Why will it not prevent accidents? Most accidents are not caused by a lack of speed but rather, too much speed. Sure, one can hypothesise scenarios in which rapid acceleration is desirable to avoid an accident, but I'm sceptical those are very common in reality, and the obvious ones I can think of are around people performing dangerous manoeuvres (like overtaking with insufficient space).
A stationary car is not going to cause a crash. Inattention from drivers might be why the speed is too high, but ultimately it's the vehicle moving at a speed at which there is insufficient time to mitigate any problems that results in crashes.
>Inattention from drivers might be why the speed is too high, but ultimately it's the vehicle moving at a speed at which there is insufficient time to mitigate any problems that results in crashes.
That speed can easily be far below the speed limit. The speed is near irrelevant compared to the delay the driver causes by not paying proper attention.
A drunk driver driving significantly below the speed limit is far more dangerous than an attentive driver, driving above the speed limit. This is pretty obvious I think.
Yeah, I'm trying to think of scenarios where I go over the speed limit, and they're all blatantly obvious cases of accident avoidance in my mind. Specially due to other people being really terrible drivers.
For example, I'll sometimes go over the speed limit when overtaking someone, because they don't actually know that you should NEVER speed up (only maintain or lose speed) while you're being overtaken. Oh no, that's not common sense, that's LAW almost everywhere.
But the worst of all cases: 3 lane highway. Me (car A) and another guy (Car B) in an acceleration lane (so 4th) trying to merge in. A car (C) in lane 3 is trying to weave between us two, as the lane is also an exit. All fine. I'll merge in, the Car C will too, and Car B will do so a bit behind.
Car (D) speeding up on lane 2 quickly turns and clearly shows themselves meaning to go to the exit lane, but noooooo, not behind anyone, he MUST go ahead of Car C. There are three outcomes in this mongoloid's cerebral physics puzzle. He crashes me if I don't get out of the way, he crashes C if they don't give way, or he panics, does something weird and either of them crash into B.
I slammed the pedal faster than I could even process what was up. If some stupid retarded automated system got in the way of that moment, I'd be in the workshop and considering my position on political activism a bit more than before.
Oh believe me I read the second scenario several times.
For the first one it's "blatantly obvious" that you should just stop overtaking if someone is being hostile against you. Even if you have a rally cross situation behind you, the physics works out to be safer if you abort.
Second one is rather confusing, but it would appear that this driver of D having realized intentions of C decided to brute force the situation with speed, making driver of A to solve everything again with even more speed.
This mentality of speeding just ends up amplifying until something gives.
Next step: have a speed tracker on the car that will report speeding straight to the cops, no need for them to see you with a radar or anything like that.
In general there's lots of politicians and "administrators" who salivate at tech like this that constrain people and make them manageable. I find these attempts very undignified and totalitarian.
Well, why not have alcohol breath sensors in all cars? Why not have the car not start at all without the seatbelts being in place, and not just have the annoying alarm? Why not have the car stop going over 20 km/h if it's unregistered?
Overall limiting cars to a maximum of 160 km/h seems like a good idea. Apart from some stretches of the Autobahn - there's not much reason cars should go that fast.
some exotic cars do, but I was thinking of cars popular with young men who cause senseless accidents by treating cities roads as race tracks. A BMW 3-series is popular with them and is about 5 seconds 0-100.
5 seconds is still too quick in my eyes, the current VW Golf can do this, the Mark 1 took 9 seconds. Why would you need this as a default? If it's an option that you have to toggle and it comes with a visible sign and the data tracker kicking in, that'd be okay.
>Overall limiting cars to a maximum of 160 km/h seems like a good idea.
Ridiculous. People use cars for things besides going from A to B. In Germany significant parts of the streets are without speed limit and you can easily go 200km/h+.
The speed limiter is enough, I'm sure that insurance companies will soon offer discounts if you submit those speed logs in case of accidents or in general with live-speed-tracking.
The problem though remains: Too much horse power and it's particularly sad with young men not being in full control of those cars causing accidents of all sort. Here's a recent interview with a public prosecutor in Germany: https://archive.is/20240703123415/https://www.sueddeutsche.d...
This whole system seems set up like nagware. Having the car distract the motorist with alerts while driving will surely increase risks of accidents, as will the anger induced by the frustration of knowing that a machine is fighting him instead of working for him.
