Australia, UK To Test Vehicle Speed-Limiting Devices 859
nemesisrocks writes "The New South Wales government is set to begin testing a device that will limit the speed of drivers because 'excessive speed is one of the primary ways that people are killed while driving.' Located on the dashboard, it senses a driver's speed with the use of GPS. If the speed of a car goes over the posted legal limit, a warning sounds. If the driver ignores the warning, the device eventually cuts all power to the car because a cut-off switch has been installed between the accelerator and the engine."
The Times Online reports that the same system will be tested in the UK this summer for use in taxis and buses.
That's strange.. (Score:5, Informative)
"Cuts power" not "cuts all power" (Score:5, Informative)
Speed limiters already on HGVs / trucks? (Score:5, Informative)
Don't HGVs (heavy goods vehicles, artics, trucks, whatever you call them) have speed limiters on them as it is? I think this is so in the UK and some of Europe? (90kph/ 56mph)
Information welcomed.
Re:"Cuts power" not "cuts all power" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:GPS speeds are inaccurate (Score:1, Informative)
That's one of the reasons that the EU is starting its own GPS system; Galileo. As well as being able to give a much more accurate reading of speed than the US's GPS it will also give a much more accurate reading of location and allow the government to charge for using certain roads.
Re:All I have to say is... (Score:5, Informative)
If implemented as described in the article: not much. With "cut power" they actually mean "limit power to reach only the maximum allowed speed" and you can override it if you wish. (Emergency transport to the hospital, speed limit out of date etc.)
Re:bad assumption (Score:3, Informative)
Speed can be a contributing cause to a crash. Higher speed reduces effective response time (or, if you wish, increases response distance), meaning a situation which could have been avoided (braking, evasive maneuvers) at a lower speed becomes unavoidable at a higher one. (Of course, arguing about causation can be pointless--after all, there could have been no crash at all if the drivers had chosen not to drive in the first place.)
But true, speed's affect on a crash is to increase the total kinetic energy budget of all impacts involved.
Re:No Doubt (Score:3, Informative)
"That removing this device would be illegal."
So is speeding.
Re:"Cuts power" not "cuts all power" (Score:3, Informative)
I can't see it happening (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I didn't RFTA but ... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:All I have to say is... (Score:1, Informative)
The system doesn't track anyone - it just uses GPS to match your position against its internal speed limit database.
Re:All I have to say is... (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, it does:
(i love having to wait 5 minutes between posts)
Re:"Cuts power" not "cuts all power" (Score:3, Informative)
Try riding on a highway adjacent to a service road and parallel to a nearby ridge line. Depending on the satellite geometry and other terrain, you can end up getting a long-term incorrect reading that way, due to receiving the satellite signals reflected from the ridge line.
Re:All I have to say is... (Score:5, Informative)
Semi-trailers here in Aus already have governers set to 100KPH.
Drivers often drop them into neutral on the highway on downhills, they hit 140 no problems.
There's also a thriving industry found in the back pages of trucking magazines dedicated to remov...err 'maintaining' them.
Re:All I have to say is... (Score:3, Informative)
Except the device won't respond by "killing the engine" -- it will reduce power, and you can push the button to override it. So it won't cause a "massive pileup".
So aside from the lack of consequences as you imagine them, you're absolutely right.
Re:All I have to say is... (Score:3, Informative)
In my quick perusal of the local Vehicle Code, I see there are about 4 - 6 different kinds of speeding violations. One of them is "driving too fast for conditions", which seems to be the only one people are concerned with as a practical matter. But there are others, like driving faster than the posted speed, faster than the state maximum, faster than the max for your kind of vehicle, faster than max for the kind of road you are on, etc.
commercial vehicles are already limited (Score:3, Informative)
If you want to do something like this for commercial vehicles
They already are. For decades, diesel trucks have had mechanical governors that can be adjusted (not in the cockpit.) For at least a decade, there have been dataloggers for fleets, some live...some memory-card based or short-distance radio (ie when you pull into the yard.) They record things like the driver bouncing off the engine rev limiter, engine speed, road speed, throttle, fuel consumption, etc.
A friend bought a new cargo truck a couple of states over, and the PO neglected to mention that the governor had been set for 53mph. One of his drivers drove the truck back while he followed in his car, and they did 53mph for 6 hours straight on a highway where the limit was 65.
Re:All I have to say is... (Score:4, Informative)
https://shop.sae.org/technical/papers/960439 [sae.org]
Learn to google. Googling speed limits interstates accident rates got me the first one, and variations thereof, Adding -purdue got me the second. It would also have eventually produced contrary results if any existed. Of course, I'm not going to sit at google adding fifteen hundred -words just to reinforce or refute those articles. I don't even drive.
Re:All I have to say is... (Score:5, Informative)
Learn to read. The findings were mixed and in cases where increasing the speed limit saved lives, it was as simple as 'ore speed is faster' but rather 'faster highways takes speeding drivers away from other roads where accidents are more likely'.
"For example, one study found that a speed limit increase from 55 to 65 resulted in roughly a 3 percent increase in the accident rate and a 24 percent increase in the probability of a fatality once an accident occurred," Mannering said. "But then other studies have contended that legislation-enabled speed-limit increases have actually saved lives. One study argued that increasing from 55 to 65 saved lives because of shifts in law enforcement resources, the ability of higher speed limit interstates to attract riskier drivers away from inherently more dangerous non-interstate highways and reducing how often drivers speed up and slow down."
Re:All I have to say is... (Score:3, Informative)
That's not a result of speed, it's a result of following too closely and probably not paying attention, which are both problems regardless how fast you're driving. If you're driving 30 mph faster, then there should be correspondingly greater space given to traffic around you to account for it.
How do you think accident rates would drop if you actually forced anyone to drive no faster than 55 mph?
I don't think they'd change appreciably. Sliding off the road sideways and hitting an oak tree at 55 mph will kill you just as effectively as it will at 80 mph. Limiting the speed to 55 mph will not change people's propensity to follow too closely or otherwise practice poor driving habits, and most definitely will not get people to pay closer attention to what's going on around them.
Re:"Cuts power" not "cuts all power" (Score:2, Informative)
So if you are behind a triple-trailer that is going 5-10 under the limit, you want to try to pass the triple-trailer while only going 5mph faster? Good luck with that...
This is why in places like WA, it is explicitly LEGAL to exceed the speed limit when passing on two lane roads. I for one like to minimize the amount of time I'm on the left side of the center line, cuz you never know who might poke out and make a right without looking both ways.