporary speed boost but couldn't due to this tech.
So take a picture of a 400kph sign and place it permanently in front of the camera. problem solved.
Sometimes, transiently going over the speed limit can save your life.
More control, more authority over people. THAT is the stated goal of government. No such thing as freedom, you are too stupid to take care of yourself. WE will tell you what to drive, or if you can drive, how far you can drive and how fast you can drive. We'll tell you where to live, how to live, where to work and what to eat. Good grief people, do you NOT see what is happening to you?
You give too little credit to the ability of a driver to exceed any safety barrier you can imagine.
If you just take away one element of control, it will just make the problem a LOT worse, for reasons most people have listed above.
Also, how are you going to do it? Brakes? Causing cars to skid-out, likely causing vehicular mayhem? Forcing the car into neutral?, having the power drop out and pratically destroy the engine? You can't just stop at speed, you have to prepare ahead of time what speed you plan to be going, and slowly reduce your speed if you are going too quickly.
This fully assumes that "an existing device works in any case", where it is currently just serving comfort oriented users and where small errors are tolerable.
There is just that little difference to safety systems, those that really need to work in any case.
E.g. these devices used to detect "traffic signs" printed on the trailers end (which show the trucks allowed maximum speed) and indicate those to the driver. Thats not funny if it would suddenly limit speed, consider driving 130 km/h and have the trucks maximum speed of 80 detected.
Additionally there are afaik no rules regarding advertising panels or [url=http://www.progress-sbg.at/tl_files/images/header-content/standardbus-50.jpg]vehicular overprints[/url] to not include traffic signs.
Devices that are able to control the brake are never to be taken lightly, speed limit or not.
Clearly, the idea of "reading" speed limits and varying your speed based upon some detected speed limit is a bad idea, at least with current technology. Signage-based solutions are easily disturbed by tampering with signs, and GPS-driven, database-linked solutions are subject to errors in the databases.
However, the idea of capping the maximum possible speed is sound, and here's why. With the exception of a few places which stubbornly hold onto their lack of permanent speed limits -- essentially some roads in Germany and the Isle of Man, to my knowledge -- it is fairly trivial to ascertain the maximum legal speed for a road-licensed vehicle within Europe. (Yes, the speed will vary by country, but there will be a speed limit beyond which *no* European country will allow you.)
That limit should be hardwired into your vehicle, because legally, you have no reason *ever* to exceed it. If you have an emergency, you contact emergency services (police, ambulance, whatever) who are legally allowed to exceed that limit. If you don't have an emergency, you abide by the limit. And if the technical challenges of a vehicle-enforced speed limit on every road can be solved, it would be a good idea there, too.
And here's why it is a good idea. If everybody -- including the politicians and those tasked with enforcing (and making money out of) the speed limits are forced to abide by them too wherever possible, then we can be sure that irrationally slow speed limits will be raised to rational levels. In the current system used by many countries, we have two rules. One for the general populace, designed to raise funding via a system of road taxation based on illogically-slow speed limits, and one for those who create and enforce the system, and are allowed to ignore the speed limit with a nudge and a wink.
If their cars cannot ignore the speed limit, they suddenly have a vested interest in setting proper speed limits. Right now, they have the very opposite in many countries.
Will politicians and the privileged be given exemptions?
While some cars do have the ability to apply the brakes while using cruise control, most do not. That's easily demonstrated by enabling cruise control and then driving down a reasonable gradient. Your car quickly exceeds the cruise control-selected speed, often by a very significant margin.
So no, unless your car is in the minority with the ability to brake automatically to maintain an upper threshold on cruise control speed, then you don't have a speed limiter. You have cruise control. And I sincerely hope you're aware of that fact.
Immediately, an image of Wile E. Cyote standing at the side of the street with a maliciously formed speed limit sign popped into my mind.
X
"3) You can't full brake the tires when trying to stop on snow, ice or gravel."
but... that is the optimal way to emergency brake on gravel?
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
There's a fundamental difference between the kind of safety features you list, and the kind proposed in the article, which is essentially whether the car will "do its best" to obey the driver or not. Take anti-lock brakes, for instance -- you could say that they are "a technology to prevent stupid", but when a driver presses the brake pedal, anti-lock brakes still brake, they just do it more effectively than a human driver could. There's a significant difference between that, and telling the driver to go fuck himself when he tries to do something that the whims of legislators have decreed illegal. Safety features like the ones you list are a good idea, because they enhance a driver's ability to operate and control their car. The one in the article is an entirely different animal.
weinersmith
Just make it illegal not to use a government supplied driver. And if you ever break that law, 10 years in prison.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say I don't think the government should have the power to outright restrict any persons general right to drive. The fact we/or some call it a privilege is unconscionable. The costs of these freedoms and rights may be an increase in the death toll. However that is the price we pay for living in a free society.
None of this means you can't have regulations. All it means is you can't ever keep a normally capable driver off the road. You can't restrict every drivers vehicle because a few with exceed the regulation.
