EU plan to fit cars with speed limiters could be UNSAFE

Something like this might be useful, if instead it was just a display of the current speed limit. Drivers would/should be able to tell when it's pulling the limit from the wrong road and not do 65 mph on the country road next to the highway, or slow to 25 on the highway next to the country road. Incidentally, both of my relatively recent cars with built in GPS do this, although the data is fairly low quality.

At the end of the day, there are times where you need to exceed the speed limit to drive safely; and there are plenty of times where exceeding the speed limit is not unsafe; anything built on the principle of strict adherence to arbitrary limits is going to result in bogus outcomes. This is much worse than the generic speed limiters around 120 mph; that's fast enough that it's pretty unlikely you'll have a case where you needed to go faster for safety reasons.
 
I get that people don't like this ... however the reason that things like this get proposed is because of idiots and their terrible driving.

Where i live, in the great white north in a city of 120k people, 4 days ago 2 motorists were clocked at 200 km/h. A year ago a teenager on a bike was clocked at 240 km/h. The maximum speed anywhere, on highway 401 is 100 km/h
 
Trucks here have been capped at 80 km/h for decades, fastest i have seen / overtaken was doing 110 km/h, a specialty of theirs are the so called elephant races where a truck going 1-2 km/h faster overtake another truck, and as most Danish motorways are just 2 lanes you can imagine how popular that are, as the cars there are okay to do 110 or 130 km/h.

The law here do state that you are not allowed to exceed the speed limit when overtaking, and if you / we was to adhere to that a lot of Danish drivers would go absolutely ballistic :)
 
Cars have been computerized since the late 90s, early 2000s. Every car that has an electronic cruise control has the throttle controlled by the computer. Having a speed limit doesn't make it any easier to hack. And 99% of the cars that have no cruise control nowadays only have it disabled in the software.

are you comparing electronic engine control with a fully integrated cell connected network?
 
I am not fan of this, but I think a lot of people are also being overly alarmist over it. It is only monitoring and keeping you under a max limit. You still have control over your vehicle and are still responsible for your own driving.

Hackers? They may be able to change the max speed you can go, but everyone will be affected by that.

Passing? Why would you need to pass if everyone is going the same speed limit? If they are not, then you should still be able to pass them.
 
Just put a piece of opaque tape over the camera that read roadside signs, and hey presto problem fixed.
Okay the same camera might also work with lane departure warning ASO, but only retarded idiots would use / want that tech anyways.

BTW this are already standard in many high end cars, and i have not heard of any entitled high end car owners complain about them not being able to drive as they please, cuz you know that's that they too do.
 
Just put a piece of opaque tape over the camera that read roadside signs, and hey presto problem fixed.
Okay the same camera might also work with lane departure warning ASO, but only retarded idiots would use / want that tech anyways.

The system uses both camera recognition and GPS to determine location and speed limit. So even if you tape over the camera, it will likely still detect the limit via GPS. But also, it does stipulate you can override the limit, if you persist in going over, it will warn you and then it may slow you down.

So those still worried about not being in control of your car and not being able to speed up when needed to avoid issues, you will still be able to do that.
 
Passing? Why would you need to pass if everyone is going the same speed limit? If they are not, then you should still be able to pass them.

Thats the problem, many think passing are a human right, and so just can not stand driving behind another car, no matter the speed it is going and the speed limit on that road.
In truth passing are a option you have to deal with slower moving vehicles, BUT ! with a set of criteria that need to be in place before you can legally pull it off.

If i drive 80 - 85 km/h on a Danish highway ( limit 80 ) then the vast majority of cars coming up from behind will pass me, and a select few idios will then slow down again when in front of me, but most just disappear in the distance.
 
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Thats the problem, many thing passing are a human right, and so just can not stand driving behind another car, no matter the speed it is going and the speed limit on that road.
In truth passing are a option you have to deal with slower moving vehicles, BUT ! with a set of criteria that need to be in place before you can legally pull it off.

This is true, I hate driving behind large vehicles, like large trucks/vans/etc because I usually cannot see around them, and when I provide enough space, people just swoop in.
 
Thats the problem, many think passing are a human right, and so just can not stand driving behind another car, no matter the speed it is going and the speed limit on that road.
In truth passing are a option you have to deal with slower moving vehicles, BUT ! with a set of criteria that need to be in place before you can legally pull it off.

