Safe Speed Forums

This sounds insane, but read on ...

Times, July 01 2004

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1164020,00.html

Car computer to stop you speeding
By Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent

THE Government is to establish a national speed limits database that will pave the way for all cars to be fitted with devices that prevent speeding.

The digital speed map of Britain is an essential first step towards introducing Intelligent Speed Adaptation, known as ISA, which automatically applies the brakes or blocks acceleration.

An on-board computer linked to a satellite positioning system will use the digital map to identify the local speed limit. If drivers attempt to exceed the limit, they hear a series of bleeps and the accelerator pedal starts vibrating.

The device will be offered initially as an optional extra by car manufacturers but ministers have not ruled out eventually making some version of the system compulsory.

The Government’s senior transport adviser believes ISA could eliminate the need for speed cameras and road humps once the majority of vehicles have been fitted.

David Begg, chairman of the Commission for Integrated Transport, said: “Motorists will choose to have this technology on their cars because it will prevent them from inadvertently exceeding the speed limit and will save many from losing their licences.

“Speed cameras and road humps could be removed because there would be far greater compliance with the speed limit.” Professor Begg said that courts could be given the option of ordering motorists to have ISA fitted to their cars as an alternative to a driving ban.

The Department for Transport has commissioned a series of trials of ISA in Leeds and Leicester. But there is no central speed limits database for the whole country and many local authorities have poor records of the limits on their roads.

The Department for Transport believes the absence of a national database is hampering development of ISA, which it hopes will initially be offered as an option by car manufacturers.

The DfT has now invited expressions of interest from the private sector to create a national speed limits database.

A DfT spokesman said: “If the whole country was mapped, it might make it more logical and practical for manufacturers to consider offering ISA. There could well be road safety benefits from ISA.”

Oliver Carsten, Professor of Transport Safety at Leeds University, said: “The digital speed map is a necessary first step for a commercial ISA system, which would prevent many road deaths and injuries.”

A previous research project by Professor Carsten estimated that ISA would reduce crashes involving deaths or injuries by 20 per cent. But he said that the casualty reduction would double if a more advanced system was introduced which took account of conditions.

He said that even the simplest versions of ISA would prevent drivers from drifting over the limit and being flashed by speed cameras. “Roads are complicated and people make genuine errors when guessing the limit. Not everyone can measure the distance between lamp posts and ISA will remove uncertainty by displaying the limit on the dashboard.”

The Automobile Association said that drivers would welcome ISA as an extra tool to help them to drive safely but did not want “Big Brother” in the back seat taking control of the car.

Paul Watters, the AA’s head of roads policy, said: “There are concerns that this system could be draconian and restrict freedom. But as long as it remains optional and can be switched off then it could be very useful.”

Several other European countries, including Norway and the Netherlands, have already produced national digital speed maps or are about to complete them.

Initial results from the trials suggest that people might feel frustrated by the system if only a minority of cars have it. But once most vehicles are constrained, drivers are inclined to welcome it.

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Keep right on to the end of the road ...

Hi - just registered after lingering around this excellent site for some time.

Just had to post on this latest nonsense. Yes it sounds crazy, but if Bliar and his croneys want it and the technology can be made available then they will push for it. What really sticks in the craw is the attitude of the "powers that be" to the whole debate which seems to be that they are doing everything for "our own good" and we are somehow ungrateful to them for being so caring.

Anyway, end of rant - there'll be plenty more opportunities for that sort of thing.

In response to CJB's post - I guess I'm fortunate to have cruise control and a speed limiter facility on my car, both of which are useful in scamera zones.

It strikes me that if Bliar and his pals legislated for all cars to have this facility then they wouldn't need to go to the expense and trouble of digitalising all the speed limits. (I really can't imagine any ulterior motive for their wanting to do so.....not!!)

As "choice" would appear to be the new political watch word wouldn't this be the ideal compromise? We could all then choose whether or not to pay their scamera tax. The fact that it might slow us all down and kill their golden goose probably hasn't occurred to them yet.

Well that's my posting duck broken - my kids will be well proud of me.

Keep up the good work

This has been talked about in the past. There have been studies done on the nett effect on casualties but these have been "funded" by business with a vested interest (system manufacturers) hence the exaggerated claims.