You can still fine and/or imprison for a reasonable length of time drivers whom are driving recklessly provided there is ample proof. Driving 10(16km/h)-20(32km/h) miles per hour over the limit in a 40 mph zone in many cases is far from being “significantly risky” in most circumstances. However going 40 mph in a 5 mph parking lot full of people would be or driving 140 mph on a road with lots of cars where the rest are doing 60-70 mph.
After having driven around most of europes countries, tens of thousands of km, I have come to the conclusion that the primary reason for many casulties on the roads outside of city traffic in many countries isnt speed, its basically bad road design (a lot of that in cities too). You can build safer roads. But that costs money and takes time, and involves politics, landowners and more. The other part is terrible drivers.
Its a hell of a difference driving in Scotland and Sweden than France or Italy. South of England is another category. Its easier and cheaper to just put up signs warning that "this road have had a lot of casulties in the last 3 years so drive carefully" than to make the road safer. ... and if its a mountain road, in a region know for a lot of rain, a simple ditch on the mountain side to handle rain so it doesnt flod the road and a roadfence on the outside of corner might be a good idea.
http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/local-news/biker-dies-crash-deer-b1257-3690190
> 1) The engine will shut down if oil pressure to low.
Low oil pressure will destroy the car. Saving a couple thousand dollars is not a bad thing.
> 2) You can't put the car in drive unless you press the brake pedal.
If you can't reach the pedal, you can't drive. It's more of a child-safety feature, and yes, children do dick around in cars. I have dented quite a few parked cars in my youth by putting them in neutral.
> 3) You can't full brake the tires when trying to stop on snow, ice or gravel.
Anti-lock breaks take an existing feature (brakes) and improve its performance in the worst of conditions. Shit like that saves lives.
An anti-speeding car does what, exactly? And what do you think is going to happen when a "smart car" automatically slams its brakes on the highway? This idea is bad and its legislators need to feel bad.
Will capping the speed limit make driver exams any less difficult? No way. The difficulty is intended to keep as many people in public transit.
Remember, you are dealing with people that if they had their way, only the military, police and themselves would be personally mobile at will.
They should just start small instead...
Make a law that says from 2016 all new cars must be limited to 150 km/h.
There aren't many places where you are allowed to drive 150 km/h, and even fewer places where this is possible.
No it wouldn't stop much, it would make highspeed highway chases a bit slower, and prevent total morons from driving 180 km/h through small towns killing innocent children on their way to school.
Small step, easy to make, cost efficient and nobody can say that 150 km/h limits the freedom of motorists.
Ontopic: The news here is not what the EU is considering, but the fact that they choose not to go through with this because it would extremely unpopular in the general population.
IMO, a decent call, everybody have something to say about speed limits, therefore these things are better left to be decided at state level.
At state level more people would be able to say there piece, instead of being discontent with a decision made at EU-level, furthermore there may be valid reasons for different speed limits and restrictions in different countries. (Technically, this might also be done using the GPS system, then leaving it to each country to decide whether or not they want speed limits strictly enforced, or by what percentage they want it enforced, who ever said it had to be strict!).
Twice?
Can't fix fucking selfish arrogant wanker stupid apparently.
That would be awesome just to see the reaction from the kid...guys from Top Gear (the one and only: UK).
"Wreckless" and "reckless" are two entirely different things. You can't be reckless and stay wreckless for long.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
My limiter would be turned off about six seconds after fitting.
Oh they'd test the car to see if it had been tampered with? Then I'd damage it in a way that could be inadvertent and undetectable by an unaware driver... with the result that I maintained plausible deniability.
You do not control my car. I control my car. I will follow the traffic laws but you're not going to tell me when I put my foot on the breaks.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
From a human rights perspective driving is a right not a privilege.
Sweet! I'll drive around blindfolded in a tank during rush hour because driving is a right. Anyone got a problem with that? You can't take my license away because I pancaked a dozen school buses! I had a right!
A right is something you can excercise at any time. Driving is not something we want that for -- there are people who are old, blind, retarded, narcoleptic... this is why we license drivers. Now, very often, it seems the government wants to take away people's licenses for offenses that have nothing to do with the safe operation of a vehicle -- like child support, parking tickets, etc. That's not right, but it is not the same problem. Same with speeding -- there is no "right" to speed because speed kills. And I don't give a fuck if you want to throw yourself into a wall at 150 MPH, but I rather do mind if you hit my car at that speed. You wanna suicide? Fine by me. But don't make me part of your political statement.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Going 20MPH below the limit should also not be a freedom.. but it is. In my (non-expert opinion) slow drivers cause more safety problems on the road than fast drivers. At least faster drivers are aware of the other drivers in front of them, whereas a slow driver is, due to certain limiting factors (eye not found on back of head), typically very unaware of what is going on behind them.. placing the onus for maneuvering around them on the countless cars that wish to travel at or near the speed limit.
"Although this "Hacker House" was in nearby Belmont, then shifted to Brighton, Nelson resisted buying a car. He couldn't stand driving. "It takes too much processing to deal with the road," he would later explain. He would take public transportation, or get a ride from another hacker, or even take a cab...." - Steven Levy, Hackers, Heroes of the Computer Revolution, referring to Stew Nelson of the MIT Tech Lab days.