If i drive 80 - 85 km/h on a Danish highway ( limit 80 ) then the vast majority of cars coming up from behind will pass me, and a select few idios will then slow down again when in front of me, but most just disappear in the distance.
This is very true. Oh how many times driving 75mph on a highway and still have a asshole run up my ass and proceed to pass me.
 
On the news it has just been reported the limiter will have an override.
 
If they are tracking your speed with GPS, they will want to start giving out automated citations from it.

We already have that with the speed cameras in some places... those didn't go over well. Some places have actually pulled them.
 
On the news it has just been reported the limiter will have an override.

It was actually in the very article he linked... It literally says it in the infogram under Step 3. People just don't like to read.
 
I think we need to somehow suggest to the EU that speeding planes pollute and that they need to be speed enforced just like cars to (what's the stall speed of a a320? 150 Kts?) 140kts. That should cut back on smog/noise pollution and give air traffic controllers more time to avoid collisions :p
 
I miss things when a lots going on :rolleyes:

That wasn't really meant to be "targeted" at you, it was a catch all since a number of people in here made statements thinking that it was going to force you to go a certain speed without any control on your part.
 
Speed limits are unsafe

We need no speed limits.

I wish we had a coast to coast autobahn in America.
 
It was actually in the very article he linked... It literally says it in the infogram under Step 3. People just don't like to read.
Sorry, I didn't have enough time to read the article while speeding down the road? :p
 
I get that people don't like this ... however the reason that things like this get proposed is because of idiots and their terrible driving.

Where i live, in the great white north in a city of 120k people, 4 days ago 2 motorists were clocked at 200 km/h. A year ago a teenager on a bike was clocked at 240 km/h. The maximum speed anywhere, on highway 401 is 100 km/h
Get off my great white lawn!

Speed has been made into this great boogeyman, when in reality absolute speeding is rarely the sole cause of accidents. If it was the most accidents would happen on unrestricted german autobahns. But there are no more accidents there compared to the rest.
 
Get off my great white lawn!

Speed has been made into this great boogeyman, when in reality absolute speeding is rarely the sole cause of accidents. If it was the most accidents would happen on unrestricted german autobahns. But there are no more accidents there compared to the rest.

I would like to see your statistics on that statement. Speeding is listed in numerous places as the first or second leading cause of accidents (distracted driving has become more prominent lately because of phones) and the second leading cause of fatalities just barely trailing drunk driving. Accidents involving higher rates of speed are statistically more destructive and more damaging to individuals. Also, some roads are not meant for higher rates of speed, so there is also the case of people driving beyond the capability of the road/vehicle, causing them to lose control.
 
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Punish ppl that use the left lane to drive in instead of passing only.
I did an unofficial study a few years ago, watched my rear view mirror religiously each time I hit my directional to make a right hand turn from the right TURN LANE and 99% of drivers come up on the butt of the car then get visibly angry because I slowed down to make a right turn from the TURN LANE ... "stupid car."
 
flintstones

Is that a new term for technophobes ?

I am often accused of being a technophobe, just cuz i find some things unneeded and dare to questions other peoples beloved devises or services.
But i like tech and some of what i like other people probably find silly and not needed at all, but i welcome those people as long as they have some manners.

And it pretty much always end up with me telling that i have a age where FM radio was the new big thing when i was young, and i was on computers long before Microsoft and not least this internet.
So i know a lot from personal experience and not google smarts, so i am totally entitled to say "thhhhh :rolleyes:" to some things, and if i am wrong what happen often as i like to take bets with a wide spread, well then with my head held high i will admit, "yeah i was wrong"
 
I would like to see your statistics on that statement. Speeding is listed in numerous places as the first or second leading cause of accidents (distracted driving has become more prominent lately because of phones) and the second leading cause of fatalities just barely trailing drunk driving. Accidents involving higher rates of speed are statistically more destructive and more damaging to individuals. Also, some roads are not meant for higher rates of speed, so there is also the case of people driving beyond the capability of the road/vehicle, causing them to lose control.
I only believe statistics that I falsified myself. Stalin joke aside, those statistics don't differentiate between relative and absolute speeding.