Things not taken into consideration as follows:-
1) driving on the limiter all the time = tailgating
2) Sudden drop in power when you go accross a zone, fatal if you are overtaking a car with out a limiter
3) Roadworks not included
4) updating the database in the cars for changes in road junctions.
5) de-limiting on private land. every driveway would have to be mapped!

If the "system" screwed up somehow just think of the litigation that could happen.

Its another "quick fix" that manufacturers are offering to make loads of money and give the Government a way of window dressing it's failing road safety policy.

I have been predicting this kind of thing for a long time, and the technology is coming together now. Pretty soon, it looks like the system will take care of some of your driving for you. Watch out for much more of this instrumentation, monitoring, automation and control technology over the coming months and tears, sorry years.

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I stole this .sig

This probably would be got round by having a default speed of 20 mph where the vehicle lost the signal. If you wanted to allow vehicles to travel faster on private land (e.g. if you were organising track days) then you would have to get a licence from the government.

The trials that have taken place in Leeds and Leicester were done in Skoda Fabias driven by willing numpties. Nobody who was sceptical about the concept was allowed to take part. The ABD asked to do so but were refused. It wouldn't be difficult for a sceptical driver to expose glaring flaws in the system.

While there's no room for complacency on this issue, it's hard to see the authorities actually introducing it, as it would initially cause new car sales to fall off a cliff, probably plunging the whole of Europe into deep depression, and sales would probably never recover to anywhere near their previous levels.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

I don't know if total automation is the end goal, but technical solutions exist for some of these specific considerations. In any case, this is ways of yet, for technical, cultural and political reasons. But the idea of audibly 'warning' the driver when he is over the limit is reasonable and probably implmentable in the next few years. Anyway, some potential solutions to the issues you raied are :



This is solved by charging with a paypal account each time you activate the limiter. Ten pounds per use stops people relying on it

Similarly solved by not reducing power, simply charging for the offence.

No roadworks to be opened without the central database update first.

Importantly, no information at all to be kept in cars, all state to be centralised and distributed on demand.


Private land out of scope, switch to manual. Again, charge if manual use detected on highway.


Yes, and also imagine the negligence claims if a system could reduce carnage but was not implemented.

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I stole this .sig

Charging for over-riding the system isn't much of a solution. In effect it would allow you to buy the right to speed providing you can afford it. Sorry, but that doesn't sound all that practical to me. Such a system would probably be extremely unpoplular, as it would effectively be one rule for some and another for those who've got money. To avoid this, and accusations that it's a revenue raising scheme rather than a safety one, it would have to be a simple car-can't exceed-the-limit-no-matter-what type system, and that would still have some or all of the problems that Gizmo pointed out.

Not so sure about that either. The government could save many lives by banning smoking. And I don't mean pussyfooting around with this "in public places" crap - I mean outright (strange thing to say while I'm puffing away on a ciggie, I know, though I do make the effort not to be antisocial by sparking up round nonsmokers). Of course, all governments are even more addicted to tobacco revenue than I am to the nicotine, so the situation is allowed to continue. Can anybody think of a government who has been sued for failing to ban tobacco? No? So why would they get sued for not putting in a satellite based speed control system?

Basingwerk, this has been discussed elsewhere, and I may have missed it but I don't recall ever seeing a practical solution to the problem of all the road users that would not be in the system. That is, pedestrians, cyclists, horse riders, animals, foreign vehicles and motorbikes. I also mentioned the possibility of rare situations happening and changing the 'safe speed' faster than the system could cope with. The example I gave, albeit of a very rare situation, was a recent light aircraft crash adjacent to the A30 in Hampshire. Fortunately the aircraft didn't get quite as far as the road, but you can bet your bottom dollar that every driver on the road at the time slammed the anchors on in case it did (or in a few cases, if they thought it was coming straight for them they might have floored it to get away from the danger area). No report of the incident mentioned any collision among the traffic present at the time. Clearly all the drivers using the road when the plane came down reacted to the changed conditions quickly and appropriately. A more common, though still fairly rare, situation might be a truck blowing a tyre on a motorway. Sometimes it has a knock on effect resulting in accidents, but more often everyone manages to avoid a collision. This all happens without the aid of computers.

As it happens I think the digital speed map might be a good idea, providing it was made availbe to owners of GPS speed trap detectors.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

I would imagine such a system would be implemented on an EU-wide basis so the vast majority of foreign vehicles would be covered. Pedestrians, cyclists, horse riders etc. are not subject to speed limits and in any case rarely exceed them.