Nerd here, I like to drive, I like cars. I treat driving as a giant video game with only one life and no continue options, and it's my responsibility to have as much fun as possible while playing while not fucking up. I've been doing it for 25 years and only one ticket, which I deserved and for which I was actually kinda grateful -- it was a reminder my eyesight isn't as good as it was 25 years ago, and that the gamemasters with the fancy lights on their cars have gotten better at their game too. Having said that, in my circle of meatspace friends, I know of at least two who refuse to drive because it freaks them out. They're both vastly better coders than I ever was.
(I mean, they even close their italics tags when debasing themselves with HTML. But you get my point ;)
It's not a 'priveledge' to operate a vehicle on public roads. The ways the legal system works is that you are initially free to do anything, and then that freedom is restricted in certain ways by laws. A good example is a restriction that says you must have a valid driver's license to operate vehicle on a public road.
After all, there is no law saying "you have the right to breath the air surrounding you" - there isn't even one that says you have the right to breath the air on someone else property. Since there is no law stopping you, you just can.
These comes out 3 weeks after a report that proves that speed limiters are DANGEROUS because their users don't pay enough attention to the others.
http://auto.rtl.fr/article/regulateur-limiteur-de-vitesse-attention-danger-sur-autoroute-7763052006 (sorry FR only)
Wrong, UK Motorways have a lower death rate.
http://www.abd.org.uk/safest_roads.htm
Seriously, two seconds on google.
You own a Corvette and this is your attitude? Fuck you. I bet you're one of those insufferable late middle aged vette owners that brags about how their car's never seen rain.
Nope driving not a privilege it is a necessity, same thing goes with buses, planes, rail, and boat. Freedom of movement is a basic right, you need it to utilize freedom of association, freedom to assemble, etc. We have been on a slippery slope since the buggy makers were throwing on requirements trying to prop up there industry.
No sir I dont like it.
How about we just wrap everybody in cotton wool and outlaw leaving the house, ever
Because outrageously stupid ideas like these make much more sense than making the fucking driving test harder so that morons don't get to drive
Yes. All the time. Is that surprising in any way?
"enjoying the priveledge of being allowed to operate a vehicle"
Thanks for the laugh, funniest most arrogant rant today...
It's a _really_ complicated problem for a number of reasons:
1) GPS is inaccurate.
2) Road network data is inaccurate and updated infrequently.
3) Speed limit data can be wildly inaccurate, if present at all.
4) There is no international standard for this data, and governments do not invest in creating and/or supplying it.
Satellite imagery suffers from the same problem. You're likely looking at Digital Globe Satellite imagery (via Google or Bing) that is over a year old at *best* and over 5 years old in a typical image, composited from multiple satellite passes to form "features" where there was minimal amounts of cloud cover over a large region in one continuous image. A lot can change in 3 months. The aerial photography level doesn't have the same problem because the airplanes fly under the cloud level, but the coverage there is typically limited to the cities.
My company's products and solutions incorporate many means to provide speeding alerts to drivers and managers of drivers for driving safety, but it's still a system fraught with unknowns, and the best mechanisms we have to discover and correct the issues are a topic of ongoing research and development. That and it's a niche market.
A friend of mine posted about the same suggestion on her blog MANY years ago. http://amandateoh.com/?p=745 The car companies will against this measure. All in a sudden, my crappy kia can go as fast as my wealthy neighbour's BMW. This won't end well.
Your car will not get speeding tickets far more efficiently than any human could. (If we look at the evidence of how many speeding tickets have ever been issued.)
Actually a lot of the autobahn now has speed limits. And yes it has cut the amount of deaths there by a lot.
I in fact like this idea.
My life should not be put at risk because some rich jack ass in a merc wants to go 90 while everyone else is going 65-70.
Would it make any difference if it's a poor prick in a Hyundai Excel?
I agree with your principle but this is a bad idea because there are a few situations where it's safer to break the speed limit, these are once in a blue moon situations but when they happen it's normally life and death.
Also, this wont work as pricks who want to speed will just have the chip disabled/modified making this ineffective.
Beyond this, EU car manufacturers wont have a bar of it, I imagine BMW, Mercades et al. will simply put a system into their cars that disables this at the touch of a button (they'll call it "race mode" or something and claim it's only for use on the track).
As a I said, I agree with your principle, but this wont affect people who speed because they're pricks. The only way to affect these idiots is to take away their licenses (and then their cars if they're dumb and arrogant enough to drive unlicensed). Fines for speeding are pretty ineffective.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
What about my freedom to go 200kph down a highway that's limited to 80 kph?
what about my rights?
so what if my right to speed infringes on another persons right to live, as i cut them off, or force them off the road, or force them to apply the breaks and then get rear-ended, or I ____ up and collide with someone else.. well.. It's still my freedom to kill other people through my reckless actions on a publicly paid for roadway...
(/sarcasm)
My 1997 BMW Z3 came from the factory with an electronic limiter set at 128 mph. It's an easy fix to remove, not that I would ever drive that fast... often.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
You seem to be confusing your freedom of mobility - which you obviously have - vs. your desire to complete your trip in a certain elapsed time - for which you may need to pay for a faster mode of transport, or acquire a means (vehicle) and right of passage (licence) to do so yourself.