Relative speeding = not driving in accordance with the current conditions (traffic, road surface quality, curvature, weather, etc)
Absolute speeding = going faster than the posted speed limit.

The two aren't connected in any way. You can be relative speeding without exceeding the posted speed limit, and you can be absolute speeding without relative speeding.

There are literally no situations where absolute speeding in of itself can cause an accident. Either you have to exceed what's safe for road conditions, or another rule must be broken (ex rules of overtaking, or right of way)
Yes it is true, that higher speed results in a higher probability of injury, but that speed causes accidents in of itself is pure bullshit that they push because speed is what they can clearly measure and "tax".

So reducing speed does reduce the chance of having a fatal accident, but not because speed causes the accidents.

One of my friends had an accident where they were injured, the official report said the cause of the accident was speeding. They didn't exceed the posted speed limit. But the driver lost control of the car on a wet patch of road and they hit a concrete electric pole that fell on the car.

In reality very few people are speeding, and I mean speeding as in exceeding the speed limit by a large margin. Because 140 instead of 130 is not even speeding in my vocabulary. The condition of the car has a much greater impact on safety than 10-20kph speed difference. If they should do anything is a system that prevents people from driving junkers that are absolutely not roadworthy.

But I guess if this becomes law we'll find out in 5 years whether the number of accidents are greatly reduced because people can't speed.

I wouldn't expect them to change significantly. If anything it could make people even more frustrated, which could result in higher number of accidents.
Also less speed by definition makes overtaking maneuvers more dangerous. And there are not many things more frustrating in traffic than sitting behind a slow moving vehicle.

It will be especially funny (as in dangerous as hell) as non-limited cars slalom around cars equipped with limiters.
 
Get off my great white lawn!

Speed has been made into this great boogeyman, when in reality absolute speeding is rarely the sole cause of accidents. If it was the most accidents would happen on unrestricted german autobahns. But there are no more accidents there compared to the rest.
The difference with the autobahn is that driver training is much more extensive in Germany. A German driver’s license costs over $2000, after a minimum of 25-45 hours of professional instruction plus 12 hours of theory, and such a license used to be good for life. Beginning in 2013, the German license had to conform to the EU term of 10 or 15 years.
 
Most people don’t know how to drive anyways....at least safely.

I don’t see daily hacking stories in the news for cars. Maybe it’s a problem, maybe not. It forces those agencies to rethink or fix.

Override kind of defeats the purpose. If available most will use it all the time. The biggest issue here is people. Too many dumb people behind the wheel.

I doubt car sales slump. Most are to lazy and will just adjust to the new deal.

It will be interesting to watch and read the results. As we move towards the concept of self driving cars one has to expect a whole lot of change.
 
I am sure this will in time lead to GPS issued speeding tickets. Honestly it really doesn't matter that they do this in the EU. Most countries in the EU have so many speed cameras setup that it is impossible to speed even on a freeway.
 
I get that people don't like this ... however the reason that things like this get proposed is because of idiots and their terrible driving.

Where i live, in the great white north in a city of 120k people, 4 days ago 2 motorists were clocked at 200 km/h. A year ago a teenager on a bike was clocked at 240 km/h. The maximum speed anywhere, on highway 401 is 100 km/h
My uncle was hit in the back side by a motorcyclist travelling at insane speeds and rear ended in Nissan Pathfinder. A BMW motorcycle and this dude went flying over the divider onto the other side of the highway. He was with a group of people who were also speeding and they had their license plates blacked out. Turns out the dude was a cop from NY and tried to sue my uncle for changing lanes, even though the dude rear ended and crushed the back left side of my uncles truck. I'm amazed the guy could still walk frankly.

But this isn't the same as driving 20 km/h over the speed limit. These people usually have full intent to drive super fast and this new EU plan will have cars with a button that will disable this feature. What we really need is self driving technology to help avoid these type of accidents. Which would also help with the drink driving, the people falling asleep, and distracted driving.
 
My uncle was hit in the back side by a motorcyclist travelling at insane speeds and rear ended in Nissan Pathfinder. A BMW motorcycle and this dude went flying over the divider onto the other side of the highway. He was with a group of people who were also speeding and they had their license plates blacked out. Turns out the dude was a cop from NY and tried to sue my uncle for changing lanes, even though the dude rear ended and crushed the back left side of my uncles truck. I'm amazed the guy could still walk frankly.

