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UK to adopt speed limiting tech: do you support it?

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Profile photo of George Martin George Martin Conversation Editor
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The Department for Transport has today said that speed limiting tech, which will become mandatory for all vehicles sold in Europe from 2022, will apply to the UK. Do you support it?

New rules have been provisionally agreed by the EU that will see the introduction of GPS/Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) technology that can send the local speed limit to a car’s dashboard to help enforce speed limits. ISA uses speed sign-recognition video cameras to do this.

From 2022, this will apply to the UK. And yes, that’s despite Brexit.

It’s worth noting that this won’t be an enforcement; the driver will be able to override the system by pressing the accelerator. Think of it more as a supportive guide – manoeuvres such as overtaking shouldn’t be affected.

Been hit with an undeserved speeding ticket? Here’s what to do

Are speed limiters a good idea?

Motoring rules, regulation and etiquette always generate a lot of discussion here on Which? Conversation, and it’s no different at Which? HQ itself, so I asked the rest of our Convo team for their views. Here are their takes:

“Have you ever driven on a motorway at 86mph in a Smart car? This is the speed my car was limited to and, frankly, I would never have wanted to go any faster. In fact, I don’t think I needed to go any faster.

332 people died on UK roads in 2017 because of someone either breaking the speed limit of being judged to be driving too fast for the conditions. Is getting somewhere a tiny bit faster really worth it?

It can be so easy to break the speed limit on the motorway.  I had a five-year break from driving recently. When I got back behind the wheel I had got over the ‘need to speed’. But that’s the thing – unless you are an emergency service you don’t need to speed. You just want to”

“I welcome safer roads and I’m keen to see ways in which technology will help us get there. I do not, however, welcome systems that might confuse the driver or limit their ability to make choices to navigate the road ahead.

I have an older car where on occasion (and sometimes by accident) I make use of the speed limiter. This has enabled me to reduce the risk of fines from temporary roadworks and average speed checks, but has done nothing to reduce the danger from the traffic around me (many of whom aren’t using limiters).

Many people treat driving as a right – a casual task that requires no thought – and their driving certainly reflects this. Would it really do any good to introduce another system that the driver doesn’t have to give their full attention to?

Driving is a huge responsibility – you, as a human, bear responsibility for all of the life around you. I think if we truly want safer roads, the solution is holding the people responsible to account, and not looking to the tech to solve this for us.

Or, you know, just more frequent and more reliable public transport at an affordable cost. Were this available, I’d happily recycle the car”

So now you have Jon and Abby’s views, what are yours? Do you support the introduction of speed limiting technology? Do you think this is the answer for safer roads?

Let us know your thoughts on the changes and we’ll feature your comments alongside Jon and Abby’s.

Comments
184
Paul Buckingham says:
25 April 2019

External driving control is definitely the way forward. Despite the emotional thought that the human is the best operator, psychological studies ‘prove’ that we get distracted or focus so strongly on what is most important to us that we make errors or poor decisions. Aircraft have used auto-pilot systems for decades and they certainly fall out of the sky with fatal consequences if they go wrong. The biggest cause of air accidents is still where the human is in control and makes a poor decision. Why not trust the same advances for restricting our speed?
Poor driving is not just about outright speed it’s also about inappropriate acceleration. Even at its least dangerous, the noise and shock factor alone is frightening to sensitive people (like children, aged people and animals) who might react to put themselves in harms way.
The most road deaths are in areas of low speed limits (urban and housing conurbations) where even 30mph is too fast for the condition. The victim is almost exclusively pedestrians.
Modern vehicles are more capable of higher speeds and acceleration than ever before but with better brakes, tyres and suspension. It’s how we use these advantages that is of concern.
Every day when I drive my children to school and then on to my place of work, I see behaviour that is just selfish. People feel entitled to stop on the zig-zag lines or in the school entrance “because it’s only a moment” and their child is late. I wonder, if their own child is killed or maimed in a road accident, would they be screaming for the perpetrator to be vilified? It always seems to be OK for me to transgress the law but everyone else needs to obey it. The reality is that in a world of ever increasing urgency we get sucked into reacting without enough thought.
For me, the technology needs to take account of ALL the conditions like the traffic congestion level, the weather and the pedestrian count. Modern technology can do all this right now. It will be very expensive to implement full traffic control systems so do we want to value lives or not.
For those who don’t want to give control over to the machine, I’d just say that where we try to wrest control back from the automatic system, it’s almost always the case the human hasn’t been concentrating and makes an instant reactive decision that in hindsight proves to be less than ideal. Do we really want to go back to foot pump or finger push windscreen washers, hand winding windows, hand cranked wipers, crank handle engine starting systems, hand signals for indicating our intentions etc. etc? No of course we don’t. Just a year or two after fully autonomous vehicle use and we’ll wonder why we ever trusted manual control.
Not to mention the environmental impact – but that’s another debate

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VynorHill says:
25 April 2019

This whole business of speed is a mixture of many, many elements churning round. Not least of these is the variable nature of the human population here who range from laid back and tolerant to impatient and always in a hurry. Then there is the government and local councils who believe that they have to cater for the lowest common ability in order to avoid accidents. Add to that the increasing desire to reduce speeds in order to reduce road pollution and the general trend is to hinder the progress on the road by any number of devices and make driving less pleasurable and more restrictive. Motorists are constantly being told what they can not do when it has appeared safe to do it before and, crucially, all this is imposed by those in charge without any consultation with those on the roads. The motorist feels disenfranchised and unwelcome. Another problem that we have to face is that our roads are not fit for purpose. There are many more of us on them and they can not cope with the demand. Queues are a regular nightmare. This has been the case for some while and there has always been an argument (for and against) about spending on roads in order to fill them up and create a demand for more spending on roads.

So the road system is a hostile environment and that breeds impatience and misunderstanding. Some look at a clear stretch of motorway and see no reason why they shouldn’t proceed at 80plus mph. Most cars are quiet and refined at that speed. No one is being killed and they get there, where ever that is, quicker. Miles of empty cones and a fifty limit means that, more than once I have suffered, with lorries, inches from my back window, and at seventy on the motorway I am one of the slowest there and have to slow down behind a slower vehicle while things speed past me next door. No explanation is given for pollution control, so a fifty limit is ignored and some “don’t drive responsibly.” The 20 limit is now becoming fashionable and that means a second gear crawl through urban areas. Most ignore that and, once again I get tailgated ad-nauseum. Not recognising an unobvious hazard, without any signage, creates the feeling of being restricted unnecessarily, especially when there are times that something is signed and doesn’t appear.
There are two lots of us on the road. I simply do what I’m told because that’s what I’ve been told to do. The other lot decide for themselves what’s safe and drive to the perceived road conditions ahead rather than the instructions on the signs. Not many get caught doing it so they carry on.

Since the radio has broadcast road traffic reports, very, very few end without a collision to avoid and tailbacks associated with it. That means a lot bent metal on the road every day. Perhaps it was always thus, and we didn’t hear about it, but I am amazed at that there are so many crashes these days. Who is right; those who project the nanny state or those who think we are being hard done by? Is there happy medium? Probably not, since only one set of people control the road usage and the rest of us drive under their dictatorship. Climate change and vehicle use will alter dramatically as will our ability to do what we do now. Enjoy motoring while you can it is under threat and can only decrease in future.

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