Self-nullifying your right to mobility by defining the timeframe taken is your problem.
The U-shaped shows that being slightly faster (about 5km/hr) than average is the safest speed to drive. It was from research in 1964 and reaffirmed in thousands of research papers from all over the world.
The opposing opinion comes from a few papers from Aussie universities who get their funding in part from speed camera research and speed camera revenue but most of their work ignores the left part of the curve.
We need more, not less deaths as the earth has reached its event horizon. This world cannot support us being the massively spreading virus that we are. JMHO
This measure probably won't happen. I don't think it will fly, because it offers no incentive, it's just a restriction.
Though eventually, we'll likely see single lane speeds on (for instance) 3 or 4 lane highways, you pick a lane, and the speed control system in your car sets your speed to match all the other vehicles in that lane, and maintain separation distance. The optimal speed would be chosen by the traffic system. Drivers without automatic speed controls will have to match lane speed and separation, or use the one (or two) lanes dedicated to manually-speed controlled lanes, which would have lower conventional speed limits.
Then you can do neat things like cars announcing intentions to the whole traffic system. Think what a traffic system could do if it knew the intended routes of a majority of the vehicles in transit, especially incorporating data like the locations of any road hazards and moving emergency vehicles.
You can also (more) safely set lane limits at higher speeds than might be wise with all the cars having manual speed controls, thus solving the safety issue as well as the desire to let people move freely at maximum safe speed.
Cars truly are the albatross around the neck of society. Aside from ruining the amenity and aesthetics of our cities, displacing other forms of transport, the carnage that accompanies them would never be tolerated by any new technology. Just looking at a few of the responses in this discussion for an example of the antisocial, entitled mindset of the majority of drivers. And they pollute the air we breathe in the process!
Fortunately the price of oil will soon make automobiles a luxury for most, lowering the barrier on populist mandated limits on the deathcages.
The big german sedans are limited to 155mph, too. Just take a trip down the autobahn/autostrada and see how effective that is :D
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
141, huh? My Chrysler convertible stops at 125. Not that I've actually tried it or anything... (psshhht)
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
In the future autonomous cars could be Default
The difference that surveillance and airport sexual assault checkpoints is not something you have to purchase. Here is US we have enough cars to last next 50 years. It will be just like Cuba.
Good example is Windows 8, sure someone will end up buying it, but when consumers in large numbers say DO NOT WANT you have panicked lobby groups reverting obnoxious laws in a hurry.
"The annual fatality rate (2.7 per billion km in 2009) is consistently lower than that of most other superhighway systems, including the US Interstates (4.5 in 2009). Furthermore, a 2005 study by the German government found that Autobahn sections without speed limits had the same accident rate as those with speed limits."
Personal experience:
I wouldn't correlate slower driving with safer driving, driving fast is what keeps me out of car accidents. I'm not kidding.
The faster I can drive away from all the other cars the safer I am and the faster I'm driving the more options I have to react to the conditions on the road. I know for a fact that forcing me to drive slower will not reduce my personal odds of getting into an accident on the freeway. I drive very fast and get a lot of speeding tickets. All the accidents I've been in we're when I've been stopped or driving less then 10 mph, if I were driving faster I would have not gotten in those accidents. I'm from Los Angeles, drive an Audi a4, and I have noticed this to be true time and time again in my life.
Sweet! I'll drive around blindfolded in a tank during rush hour because driving is a right. Anyone got a problem with that?
That would depend on whether you injured anyone, damaged the road, or damaged anyone's property.
You can't take my license away because I pancaked a dozen school buses! I had a right!
What license? In a free society you wouldn't need a license to exercise the basic human right to move about with more than just your own two legs.
A right is something you can excercise at any time.
Whether or not you can engage in an action at any time is unrelated to whether it can be seen as a human right. Think more in terms of the basic equality of all human beings or in a wider sense all sentient life. What right does someone else have to stop you from doing something? That is how the concept of rights arose.
Does someone have the right to prevent you from walking down a street and if so, what gives them that right? If they do not have that right, then what about if you are driving in an electric wheelchair? A bicycle? A bicycle with an electric motor to assist on hills? And yes eventually you get to mopeds, motorcycles, and cars. Maybe even flying cars someday. The way I see it no group has the right to prevent someone else from moving around freely as long as the property is not privately owned. If someone is harmed then that is different of course. They should be held responsible for such harm.
Driving is not something we want that for -- there are people who are old, blind, retarded, narcoleptic
Once you require government permission before you can do something that is a basic requirement of human life then you are no more than a slave. You become someone's property.
Very few blind people are going to attempt to drive a car. That is a non-problem. IQ is not even something currently tested to receive a license. Another non-problem. Admittedly old/senile people are a problem in Florida, but it is not a simple problem to solve even with the current system because it is not always easy to show that someone is dangerous to others and stranding everyone who might be dangerous in their homes is really a kind of imprisonment. We don't currently have a system for weeding out narcoleptics or insomniacs either and somehow our system of roads seems to mostly work.