But this isn't the same as driving 20 km/h over the speed limit. These people usually have full intent to drive super fast and this new EU plan will have cars with a button that will disable this feature. What we really need is self driving technology to help avoid these type of accidents. Which would also help with the drink driving, the people falling asleep, and distracted driving.

If you want to trust HAL with your life then your free to when that time comes. Some of us trust ourselves far more then a computer programmed by a human.
 
If you want to trust HAL with your life then your free to when that time comes. Some of us trust ourselves far more then a computer programmed by a human.
Peer review, and testing it the key. Yeah but it's programmed by a human so it's just as unreliable as any human is a false equivalence.
 
Yea, try driving behind large vehicles on Michigan roads.. You get your windshield broken, headlights cracked, and tons of paint chips / rock dents because the roads are falling apart and concrete chunks routinely fly up and hit you. Passing is necessary.. If you slow down to hang back behind too far, you're going under the speed limit, slowing down traffic.

So far in 120k miles in my car commuting I have gone through 5 windshields from road debris breaking it, 2 sets of headlights, and hood repainted once because it gets sandblasted with gravel on the highway.
 
Peer review, and testing it the key. Yeah but it's programmed by a human so it's just as unreliable as any human is a false equivalence.

If it's made by a human then it's likely to be flawed and it's that simple. Cars go through tons of testing yet recalls and issues happen all the time, you should see the hundreds of technical service bulletins that go out for known issues on just a single model. I want control of my car, not trusting a machine to do it right.
 
Cars have been computerized since the late 90s, early 2000s. Every car that has an electronic cruise control has the throttle controlled by the computer. Having a speed limit doesn't make it any easier to hack. And 99% of the cars that have no cruise control nowadays only have it disabled in the software.


Cars were not internet accessible in the late 90s, early 2000s, nor were they fly by wire.... you needed physical access to the vehicle to mess with it so its not even remotely the same thing.
 
No, but you are apparently, just don't know why. GPS has nothing to do with cell networks.

i never said anything about gps being cellular.

i just thought it was strange you compared a late 90's car to the machines of today.

it is concerning that the EU wants to add another vector of attack to an already proven to be insecure system of car electronics.

the jeep hackers attacked through the radio.
 
What happens when someone sets all the boxes to make the cars have a max speed of 0? This could happen in an emergency or in the event of martial law. We could see something like the Hawaii missile scare where someone hacks into the system and stops all traffic for a time. This is such a bad idea!
 
I get that people don't like this ... however the reason that things like this get proposed is because of idiots and their terrible driving.

Where i live, in the great white north in a city of 120k people, 4 days ago 2 motorists were clocked at 200 km/h. A year ago a teenager on a bike was clocked at 240 km/h. The maximum speed anywhere, on highway 401 is 100 km/h

In what universe has anyone on the 401 driven 100? You go 120 on average or get slammed from behind. Hell, the OPP roll at 130 because there's too much distance to cover to waste that much time.
 
I only believe statistics that I falsified myself. Stalin joke aside, those statistics don't differentiate between relative and absolute speeding.

Relative speeding = not driving in accordance with the current conditions (traffic, road surface quality, curvature, weather, etc)
Absolute speeding = going faster than the posted speed limit.

The two aren't connected in any way. You can be relative speeding without exceeding the posted speed limit, and you can be absolute speeding without relative speeding.

There are literally no situations where absolute speeding in of itself can cause an accident. Either you have to exceed what's safe for road conditions, or another rule must be broken (ex rules of overtaking, or right of way)
Yes it is true, that higher speed results in a higher probability of injury, but that speed causes accidents in of itself is pure bullshit that they push because speed is what they can clearly measure and "tax".

So reducing speed does reduce the chance of having a fatal accident, but not because speed causes the accidents.

One of my friends had an accident where they were injured, the official report said the cause of the accident was speeding. They didn't exceed the posted speed limit. But the driver lost control of the car on a wet patch of road and they hit a concrete electric pole that fell on the car.

In reality very few people are speeding, and I mean speeding as in exceeding the speed limit by a large margin. Because 140 instead of 130 is not even speeding in my vocabulary. The condition of the car has a much greater impact on safety than 10-20kph speed difference. If they should do anything is a system that prevents people from driving junkers that are absolutely not roadworthy.