Everyone except the managers hates micromanaging for good reason, it treats me like an idiot who cannot be trusted to make his own calls. And I know better than some remote manager the best choice to make in a given situation - especially while operating high speed machinery. There have been more than a few times on the road that flooring it was safer than slowing down.
Absolute trash idea - even worse than Auto Idle Stop, I will ensure it is removed from any future car I purchase.
Your argument works fine until you remember that distraction, in the form of smartphone-usage during the drive, has risen to one of the top three causes of road accidents.
Sure I have, my objection is on the greater tendency for legislators to use technological means to constrain ordinary behavior. Today is a speed limiter, tomorrow is a embedded car snitch, or an automatic hate speech detector, or whatever else you can think of.
Though I can imagine over time, when an accident happens and you had your limiter off, that the burden of proof for who's at fault shifts.
Similar to how on much of the German Autobahn you can drive as fast as you want, but if you are significantly above 130km/h and an accident happens, the fast party is the one deemed guilty (unless clearly proven otherwise).
I would really like it if my car would warn me that I'm exceeding the speed limit of a stretch of road, and update dynamically. Google displays the speed limit, but doesn't warn me, and is wrong ~40% of the time.
My understanding was that some sort of warning system was mandatory, but that physical speed limitation is not. (Edit: it does clarify this in the article—not sure how I missed that)
In any case: I hate this. Having an intuitive understanding of the handling characteristics of your vehicle is critical to driving safely, and if you go to overtake someone or try to merge, only to discover that the car isn’t accelerating because it’s decided the speed limit is lower than it is, accidents will happen.
I have an older Civic which will read road signs but doesn’t do anything but display them on the dash—and thank god, because it’s constantly getting it wrong.
Modern cars have so many beeps and bongs and touch controls that I can’t help wonder if the extra distraction is a net negative. It’s also a bit of a trope that the various lane keep assist features on modern cars will repeatedly try to drive you into a hedge or oncoming traffic the second you take them on a twisty British country road.
It’s quite common for motoring enthusiasts to tune ECUs for performance; I suspect hacking the thing to make them remember that you’ve turned them off will be equally popular.
In my area, everyone goes about 10mph above the limit. Police don’t ticket.
Will this system limit exactly at the speed limit? Or will it have some buffer threshold?
This seems like pretty bad tech that I don’t want. And the way it’s written seems very gaslighty…
“ the speed limiter technology is simply there to prevent ‘momentary lapses of concentration’ that could result in speeding”
I don’t think my speeding is the result of momentary lapses of concentration, but calculated decisions about immediate road conditions or long term travel goals (eg, if I go 9 over the limit on a 10 hour trip, it reduces the trip by an hour).
That seems like a problem with your police force, not the tech.
In the part of Dublin I live in, there's a 30km/h speed limit (dense urban centre - travel times didn't really change when it came in as the traffic is horrendous anyway). It's somewhat common for people (generally visitors) to ignore this completely, barreling along far too fast and putting people in danger. I'd be quite keen on anything that would stop that.
I think this was tried in the US a very long time ago. Not as a law but as a limited experiment. I do not remember much, but I think it was abandoned due to a couple of safety issues.
One I can think of is long steep down hills with a large truck in back of you. Cases could exist were you could not get out of the way and you cannot speed up. I do not remember the details.
In many places in the US, this scenario does exist.
Could be very unsafe if this kicks in unexpectedly during an overtaking manoeuvre on a single carriageway. Less speed during the overtake is less margin to oncoming traffic (more time spent in the oncoming lane), and a small speed difference can have a big effect.
Edit: another comment mentioned merging- this too can be huge. If your car isn't keeping up with the flow of traffic, or unable to move faster, that could also directly cause accidents if there's a space in front but no space behind.
The article mentions it is not a limiter, but rather a speed limit warning. So none of your hypothetical scenarios apply, other than drivers might learn not to overtake if breaking the speed limit is necessary because the warning is annoying.
It does limit engine power but I see further down there's an emergency override (by pressing hard on the accelerator) which would get around these issues.
Even though this scenario is suggested quite often, it doesn't make it good. Overtaking does not grant you a permission to speed. Also, while it's probably easier said than done, you should not succumb to the sunk cost fallacy and simply use the other pedal at your disposal.