Same with speeding -- there is no "right" to speed because speed kills.
You cannot prove that 'speed kills'. Yes, I'm familiar with 1/2mV^2 and a collision at higher speed will result in a greater release of energy, but to say that 'speed kills' is no more accurate than to say that mass kills. The truth is that people kill when they make mistakes with dangerous machines and there is not much that can be done about it. Reducing speed is no more reasonable than reducing mass.
Every person seems to have their own idea of what a reasonable speed is for a given road and a given set of conditions. So who gets to decide what is a safe and reasonable speed for everyone else? I've been driving for more than 25 years and for all of that time I have been routinely ignoring speed limits to the point that I once nearly had my license suspended for 5 years. I probably drive faster than 90% of Americans (probably about as fast as an average European) and yet I have not been responsible for injuring or killing a single person ever and on average I haven't been in any more accidents than slow drivers.
It doesn't sound like a causal connection between speed and hurting other people has been established at all. In fact I could make the opposite argument: that slow drivers are responsible for more accidents than fast ones. They interfere with the natural flow of traffic on highways and on back roads their selfish, antisocial behavior results in faster drivers passing them in unsafe situations resulting in head-on collisions in the opposite lane. You can bla
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Even without the oh-so-typical use of imperial units, it took me all of 2 lines into this bit of "news" to know exactly which newspaper it came from.
Lo and behold, it is indeed nothing more than the semi-regular bit of foaming at the mouth by the Telegraph: a notoriously europhobic rag whose sole raison d'être seems to be lamenting the glory of ole Britannia and play into the fears and pet hates of their readership (in no particular order: immigrants, the youfth of today, loud music, feminists, the EU, anybody who dares criticising the Royal Family etc).
As usual, the article is full of weasel words and rightful indignation, with little evidence to back up the claim that any such plan exists, as more than the inconsequential suggestion of some external consultant, somewhere, somehow (the closest I have found to a non Telegraph/Daily Mail-related source about that story, is this page on an official EU's website, which clearly states that its content does not reflect the opinion of the commission, let alone anywhere near the stage of an official EU proposal).
But at least the "editors" of Slashdot and a couple other lazy online websites get a nice click-whoring controversy out of this, the usual crowds can rush in and start pointing out why this is a horrible idea so typical of the EU, the Telegraph gets some extra publicity and their readers get their weekly dose of EU paranoia (and must feel really powerful, when none of these scary directives ever make it into law). Everybody's happy.
The implication here is that new technology should be used to enforce an archaic system of speed limits.
It is rather obvious that the concept of a speed limit only exists because you can only place ONE SIGN at the road.
In reality, the safe speed limit is based on the car, the weather, the time of day, traffic, and whatever else is happening around the car.
Thus speed limits, while computable, should OBVIOUSLY not be tied to the old flawed signs along the road. If the cars at some point become the extended arm of traffic law enforcement, speed limits should become flexible as well.
Put the max speed into the car for the maximum speed limit in THE ENTIRE WORLD ....
And the next problem: what if I want to use my car on the racing circuit ?
It wasn't my fault. I tride to swerve to avoid the pedestrian, but my car hit the brakes mid-turn, causing me to spin out and kill six pedestrians instead.
A marathon running on the sidewalk was labelled with a big "30", so even though it was a sixty zone, my car slammed on the brakes thinking it was thirty.
I was passing a huge truck that was driving slowly on a two-lane road. I was executing a proper high-speed pass on the other side of the road. In order to pass the truck going 50 in a 70 zone, I needed to drive faster than him. The faster I drive, the less time I spend in on-coming traffic on the wrong side of the road. I needed to drive 90 to pass the very long truck in under two miles. But my car refused to go more than 70. So it took me four miles pass him. Or it would have, had I not hit the other guy head-on after only 3 miles, killing us all.
I've always appreciated the "guilty with a reason" option on moving violations. This completely eliminates the benefits of that option.
I was young, drunk, wreckless and speeding.
So you were trying to get yourself a wreck, then?
Causing the car to slow down doesn't make the nation a dime. Simply assigning large fines for speeding and automating the capture of license plates and sending out the fines could make a nation billions. Tick tock!
Unlike the real Big Brother which the people in the UK seem to be relatively relaxed about?
You can't put the car in drive unless you press the brake pedal
sure i can. pressing the clutch pedal is suggested, though :)
Rich
Current laws already recognise it's not all or nothing - that you can ride a bicycle does not mean that driving a car is exactly the same, so bicycles are treated differently than cars (here bicycles have a right to operate on the highway, cars do not - they and their driver must be licensed and insured).
As for responsiblility, you're going to need rules for that too I'm afraid. When your untrained unlicensed driver runs over some pedestrian, and does not have enough money to pay for the pedestrian's health care, someone has to enforce that they have financial responsibility.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
As soon as you get the employment contracts of everyone you want to not have a right to drive changed from saying "8 AM to 8 PM" to "approximately monday to approximately monday".
Otherwise, not having the right to drive means not having the right to work, and in a capitalist society, that quickly translates to not having the right to food, and thus not having the right to life.