But I guess if this becomes law we'll find out in 5 years whether the number of accidents are greatly reduced because people can't speed.

I wouldn't expect them to change significantly. If anything it could make people even more frustrated, which could result in higher number of accidents.
Also less speed by definition makes overtaking maneuvers more dangerous. And there are not many things more frustrating in traffic than sitting behind a slow moving vehicle.

It will be especially funny (as in dangerous as hell) as non-limited cars slalom around cars equipped with limiters.

The problem with your theory is accidents are investigated, they can determine with fairly decent accuracy the speed of impact. So the thought that someone was not actually speeding according to a police report, does not help the case where the data is derived from accident reports. You can contrive all the scenarios where there are outliers, but that is the problem, they are outliers. There would have to be a massive conspiracy to falsify so many reports on accidents to change the data significantly to fit your claims.
 
The problem with your theory is accidents are investigated, they can determine with fairly decent accuracy the speed of impact. So the thought that someone was not actually speeding according to a police report, does not help the case where the data is derived from accident reports. You can contrive all the scenarios where there are outliers, but that is the problem, they are outliers. There would have to be a massive conspiracy to falsify so many reports on accidents to change the data significantly to fit your claims.
I think you guys are talking about two different things.
The previous poster is suggesting there are other underlying conditions why accidents happen in the first place and speed is not one of them. You are saying fatalities happen and speed has a direct correlation. I don't think either of you are wrong.

Speed is a direct factor in fatalities and harm to the drivers/passengers in a car. There's no doubt that no matter what, the impact speeds greatly determine the stopping force a car has to exhibit. However as the previous poster described, the cause of the accident is almost never speed alone but rather dangerous/stupid driving. There are many places in the world with unlimited speed that do not see an increase in accidents and have the same accident rates.

The two different goals are as follows: Reduce fatalities and injuries by reducing speed. Reduce accidents all together by identifying problem driving and root causes. In most cases, i agree that speed limits are a joke and do not reduce accidents. In most places in the US for example, most people exceed the speed limit by 10-15 mph to just keep up with the rest of traffic even though it's technically against the law and they can be fined at any time for doing so. Sometimes on these roads, going the speed limit or under it is more dangerous.
 
I think you guys are talking about two different things.
The previous poster is suggesting there are other underlying conditions why accidents happen in the first place and speed is not one of them. You are saying fatalities happen and speed has a direct correlation. I don't think either of you are wrong.

Speed is a direct factor in fatalities and harm to the drivers/passengers in a car. There's no doubt that no matter what, the impact speeds greatly determine the stopping force a car has to exhibit. However as the previous poster described, the cause of the accident is almost never speed alone but rather dangerous/stupid driving. There are many places in the world with unlimited speed that do not see an increase in accidents and have the same accident rates.

The two different goals are as follows: Reduce fatalities and injuries by reducing speed. Reduce accidents all together by identifying problem driving and root causes. In most cases, i agree that speed limits are a joke and do not reduce accidents. In most places in the US for example, most people exceed the speed limit by 10-15 mph to just keep up with the rest of traffic even though it's technically against the law and they can be fined at any time for doing so. Sometimes on these roads, going the speed limit or under it is more dangerous.

No, we really aren't talking about different things. He even stated,

There are literally no situations where absolute speeding in of itself can cause an accident. Either you have to exceed what's safe for road conditions, or another rule must be broken (ex rules of overtaking, or right of way)

He is trying to state that speeding is never the cause for an accident. Which is fairly dumb. If you exceed what is safe for road conditions, thus causing you to lose control, what was it that caused the person to lose control? Speeding.
Another scenario. If you speed up to either overtake someone or just because you want to get someone sooner, but the person in front of you all of a sudden breaks and you hit them, what is the cause of the accident? Speeding.
I could go on, but my point is the same, speeding is definitely a cause for accidents, and even more so for more extensive damage in accidents. Data and statistics show this.

Now, do I think some people have greater control at higher speeds than others? Yes. I own a sports car, I have owned sports cars for most of my driving days. I have taken courses and practiced maneuvers and control at higher rates of speed. But I still understand the inherent dangers of speeding.
 
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