And who said that motorbikes would be exempt? That certainly isn't the intention of Carsten & Co, and MAG etc. are not at all happy about the prospect

Try googling for "Mulhouse Declaration"

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

That would improve things here, but wherever the border is the problem would still be there. For example, what about crossing from Turkey to Greece, or Switzerland into any of it's neighbours, or getting a car ferry from Morocco to Spain? By making the system EU wide rather than UK wide the problem is merely moved, not solved. Okay, that does go beyond the bounds of our road safety, but I'm just pointing out an inherent problem with such a system. To avoid this problem entirely it would have to be global, by which time the whole idea's getting a bit Star Trek. Maybe in a century or two, then.

:oops: I put that very poorly. I wasn't thinking about those groups speeding, though with all the humped up 20 zones that are starting to spring up there are more areas now where a cyclist can easliy exceed the limit (and overtake cars ). I was actually thinking about the possible effects of overconfidence in, and over reliance on, the speed control system. Drivers might pay less attention as, like truckers are already, they can just sit on the limiter and let the car/computers restrict the speed to whatevers legal. At the same time other road users will be just as free as ever to make bad decisions that would put them in the way of a driver, but it may now be a driver who's inattentive as he no longer feels responsible for controlling the car. They might even be more prone to do so if they're convinced the system will save them from being run over. Nothing could be further from the truth, because as we know it's not so much about what speed the driver is doing as whether he's paying enough attention to stop safely.

Not me, at least not exempt as such. It's just that I'm not sure how practical it would be to include them. I'm neither a biker nor a computer expert, so I'm happy to be corrected on this, but it strikes me that bikes naturally have less room for gizmos than cars do. Again, this is poor wording on my part. I should have said might rather than given the impression that it was inevitable.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

OK, I'm a truck driver, and on the motorway I sit on the limiter, which is set to 56mph, or is it?
I have driven trucks with their limiters set to anywhere within the range from 51mph to 59mph, there seems to be no standards. It's all to do with the accuracy of the equipment used to set the limiter, and varies between dealers and users, some hauliers want the limiter set to 56mph, others to 52mph and so on, various reasons, but fuel economy is the most quoted.
Supermarkets, in the main, set to 50mph, fuel economy is the reason given, the real reason is from union pressure to keep the drivers hours and wages up. The chaos they cause, forcing other trucks set to 56mph to overtake and therefore screwing up the lives of the car drivers who wish to, and can travel at 70mph.
Another point is the fact that I can have brand new trucks, with unfiddleable limiters, passing me at speeds in excess of the 60mph actual limit for HGVs.
So, lets have these things fitted to our cars, and within a couple of days, some whizzkid will have marketed a means to adjust the limiter to fool the sattelite into thinkg you are only doing the legal limit, whereas in fact you a doing 20mph over the limit.
The whole thing is pie in the sky, and the sooner the legislators realise they cannot govern everything on the planet, the better.
Apart from which, accidents still happen below the legal limit.

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Semper in excreta, nur quantitat variat.

There are several places on the road network that have parallel roadways with different speed limits one on top of the other, eg A404 under the Westway, Tinsely Viaduct, and many other local roads under motorways.
How would the system work here, as the two roads with different limits have got the same GPS co-ordinates?

Also would the limits be real time so VSLs can work?

People would drive to the limiters and not notice that NSL on a twisty country road isn't good . Not good.

Simon

No worries mate. Give it a few years and it'll be 20 or 30mph everywhere.
One other little thing about GPS. The first time I used a GPS it was on board a yacht in the Solent. For reasons best known to itself the GPS was convinced we were in Petersfield. It caught up after a while, but by then we'd given up and gone back to chart and compasses. Probably a duff one, but only a machine could possibly think a boat would be 15 miles inland.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

Any government that tried to bring this in would be voted out immediately. Any party that said they would bring it in would get hardly any votes. Any party that said they would overturn such a scheme would get a huge majority.

Most government schemes are implemented by large companies like EDS, after the unmitigated disasters of recent years with large computer systems and so forth I don't think we have to worry about this crack pot idea even getting off the ground. It has already been tried in Europe with lorries and has failed miserably.

