"Speeders put lives at risk on lockdown's empty roads"

AdrianC

unforeseen said:

So the only one really is Germany 

Unlimited, yes.

But the majority are 130 (82mph), with a few 140 (88mph). Italy has legal provision for 150 (94mph), but none are currently in force. So why an arbitrary 112kph limiter? Especially given that's easily bypassed...

And then, of course, there's off-road use.

Mickey666

AdrianC said:

Supersonos said:

And why do we need cars to do such speeds anyway?  Why do the government say the limit on UK roads is 70mph but allow all car makers to sell cars in the UK capable of doing almost three times that? The technology has existed for decades to limit a vehicle's speed, so all cars sold in the UK should have to have an 80mph limiter.

Clue: Cars sold in the UK aren't always used on UK roads. It's perfectly legal to drive on-road far in excess of 70mph within an easy day's drive of the UK.

True, but you've ignored Supersonos' point about technology.  New cars generally have satnavs these days so the car 'knows' which country it is in and what the national speed limit is.

Taking this even further, GPS is so accurate these days and maps are so detailed that most satnavs 'know' the speed limit on the road the car is driving.  Certainly my satnav has a speed limit warning.  Linking this technology together would be trivially easy for car manufacturers so all it would require is the appropriate legislation.

Speeding could therefore be significantly reduced and over time almost eliminated if it was really wanted, so we have to ask ourselves why this hasn't happened.

A cynic might say it's because speeding fines are a lucrative source of income.

prowla

I can legally drive as fast as I like in the UK.

Mickey666

On private roads and race tracks, yes, but not on public roads with a legal speed limit.

As above, with modern GPS it would be trivially easy for the vehicle to 'know' it was on a public road.

AdrianC

Mickey666 said:

True, but you've ignored Supersonos' point about technology.  New cars generally have satnavs these days so the car 'knows' which country it is in and what the national speed limit is.

Taking this even further, GPS is so accurate these days and maps are so detailed that most satnavs 'know' the speed limit on the road the car is driving.  Certainly my satnav has a speed limit warning.  Linking this technology together would be trivially easy for car manufacturers so all it would require is the appropriate legislation.

Eminently fallible. GPS "canyons" still exist, and mapping is rarely totally up to date. It's also trivially easy to defeat, should you wish to - simply block the aerial from receiving satellite signals.

B'sides, there isn't even a legal requirement for cars to have nav fitted. Many don't. It ages rapidly, so manufacturers are moving from inbuilding this sort of tech to linking with drivers' own devices.

Mickey666

So what if it is fallible?  Show me a law that isn;t.  It would still be an improvement though.  If the signal fails the car simply reverts back to how things are today - hardly a backward step.  As for blocking the aerial, well yes, but imagine how stiff the penalties could be for doing that.  How about a six-month driving ban as a start?

The basic point is that technology exists to address this issue but there does't seem to be any will to use it.  Perhaps it's because 99% (my guess, but you get my point) of speeding offences do no harm whatsoever?

Mind you, the idea of 'road pricing' regularly crops up these days so perhaps it's not long before such a system is legislated for, at which point might as well add speed limiting into the mix.

AdrianC

Mickey666 said:

So what if it is fallible?  Show me a law that isn;t.  It would still be an improvement though.  If the signal fails the car simply reverts back to how things are today

Except now you've trained the driver to ignore the signs, because the car does all that for him. Just put foot flat, and nothing can possibly go wrong.

Mickey666

Well, there are already plenty of drivers who already do that.  You can't construct a sensible argument against massively reducing speeding offences simply because a few drivers won't pay attention.  On that basis why have speed limits at all because some drivers will break them. Perfect solutions rarely exist anywhere so compromises are made.  Any new solution doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be better than the existing one.

facade

AdrianC said:

Except now you've trained the driver to ignore the signs, because the car does all that for him. Just put foot flat, and nothing can possibly go wrong.

Apparently, the reason insurance premiums are still going up is that the number of accidents stayed the same in lockdown, and they were even more spectacular than usual due to the much higher speeds.

"Modern" cars train the "driver" to not be able to drive at all.  In my Nissan, I can treat all the controls- brake, steering, accelerator as binary switches, off or full on and the com-pu-tah just sorts it out, reducing the throttle to stop wheelspin, chopping the brakes to avoid locking, banging on the odd brake if it is understeering because I've just wound it on full lock at 60, so I don't have to bother with any mechanical sympathy or worry about the road conditions. In the Suzuki, it even bangs on the brakes by itself if I can't be bothered to make any effort to move my foot or look where I'm going.

This is great, until the "driver's" demands exceed the laws of physics,  at which point there is a crash, and the "driver" hasn't a clue why it happened.

Meanwhile I drive past wondering how someone managed to turn their car upside down and hit a lamppost on a completely straight road   ....

Mickey666

Exactly.  The performance of almost all cars on the roads today far exceed the safe limits for driving on public roads and, in most cases, the driver's own ability to safely control that performance.