> The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has said the move will reduce collisions by 30%.
At least they have given an almost measurable outcome. If only they would choose some measurable metric that had a clear cause and effect and link the legislation to scientific outcomes.
Unlike the other bullshit statement "The European Commission has said the speed limiters could prevent 140,000 serious road traffic injuries"...
Dangerous drivers speed. Reducing top speeds should prevent some serious crashes, but I am curious whether it would be as effective as hoped. And sure as shit it is nobodies job to check reality against hopes.
I wish measurable intended outcomes were a requirement for laws and regulations, and that they could be nullified in court if it could be proven the intended outcome wasn't met. Partly it'd force people to state the intent more clearly, and partly it'd mean that if they were trying to mislead and indicate the wrong targets, the laws might get stricken off. It'd be hard to do it in ways that couldn't be gamed by e.g. promising too little (though presumably that'd make it easier politically to oppose as well) or making it something hard to objectively measure, though.
I hope there is some kind of emergency override, like applying full accelerator input, to get out of danger spots. (Edit: article says it would indeed have this)
After living for 15 years in the Middle East and frequently traveling to other countries around the world, including the US, Egypt, Thailand, and more, I trust European traffic and car regulators and their policies 100%. Landing back in my home country in Europe makes me marvel at how fast, yet safe and organized, the traffic is.
So, I am pretty sure this system will be effective in the long run. Right now, it just seems like a trial, which may require fine-tuning, but fast forward a few years, and everyone will be completely accustomed to it.
I have to disagree - the mental load to process all the traffic signs + narrow roads + roundabouts makes driving in Europe much more tiring and somewhat error prone.
> Right now, it just seems like a trial, which may require fine-tuning, but fast forward a few years, and everyone will be completely accustomed to it.
I'm quite doubtful about the latter statement:
- I know quite some people (in Germany) who still complain about the mandatory seat belt laws that were introduced in 1976 in Germany for front seats (and since 1984 for back seats if they had seat belts).
- Another example: in 2009 light bulbs were banned in the EU. I know quite a lot of people who still deeply hate the EU for this.
As I feel the current political climate, the hate against the EU in the wider public is insane. Every new such legislation is another kindled fuse for the powder keg of the fury in the public against the EU.
> Another example: in 2009 light bulbs were banned in the EU
For the sake of anyone confused by this, incandescent lightbulbs, and even then a phase-out — Halogen was 2018 according to Wikipedia, but this news doesn't seem to have reached my local hardware store in Berlin: https://www.obi.de/search/halogen/
Plenty of light bulbs for sale, they're just different than the ones I had as a kid.
> Another example: in 2009 light bulbs were banned in the EU. I know quite a lot of people who still deeply hate the EU for this.
Might just be different circles/different attitudes in Ireland vs wherever you are, but I have never met an actual human in real life who is annoyed about the death of incandescent light bulbs. I've seen it from people on the internet, but to be honest mostly from Americans.
I've met one person in real life (if Cambridge UK counts as "real life" :P) who was vocal about preferring incandescent to energy saving; you will probably be unsurprised to learn that they voted Leave.
I could see why people might feel that way about seatbelts (e.g. people feeling "don't tell me I'm a bad driver!"), but I don't see how that feeling could attach to environmental issues like the aggregate emissions from (reducing from 100W to 10W * 2.5h/day * about 1 bulb/person * 400 million people =) 3.75 GW over the continent?
Well, I think to some extent, the eurosceptic UK tendency, encouraged by the tabloids, was to seek out things to be offended by (sometimes simply making them up; see bendy bananas.)
Never really heard of this anywhere in Europe _outside_ the UK, tho.
At first the LED replacements were shit, some didn’t turn on immediately, didn’t dim and so on. It’s not that I wanted to go back, but they weren’t a good replacement. I don’t see as many issues now though.
While I value what GDPR is trying to achieve, the response to it by all the people who want to continue to track users instead of providing non-tracking alternatives, does seem to justify the criticism that @ghusto listed.
It certainly justifies criticism of companies that insist on tracking users. I do not know how you could twist this into "ammo for EU haters" when GDPR's biggest stipulation is forced disclosure. The only people that earnestly complain about GDPR are people that directly benefit from the unknowing exploitation of user data.
