Slashdot Mirror
EU Set To Mandate Speed Limiters In All New Cars (bbc.co.uk)
AmiMoJo shares a report from the BBC: Speed limiting technology looks set to become mandatory for all vehicles sold in Europe from 2022, after new rules were provisionally agreed by the EU. Road safety charity Brake called it a "landmark day," but the AA said "a little speed" helped with overtaking or joining motorways. Safety measures approved by the European Commission included intelligent speed assistance (ISA), advanced emergency braking and lane-keeping technology. The EU says the plan could help avoid 140,000 serious injuries by 2038 and aims ultimately to cut road deaths to zero by 2050. Under the ISA system, cars receive information via GPS and a digital map, telling the vehicle what the speed limit is. This can be combined with a video camera capable of recognizing road signs. The system can be overridden temporarily. If a car is overtaking a lorry on a motorway and enters a lower speed-limit area, the driver can push down hard on the accelerator to complete the maneuver. According to the report, Ford, Mercedes-Benz, Peugeot-Citroen, Renault and Volvo already have models available with some of the ISA technology fitted.
Two important bits in TFA are not mentioned in the summary:
1. there will be a switch to disable the speed limiter until the engine is powered off.
2. The car gets a black box that can be accessed after an accident.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
huh, they aren't introducing new speed limits, you will still be able to drive as fast as you want on the autobahns.
How is the insurance company screwing you if you willingly don't comply with the speed limit? Speed limits are there for a reason.
Sig?
Germany has been considering new speed limits since at least the 1970s but nothing ever happens.
If you've ever driven in Germany you'd know how the system works. The autobahans are full of police cars. You can overtake them at any speed, no problem, but try tailgating, using your phone, changing lanes without indicating ... acting like an asshole/idiot in any way at all and they'll be down on you like a ton of bricks.
It's not the speed that kills you when you're on a nice straight road, it's the distracted soccer moms and self-centered idiots.
No sig today...
It is the anomalies that kill you and doing race track speeds without the associated safety systems in place, such as you have on a racetrack, you will end up with deaths of both safe and unsafe drivers.
Really?
The real world called, they disagree...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn#Safety:_international_comparison
The Autobahns are safer than the average motorway in the world.
That's because those statistics are gathered independently by each country, and each using their own rules. And the rules in Germany are absolutely ridiculous: you only count as a fatality of a road accident if you die at the spot. Once they load you into an ambulance, and you kick it the moment they shut the door, nope, not a car-related fatality, you don't go into the stats. In most other countries you get counted as a road accident fatality if you die within a week or so.
Speed is always a factor. Remember that kinetic energy is related to the square of velocity: KE = 0.5 * m * v^2.
That energy has to be disipated in an emergency, either through tyres and brakes (and to a degree, the engine) or through friction/impact.
Remember also the rate of energy disipation is normally linear. There's a point where the tyres lose traction and cause the wheels to lock up and the vehicle to skid, which is the limit to how many watts can be disipated. Because energy disipation is linear but KE is the square of the velocity, stopping is faster at lower speeds.
This doesn't prevent speeding. All that's being talked about is adding some "no-acceleration" pedal travel around the speed limit.
Honestly, if you could add a +- X kph to the speed limit, this is a feature I would like. Call it "speeding ticket prevention mode". ;)
I have no issues with limitations so long as they can be overridden, with the difficulty of the override being proportional to the risk. For example, I would personally like to see a hard limit of +30mph / +50kph over the speed limit that can't even be beaten by further accelerator pedal travel... but can still be circumvented by activating an "Emergency Mode" which makes your lights flash and an external siren sound. Such a hard limit should also be activated at lower speeds if the vehicle knows that it can't cope with the situation that a user is trying to subject it to, such as a hill that will make it jump, a turn it couldn't possibly take, etc.
Obviously, in places with no limit, such as on a track or Autobahn, a "+30mph / +50kph" over the limit scenario would never occur.
For the love of Crom, am I the only one here who wants to keep the U.S. technologically competitive?
Obviously, you do not drive in Memphis, Tennessee!
/sarc
Being able to accelerate quickly and well beyond the speed limit has saved my life: Avoidance of accidents AND Avoidance of pre-planned accidents by insurance scammers and/or gang members.
Now maybe Europe doesn't experience auto accidents or have insurance scammers or have gangs! Must be a great place to live!
And you can, under the EU proposal. How long does it take you to floor a pedal?
The effect of flooring the pedal doesn't change. What changes is that there's a "zero action" point in the pedal's range around the speed limit, where the car only gives enough force to maintain speed. Push at all past that, and you're back to accelerating.
As a separate issue, under what I'd like to see, you'd be limited to going more than 30mph / 50kph over the speed limit without activating an emergency mode. But that shouldn't pose a hindrance to you in your "pre-planned accident" scenario either.
For the love of Crom, am I the only one here who wants to keep the U.S. technologically competitive?
And you can, under the EU proposal.
For now... If the powers-that-be decide your stretch of road is now "too congested" - too bad. It's essentially a throttle-by-wire-by-bureaucrat solution.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!