Seeing as the government have attempted to enforce the speed limit for the last 10 years rigidly and fatalities have stopped going down does it not follow that this new sort of rigid enforcement would produce the same results? If you start to limit people's freedoms in this way they are just going to start behaving in a bloody minded way. To work out which speed limit to apply when someone is travelling on parallel roads or under motorways would be a nightmare. I certainly wouldn't buy any vehicle fitted with one.

Have they thought about tunnels,hills, trees and other things that can block the satellite signals? What would happen if someone produced a method of upsetting the gps units belonging to other vehicles thus making them travel at 20 mph everywhere when they were near their car? God help us if they implement this daft scheme on a M$ platform!

Has anyone published the accident rates of the speed limited fabia drivers? Did their driving manner change compared to how they were before?

Getting all the illegal and idiotic drivers off the road would make a proper difference to the fatality rate. Perhaps this scheme could be reserved for those that have poor accident records and used as a punishment rather than being heaped on the reasonable majority and ignored and flouted by the usual illegal minority?

I'd ever thought about tunnles and things that might block 'em. Wonder what would happen if a whole roll of Bacofoil accidentally got wrapped round the GPS unit. We are Microboffed. Accuracy is futile. You will be approximated.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

Well - we have overspeed bleeps on the origin b2s already - so nowt new there on audible warnings!


But this system will depend on all data and computers being able to cope - and can you really trust any government to get it right?

Apart from that - smacks of a police state - tagging!

Might make my job easier - but price to pay is not really worth it!

Though given past history - it would probably make it harder - as GPS signals would get mixed and I cn see me chasin' wrong guy down wrong road as result!

But we've had this conversation before!

There are already fixes for this. In Canada, spotter planes check where you are on the Trans Canada Highway, then check up on you 20 minutes later. If you have gone more than 20 miles, a cop car on the ground pulls you over and that's that. The highway actually has white marker bars painted on it for this purpose. Another high tech way is to mass-photograph all traffic from a bridge and run automatic number plate recognition on it. Then do the same thing 20 miles ahead, pumping all the data through High Throughput Screening on a super computer. All vehicles that get from point A to point B in less time than legally possible would be walloped.

So you don't need a satellite, nor a gizmo in the car for a whizzkid to tinker with, nor any change to the vehicles at all. It would work on average speeds, so knowing where the cameras are will not save you! The best thing to do to avoid trouble would be to keep to the limits.

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I stole this .sig

Sounds very like what the DDR "Volkspolizei" used to do to police the (90 km/h?) limit on the transit highways between the BRD and West Berlin. They didn't actually use planes, they just compared the time you set off from one checkpoint and were issued with a bit of paper with the time you arrived at the other end, got the calculator out and bob's your uncle. Of course, if we want to emulate the Vopos, I'm sure Mad Moggie will have a thing or two to say!


We already have something very similar to this - the SPECS systems that I've seen in use on the Nottingham ring road, the Bingham by-pass. apparently it's on the Stocksbridge by-pass and the HA have it installed on the roadworks on the M6 around J7-9. Can't say haw many tickets it issues.

Tell me, Basingwerk, EXACTLY why you are so dead keen on having speed cameras all over the country? You've seen plenty of evidence quoted about their ineffectiveness in accident prevention, their inability to catch a whole range of dangerous drivers NOT exceeding speed limits, and the collateral effect on traffic police numbers. There must be something else behind your favourable attitude towards them, and we'd love to know what it is, and the evidence behind it.

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Keep right on to the end of the road ...

Yes, I was about to go along a similar path, but you beat me to it.

I have yet to see any evidence whatsoever to support the idea that:

"rigid adherence to speed limits is important to road safety"

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

basingwerk:

In car tagging, spotter planes, etc. -- you describe a world I have no wish to live in; it's bad enough already with the prevalence of CCTV. I for one do not want to live in '1984', although no doubt I'm deluding myself by thinking we're not already there.

CJB:

I'm sure Mad Moggie and Wild Cat will correct me if I'm wrong, but it wasn't just the speed limit the DDR were enforcing, I'm told they also wanted to make sure you hadn't strayed off the autobahn to sight see in their beautiful, 'free' countryside. If you took too long to reach the other end, you were suspect.


Kaz

So basicaly what you are saying is that it is a good way for the Government to make money at the expense of road safety....sounds familiar