I don't even have to read the article to know from which country this piece of garbage reporting came: the United Kingdom, the only country in the EU which still uses those quaint and archaic units, and also famously EU-phobic, always generating scary stories about the EU which are wildly inaccurate at best and downright bullshit most of the time.
It's very hard to figure where the hell this story came from since it's wildly inaccurate in every way. If there were speed advisors in cars it would obviously not apply to existing cars any more than rules about ABS, airbags etc. do. If a limiter were mandatory then it would be in new models and would probably apply to heavy vehicles more than cars.
It would also not be done by reading road signs either for obvious reasons. More likely it would be radio signals or similar in the same way as some roads have auto tolls.
And if the UK were to object to limiters then all they need do is not plant the limiting information into the roads and bingo, no limiter. But the entire purpose of the exercise is to save lives and make roads safer which I assume British road safety groups would be keen to do. But apparently this is something the Telegraph and it's idiot readership object to because it "violates" their freedoms.
I presume. Germany will be exempt from this law since there is no speed limit on their Autobahns.
You can drive 200mph on a highway without crashing assuming the weather permits it. But if you start weaving between cars at 200mph you're going to have a bad time unless you're a trained professional with the right car. Limiting speed limits is basically saying if in an emergency such as crossing a tornado will limit you to 70mph instead of your car's max and i can see a lot more deaths caused by this than the enforced limiter. Again, tyranny is trying to force control over its people.
Still a jackass doing reckless driving.
Tomorrow is another day...
When you drive on the road outside uk, you should always keep your right.
FTFY
Tomorrow is another day...
A culture where people follow rules religiously helps. You won't find a German jaywalking. You won't even find a German crossing the road in the middle of the night when no one is around if at the crosswalk the man is red.
Are you trying to be funny?
Claus
Wrong, UK Motorways have a lower death rate.
http://www.abd.org.uk/safest_roads.htm
Seriously, two seconds on google.
Please don't disturbe his religious beliefs with facts.
Claus
Seriusly, it's not going to be the speed limiters that "limit your freedom". It's the laws that limit your freedom, and the fact that it has previusly been easy to break the laws isn't an argument that it should remain so. The people arguing that it's a limitation to their freedom should be arguing against speeding laws, not speeding laws enforcement.
> Under the proposals new cars would be fitted with cameras that could read road speed limit signs
This feature is already available as a paid extra in many new cars as of mid-2013. They will repeat the street sign (speed limit, stop, sharp bend ahead, etc.) on the dashboard LCD and/or say it aloud in robot voice. I do not think they apply brakes as well.
> the move 'violated' motorists' freedom.
I am all for freedom as long as it comes with adequate responsibility! Speed, kill someone, get hanged, period.
As long as people can get away with 1-2 years for running over and killing pedestrians at the marked crossing, there should be no freedoms mentioned. Where is the freedom of the victims killed or maimed? They do not have any, since they are dead or vegetative. The perpetrators hire expensive attorneys at law and cry rivers in the court, so that pussy female judges give them 1 year or less.
Similarly, I do not understand how US people living in member states with no executions on the book can enjoy 2nd amendment rights? You can shoot someone dead at will and the legal system cannot shoot you dead? Such a country is positioned morally up-side down and will perish under the weight of its sins. As President Jackson famously said, the USA was built and stands on universal respect for 3 major institutions: motherhood, the flag and capital punishment. Roe-Wade pulled the motherhood leg and the USA is already toppling. Pulling the execution leg only hastens it to freefall.
At least Europe does not allow people to have firearms and murder each others with ease, since she has no death penalty for adequate punishment.
Simple scenario. Another car is veering out of control and heading towards you from the right. There's a car behind you and a car to your left. The only option you have to avoid getting hit is to speed up and get out of the way of the car. Oops, you have a speed limiter and now you're toast.
Shit like this makes me want to kill myself.
Every manufactured car in the last few years with cruise control has braked cruise control.
Just for your information, stopping distance on snow or gravel is actually shorter with locked wheels, due to the build-up of ice or gravel in front of the wheel (which you constantly roll over when the wheels are not locked). But of course you can't make turns with locked wheels, so anti-lock brakes did end up saving many morons' lives. For a really good driver, though, there's not really such a good thing.
I was young, drunk, wreckless and speeding.
Well, the lack of wrecks must have meant you weren't too young, drunk and/or fast.
So no, unless your car is in the minority with the ability to brake automatically to maintain an upper threshold on cruise control speed, then you don't have a speed limiter. You have cruise control. And I sincerely hope you're aware of that fact.
He is, that's why his list is so specific. The cruise control functionality in the cars on his
list does indeed include a "speed limiter" mode, with a user-selectable top speed.
It is quite useful.
It is also true that few owners of cars with that capability are aware of that mode.
You might even be one of them, check the manual.
However, only some of those systems use the brakes to stay under this set limit on slopes.
Those that do are usually in the higher-end of the market - Mercedes e.g. has a fully
automatic assistant that respects a user-set top speed while also keeping a safe distance
from the car in front, up to stopping completely. With this assistant, the only thing not
yet automated is the steering, even in stop-and-go traffic.
