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.'"
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.”
From TFA:
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
GPS take elevation into account when it needs to.
It only gives you speed over ground though.
D-GPS only provides greater positional accuracy. Nothing to do with speed. Speed is not calculated based on a delta-time/delta-distance (that would give you an average speed with an accuracy depending on the speed you're travelling or the update rate). It is calculated using the doppler effect of the signals from the satellites.
D-GPS is only designed to broadcast the effect of the atmosphere on the speed of the signals, as radio waves travel at different speed in different mediums. Atmospheric conditions and the current state of the ionosphere only effect the absolute positional accuracy of GPS, not the speed readings.
http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/reports-of-brussels-big-brother-bid-to-impose-speed-controls-are-inaccurate-beyond-the-limit-2/
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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.
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"You know you want me baby!" - Crow T Robot
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.
Straight Down is not 100% grade. 45 degrees = 100% grade. (Rise over Run is the formula.)
So admittedly the GPS might be off somewhat on a steep long grade.
Nobody cares about this because Its relative speed that kills.
A car going up/down a steep hill at the speed limit and crashing into a stationary object is going to suffer the same amount of damage as one going the speed limit on a flat surface. It matters not a wit that the horizontal distance traveled is less on an incline.
Most roads are built to no more than 6% grade. (In fact you will see warning signs any time it approaches 5%).
After market GPSs may in fact take this into account, because they all measure altitude.
Built in GPSs almost always take their speed reading from the wheels.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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
Why not fit cars with a voluntary limiter that users can enable themselves?
My car has one of those and it's awesome. I started using it along winding back roads at dusk where I would be looking out for kangaroos and was finding that I was subconciously increasing my speed to well over the speed limit. Setting the limiter to something reasonable meant I wouldn't exceed a safe speed and didn't have to keep tapping the cruise control when a bend came up etc. It's also great for following cars along winding roads that sit 10kph over the speed limit but slow down to 60kph every time a gentle bend comes up - previously I found I would subconciously follow them up to whatever speed they were doing and knowing my luck i'd be the one to get the speeding ticket
Now i just set it everywhere and never touch the cruise control unless i'm on a really long trip on the open road. With the speed limiter set I don't need to look at the speedometer nearly as often around town so my eyes are on the road more.
Speed is not the only cause of road accidents, and in many cases a crash would have occurred anyway. Also setting a maximum speed would do nothing to stop people speeding at 70mph down residential streets, which is far more dangerous than doing 90mph on a highway.
In fact many crashes are caused by lack of speed, or significant differences in speed. Someone driving well below the speed limit is often far more dangerous than someone driving way above it, especially on roads where its not easy to pass them because they will cause a queue of frustrated drivers to form behind them. Someone driving slowly on the highway is also extremely dangerous.
Also speed limits today were set many years ago, when cars were much slower and more dangerous... While lowend cars then would have struggled to reach 70mph if they could at all, today virtually any car is capable of 100mph. More importantly, while driving 70mph back then was noisy and resulted in a lot of vibration from the vehicle, today 70mph is a trivial cruising speed and you barely realise you're moving... This significantly increases the change of people falling asleep at the wheel.
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Actually, the UK is officially a metric country. We just decided that it was too much hassle to change every single distance and speed sign in the entire road network when we made the move to becoming metric.
I'm a lorry driver... and GP is right. Very few drivers actually pay for their fuel any more, and if they're from the same company, they wouldn't bother rotating. I certainly never have deliberately sat in a convoy - it's a lot harder to drive when you can't see all the road in front of you. Sometimes you'll get trucks that constantly overtake each other, because one is quicker up hills, the other is quicker on the flat, but they don't do it deliberately.