Seat belts work. Use them. Those won't don't use decimate themselves over time. E.g in Austria of the 178 car occupants killed last year 42 didn't wear a seat belt[0]. Those 23% is far above the 8% that did not use a seat belt in observations[1]. Numbers for other countries are similar or worse.
> Seat belts work. Use them. Those won't don't use decimate themselves over time. E.g in Austria of the 178 car occupants killed last year 42 didn't wear a seat belt[0]. Those 23% is far above the 8% that did not use a seat belt in observations[1]. Numbers for other countries are similar or worse.
Ask your parents, spouse, children, co-workers how they'd feel if you died simply because you were to lazy to do just one simple action before driving off into the sunset. I'm pretty sure they don't want you to join the Derek Kieper club https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/seat-belt-advocate-killed/
Not in Germany, but still in the EU, I'm one who complain not against "seat belt" in general but the approved three-points one, because they are DANGEROUS instead of being helpful and automakers know it but do not want to invest in 4-points seat belt and most people do not even know why they are dangerous OR useless...
I do not tell why now, because I'm curious how many guess correctly, if someone ask I'll tell why, and yes there is pre-modern-web research on that topic, buried of course, similar to various researches about seed oils, colza hepatic toxicity in particular, others about plastic films to wrap food and so on.
Yes. You never heard of that because seat belts became mandatory BEFORE the web spread so research on that topic, having much data to compare between those with and without seat belts was simply missed due to automakers interests.
3 point seat belts means much more visceral traumas, witch tend to be more serious and not immediate to spot than orthopedic traumas, also much more chest traumas where broken ribs perforate a lung or they make the heart explode. No seat belts (with tempered and stratified glass) means much more broken legs and arms, NOT much skull damage and NOT much visceral trauma.
Back then (my mother was a young emergency room surgeon) many doctors state that the idea of seat belt is good for 4 point anchoring who can dislocate or fracture your shoulders but no more, and in case of fire/drowning you can exit them without needing to cut them, but automakers oppose that because it means making much more expensive seats while three point seat belts are pretty cheap.
After there was a gazillion of additions to makes the three point seat belts less dangerous, some have tried a small "embedded airbag", some have tried "dynamic deceleration instead of a sudden block, but most of them dramatically fails. Embedded air-bags are simply too slow to open, too easy to misplace, too little absorbent, dynamic decelerators do sglitly better but they are still not dynamic enough and so on.
Another automotive scandal is about day lights on cars, they are pushed "because various studies have proven them to be useful", no one tell than those studies are only a couple and done in the Sweden Lapland in conditions where "day lights" are essentially "position light in late evening" for most other climate. But again they are useful to sell a bit more without any benefit.
There are many others, nothing so "devastating" but enough to understand that academia need to be public and TOTALLY, RELIGIOUSLY SEPARATED form the private sector to avoid the spread of "false commercial science" for some large enough lobbyist interests. Oh BTW you can try to dig the history witch tend to be less biased as the time passes, you'll find for instance some example from Eduard Bernays campaigns https://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/12/consumer like one for the British American Tobacco company where he literally create a scientific journal publishing some real scientific articles from small universities, young PhDs and so on gaining a certain traction thanks to a free distribution models among all doctors. Slowly he insert false, but realistic scientific papers stating how smoking is good for human health and many doctors believe them and recommend smoking as a healthy habit. In few years almost all doctors if interviewed they'll state "smoking is good for health".
In general norms are reasonable but just for instance my car ADAS today given me two phantom breaks, one for a reasonable reason (I was approaching another car fast enough knowing it will accelerate, but the car can't know that) another for no really reasonable reasons.
So well... I opposite such kind of deployments without a single, easy to locate physical button you can hit to "clear all ADAS pushing here" like an emergency button. Some examples:
- due to a health emergency you purposely want to ignore speed limits, and of course you do not want to waste time digging in car tablet preferences;
- due to a sudden emergency you need to ignore speed limits, like a landslide you see started dropping from above;
- you are actually passing another car and still at safe distance but quickly approaching another car appear in the opposite direction;
These are just few rares and far less rare examples why it's a good reason to pass limits and you have no time to deactivate the adas digging in some touch menus.