Often it seems that when the British people refer to Europe, they mean Europe minus the British Isles. There are however many countries outside of Europe (and by definition also outside the UK) that drive on the left, so while he was technically incorrect in his use of Europe, his statement was more correct than your "fixed" version.
They let people drive on snow, ice or gravel?
How else to drive in the winter - 6 months of roads covered with a layer of snow and ice - and some gravel to improve traction . . .
The reason is more due to strict driving exams.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
All the best research shows that speed is only a very minor factor in accidents and fatalities. The focus on speed is a con so they can generate revenue, nothing more. If they really cared about saving lives / safety they would be looking at other far more significant factors that don't so easily allow the politburo to steal even more of your energy for the system.
I know that you always here that speed causes many accidents but what they don't tell you is that most accidents where speed was partially at fault does NOT mean that going over the speed limit actually occurred. Lets say you are on a freeway and a big SUV/Semi/Whatever is in front of you. You come around a bend and low and behold the traffic is stopped, but it takes you a second longer to see it because of the big SUV in front of you. The speed limit is 65 and you are actually only going 60, you try to break but you impact the vehicle in front of you at about 20 mph. Many freeway accidents are rear ends. The speed minimum on a freeway is 45 MPH. The reason speed was a factor in this accident is because cars were actually going below the speed minimum. However, all you will here is that the driver was going to fast. Well, they were going 5 miles per hour under the speed limit. Now accidents in cities usually occur at intersections. You hear that the driver was going to fast as they entered the intersection, but what you don't hear is that the speed limit was 30 mph and the driver was going 42 mph. Sorry, but a governor is not going to prevent the speeder from going 42 mph in a 30 mph. Even if, as the article says, it reads the speed limit sign. Well, in the city there is not a speed limit sign everywhere. I can often enter a road and go a mile before seeing a speed limit sign. So the governor is only going to prevent accidents that occur on freeways by drivers going over the posted freeway speed limit. Well, go do your research and you will find those type of accidents are some of the least common. So no, governors on cars will probably not reduce hardly accidents. In fact, driving 80 mph has proven to keep people awake on long freeway drives, so what you are likely to see, at a controlled 60 mph speed, is a lot more drousy drivers falling asleep. What will happen when the number of accidents by drowsy drivers increase?
As for responsiblility, you're going to need rules for that too I'm afraid. When your untrained unlicensed driver runs over some pedestrian, and does not have enough money to pay for the pedestrian's health care, someone has to enforce that they have financial responsibility.
All too often, people like this beat their chest and rip grass up screaming about their rights... and secretly hope that nobody will notice their call for "right" is a call to avoid personal responsibility. There is no human right ever now, or in the past, that relieves one of their higher obligations to their own humanity. Part of that means accepting that we need to make social contracts, like licensure for driving, in order to ensure everyone's safety. Every right comes with its own responsibilities, just as all power comes with it as well. Disregard that, and you become a monster, a villain, a sociopath.
Driving isn't a right. You don't need a car to survive. You don't need it to be successful. It's a convenience, like a dish washer, or running water. People talked about human rights as far back as pre-greek times, and they didn't put in their treatise on the subject, "And Thou Shalt Preserve Thy Right To Locomote By Means Of Crushed And Fossilized Animal Remains."
People like this don't know the meaning of the word human right. They think it means "I get to do whatever I want." Human rights aren't for that; they're put there to ensure that greater evils do not take place, because several millenia of history tells us that if we don't accept that people need to be able to question authority, to defend themselves against it, to have equal partnership in the establishing of social contracts between themselves and those of other social classes... civilization doesn't happen.
Human rights, fundamentally, ensure that civilization happens... not that you get to drive 140 MPH in the fast lane. Perspective... some people need it.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I have a new Garmin GPS So far in my travels it has had the wrong speed limit a couple of times and in a few other cases it hasn't known the speed limit of the road I'm on.
One of the more common speed limit sign graffiti tends to be changing a 3 to an 8. I'm sure the Graffiti artists will improve their quality to match the ability of a speed limit camera to read the changed sign ;)
Although most of the time you have to brake to avoid an accident, occasionally you need to speed up to get out of the way.
Proximity controlled braking. It better be able to tell the difference between a car and a bird. Around here it is not uncommon for birds to fly across your path or sit on/near the road and only move at about the last second. The birds are almost never hit (I've never had one hit), but they have come very close.
You forgot to mention that the fast lane will be paved with that righteous metal rhodium.
You can't spell "oneiromancy" without "roman".
"A Government source told the Mail on Sunday"
Mail on Sunday, all credibility should end there.
I'm in a big city driving a motorcycle and I risk my life everyday at 25 Mph. Overspeed is an easy culprit since it's easy to enforce/punish, and it's very easy to make lawbreakers look like dangerous irresponsible selfish criminals, but at some point you just have to stop bringing up this problem alone.
But of course, building safer roads is overly expensive and getting people to drive better is complicated. Slowing everything down will always give you a % less death on the road (you know, less kinetic energy...) so you'll get your bonus point for the next election, but at one point you'll have to actually handle the problem as a whole and not just play politics...
