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.'"
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.