In addition to Intelligent Speed Assistance the same regulation mandates automakers to equip cars with "black boxes" akin to those in planes.
On the other hand, I could not find anything in there saying that manufacturers will have only four options to inform the driver about speeding, this must come from somewhere else (hard to say from the article almost without references).
I hope that a device that prevents people from tapping on their phones while driving will also be made and become mandatory. I see people doing that literally every single day, and it's proven it can kill people (because it did actually happen). And those who do, they are not driving fancy cars with some limited self-driving capability, just regular cars that you need to actually drive.
I have a so-called "intelligent speed limited" in my 2 year old car.
It's absolutely terrible.
On the highway it picks up the 50km/h panel intended for the bus lanes.
Close to where I live it hallucinates a 5km/h limit.
In random places it will miss limitations.
Right now it simply decreases engine power. On a highway that's already dangerous enough. Can't wait till they use the same visual/audio warnings as they do for the pre-collision assistant...
By the way, that's bullshit too. Triggering for no good reason and scary enough to take my eyes off the road. Love it.
On the one hand, there's the limiter set by the driver (that you can override by pushing the pedal down hard), which is usually activated by the same lever or buttons as cruise control but works differently - you accelerate to 50mph in a 50 zone, activate the limiter, and the car will not accelerate above that limit. You can just push the gas pedal down and hold your speed as long as the road is free.
The other system is the sign detection (sometimes GPS assisted) which displays a limit sign on your dashboard and beeps at you if you go over it. My experiences as a passenger in the UK in a 2016 registration car:
- It does not recognise that "chopsticks" (start of motorway) raises the limit to 70 mph unless stated otherwise.
- It does not recognise a National Speed Limit sign built into an "end of roadworks" sign (which is the normal UK way to end a roadworks-based speed restriction on a motorway).
- When one lane is out for works, there's usually big 60 (sometimes 50) signs for the cars and a very small 15 sign for the works vehicles. Sometimes, the camera picks up the 15 sign and beeps at you about that.
I don't know if the technology has got better since. Maybe we can use AI or something.
beeps when you turn the corner. beeps when you change lanes. beeps when you take your hands off the wheel. beeps when the engine starts. beeps when you open the door with the engine running. beeps when you don't have your seatbelt on before the engine is started. beeps when you open the trunk. beeps when you close the trunk. beeps when you stop the engine and it's not in neutral. beeps when you drive with something heavy resting on the back seats.
i guess i won't notice these beeps when you speed too much.
Everywhere I’ve driven people go ~10% above the limit because everyone knows the speedometer isn’t accurate (confirmed by those radar stations that report your speed live). Will this limiter use the true speed or the car's reported speed?
I fear we will see many more overtakes as this limiter makes its way onto the roads.
I can think of so many ways this can go terribly wrong, for little to no pay off.
If they ever attempt this in America looks like I’ll be driving older vehicles for the rest of my life.
Edit: looks like it’s a warning not a limiter - so that’s still just as silly, it’s not going to really stop anyone from speeding, it’s just going to become another annoying non-feature of new cars that everyone hates like auto start-stop.
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 169 ms ] threadCan disable with a hard acceleration or disable each time you start driving with a button press.
Any actual interference with driving will not prevent, but cause, accidents.
An example of this would be resistance on the pedal causing added latency on acceleration attempt.
Any evidence for that? Don't you think inattention from drivers or mechanical failures are more likely causes?
Plainly wrong.
>Inattention from drivers might be why the speed is too high, but ultimately it's the vehicle moving at a speed at which there is insufficient time to mitigate any problems that results in crashes.
That speed can easily be far below the speed limit. The speed is near irrelevant compared to the delay the driver causes by not paying proper attention.
A drunk driver driving significantly below the speed limit is far more dangerous than an attentive driver, driving above the speed limit. This is pretty obvious I think.
For example, I'll sometimes go over the speed limit when overtaking someone, because they don't actually know that you should NEVER speed up (only maintain or lose speed) while you're being overtaken. Oh no, that's not common sense, that's LAW almost everywhere.
But the worst of all cases: 3 lane highway. Me (car A) and another guy (Car B) in an acceleration lane (so 4th) trying to merge in. A car (C) in lane 3 is trying to weave between us two, as the lane is also an exit. All fine. I'll merge in, the Car C will too, and Car B will do so a bit behind.