If they want to take a short-cut to thinking, then why stop at the speed limit. They should also look for speed minimum signs and go wide open throttle if you go too slow!
European cars don't do 70 MPH: they do 112 Kph.
Heavy is the head that wears the tinfoil hat.
That'd be easy to work around: list the Autobahn in the system as having a speed limit of 1,200 km/h, which is just under the speed of sound in air.
Suppose you wish to overtake someone doing 35 in a 60 limit area. They might speed up as you try to overtake, making over-taking margins dangerous. Without a speed limiter you can overtake at 70 or more if you absolutely have to making over-taking far less risky. If you are limited to 60 maximum, there is nothing to spare if a car appears out of a hidden dip in the road going the other way fast. This would mean having to brake sharply and fit back in to traffic your own side of the road which as often as not can be equally as dangerous. or you can be stuck at 35 for many miles and not over-take. . . .
The fact is collisions at 40 in opposite directions kill. A combined closing speed of 80 mph is highly dangerous in an accident, or if a car goes off the road because of tyre, suspension or .steering wear or damage, eg caused by speed bumps or badly maintained roads and hits something solid at 40 it will cause an almighty prang of any car.
You can stop MOST accidents by having a 10 Km/h speed limit on all journeys or someone walking in front waving a red flag, But Oh, I forgot, some people have been killed in 10 mph collisions.
Does Brussels have chaperoned bureaucrats who never actually drive a car themselves? I wonder?
Suppose you wish to overtake someone doing 35 in a 60 limit area. They might speed up as you try to overtake, making over-taking margins dangerous. Without a speed limiter you can overtake at 70 or more if you absolutely have to making over-taking far less risky. If you are limited to 60 maximum, there is nothing to spare if a car appears out of a hidden dip in the road going the other way fast. This would mean having to brake sharply and fit back in to traffic your own side of the road which as often as not can be equally as dangerous. or you can be stuck at 35 for very very many miles and not over-take. . . .
The fact is collisions at 40 in opposite directions kill. A combined closing speed of 80 mph is highly dangerous in an accident, or if a car goes off the road because of tyre, suspension or .steering wear or damage, eg caused by speed bumps or badly maintained roads and hits something solid at 40 it will cause an almighty prang of any car.
You can stop MOST accidents by having a 10 Km/h speed limit on all journeys or someone walking in front waving a red flag, But Oh, I forgot, some people have been killed in 10 mph collisions.
Does Brussels have chaperoned bureaucrats who never actually drive a car themselves? I wonder?
In Sweden there are roads with 120 km/h (ca 75 mp/h) speed limit. In Denmark there are roads with 130 km/h (ca 80 mp/h) speed limits. I'm sure there are other countries with other hight speed limits. And what about those parts (yes, only parts) of the German autobahn where there is no speed limit? Will all countries have to lower their limits?
In short, this is a stupid idea.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
Sweet! I'll drive around blindfolded in a tank during rush hour because driving is a right
You're being intentionally obtuse. There are still reasonable limits placed on rights - you can't shout fire in a crowded theater being the canonical example (but you still have the RIGHT of freedom of speech).
Driving is so necessary to modern life that it is a de-facto right.
Nonsense, rhodium is way too valuable as a currency
You can pave the roads in gold.
Germany already had a speed limiter on cars made in Germany. 155MPH. Top Gear hates it. Just imagine what they think of a 70MPH limit!?
I foresee this being a Top Gear topic for sure! (Which I will be able to watch a year later because I live in Canada...)
Every manufactured car in the last few years with cruise control has braked cruise control.
Many people have cars more than a few years old.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
The only way to do it safely is to wait until it's safe.
Don't pass at 85mph, pass at 70 or less.
If you can't manage that safely, wait.
You seem to be confusing your freedom of mobility - which you obviously have - vs. your desire to complete your trip in a certain elapsed time
Well, technically, it's boss's desire to have me at work on time. Oh, and my desire to eat food which I can pay for with the paycheque from the job that I'm able to get to on time, in the home that I'm able to pay for with the job that I'm able to get to on time... but yeah, not driving would totally work if you're living on the street!
Right, this was precisely my point.
Complete and utter rubbish. I have never even driven a vehicle with braked cruise control, and I have driven numerous different vehicles from the last three years from European, Japanese, and American manufacturers, not a one of them being an entry-level model.
If either of my vehicles had the feature, believe me when I say I would be aware of it. Neither does.
no computer system should be able to 'apply the brakes', if anything they should only, and in the most restrictive sense possible, be able to disallow further acceleration. And when the system is in doubt or fails, it must ALWAYS default to doing absolutely nothing. Big brother my ass though, if it is illegal to speed, it makes sense that it shouldn't be possible for cars to speed. Such a feature should be on e default but should also be easily bypassed by the vehicle's owner. No fixed system can take into account unknown circumstances and as such this should be easily opt-out-able. I think most sensible people will opt-in though...
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
2 only applies if you drive an automatic
3 only applies if you have antilock brakes
i say take out the tech and let people learn how to drive instead of giving them 2 ton computerized toys that they think won't let them crash