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.
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?
It will cost just a hundred billion euros and will make 2% of the fatal accidents non-fatal, only crippling.
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.
. . . 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!
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.
Brussels should just FUCK OFF actually.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Think about the one day this fails for some reason, and someone is unable to get out of harm's way, or the brake inexplicably turns engages, and someone is hurt or injured.
Now, instead of it being a jackass driver's fault, it is the government's fault. A law-abiding citizen, perhaps, who did nothing wrong other than live in the EU. That's why this is a terrible idea.
So many reasons why a person would be injured instead of saved - I won't bother picking this apart because the details are not my point.
The shift in blame is the problem. Putting breathalyzers on the ignition of someone convicted of drunk driving, and having it false positive, can be a consequence of violating that law. Here there are consequences to just being alive, and that is unacceptable. You should not think this is at all a good thing.
Speed governors on commercial vehicles are a tested technology, and a hard upper limit like that would be much safer than one which changes. If I were you, I would support that instead. But I'm not, so I don't.
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.”
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.
All the cars should be automatic. Then all the fatal accidents will be caused by bad programmers instead of bad drivers.
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
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.
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?
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.
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
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."
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
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.
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
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
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.