Car (D) speeding up on lane 2 quickly turns and clearly shows themselves meaning to go to the exit lane, but noooooo, not behind anyone, he MUST go ahead of Car C. There are three outcomes in this mongoloid's cerebral physics puzzle. He crashes me if I don't get out of the way, he crashes C if they don't give way, or he panics, does something weird and either of them crash into B.
I slammed the pedal faster than I could even process what was up. If some stupid retarded automated system got in the way of that moment, I'd be in the workshop and considering my position on political activism a bit more than before.
There's no "besting". Those were examples in which the ability to accelerate prevented actual accidents.
For the first one it's "blatantly obvious" that you should just stop overtaking if someone is being hostile against you. Even if you have a rally cross situation behind you, the physics works out to be safer if you abort.
Second one is rather confusing, but it would appear that this driver of D having realized intentions of C decided to brute force the situation with speed, making driver of A to solve everything again with even more speed.
This mentality of speeding just ends up amplifying until something gives.
In general there's lots of politicians and "administrators" who salivate at tech like this that constrain people and make them manageable. I find these attempts very undignified and totalitarian.
EU in a nutshell.
I had an old bmw 320d; it did about 9s; and I think that was too much.
The only thing I can really do is creep forward until I get a glimpse into the traffic, and if it's clear, accelerate the hell out of it.
So, at least for the first, let's say 30 to 50km/h, I'm very glad of the high torque and acceleration of my hybrid card.
I'd be fine with a hard speed limit though. I'd be fine with limiting the Autobahn to 130km/h.
I see no reason why a 2 tonne car should accelerate to 100km in less than 5 seconds, but here we are.
Ridiculous. People use cars for things besides going from A to B. In Germany significant parts of the streets are without speed limit and you can easily go 200km/h+.
Of the Autobahn? Yes. All of it? No
The problem though remains: Too much horse power and it's particularly sad with young men not being in full control of those cars causing accidents of all sort. Here's a recent interview with a public prosecutor in Germany: https://archive.is/20240703123415/https://www.sueddeutsche.d...
Everyone except the managers hates micromanaging for good reason, it treats me like an idiot who cannot be trusted to make his own calls. And I know better than some remote manager the best choice to make in a given situation - especially while operating high speed machinery. There have been more than a few times on the road that flooring it was safer than slowing down.
Absolute trash idea - even worse than Auto Idle Stop, I will ensure it is removed from any future car I purchase.
They understood this in the 90s, why not today? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz4HEEiJuGo
Similar to how on much of the German Autobahn you can drive as fast as you want, but if you are significantly above 130km/h and an accident happens, the fast party is the one deemed guilty (unless clearly proven otherwise).
I would really like it if my car would warn me that I'm exceeding the speed limit of a stretch of road, and update dynamically. Google displays the speed limit, but doesn't warn me, and is wrong ~40% of the time.
In any case: I hate this. Having an intuitive understanding of the handling characteristics of your vehicle is critical to driving safely, and if you go to overtake someone or try to merge, only to discover that the car isn’t accelerating because it’s decided the speed limit is lower than it is, accidents will happen.
I have an older Civic which will read road signs but doesn’t do anything but display them on the dash—and thank god, because it’s constantly getting it wrong.
Modern cars have so many beeps and bongs and touch controls that I can’t help wonder if the extra distraction is a net negative. It’s also a bit of a trope that the various lane keep assist features on modern cars will repeatedly try to drive you into a hedge or oncoming traffic the second you take them on a twisty British country road.
It’s quite common for motoring enthusiasts to tune ECUs for performance; I suspect hacking the thing to make them remember that you’ve turned them off will be equally popular.
Will this system limit exactly at the speed limit? Or will it have some buffer threshold?
This seems like pretty bad tech that I don’t want. And the way it’s written seems very gaslighty… “ the speed limiter technology is simply there to prevent ‘momentary lapses of concentration’ that could result in speeding”
I don’t think my speeding is the result of momentary lapses of concentration, but calculated decisions about immediate road conditions or long term travel goals (eg, if I go 9 over the limit on a 10 hour trip, it reduces the trip by an hour).
In the part of Dublin I live in, there's a 30km/h speed limit (dense urban centre - travel times didn't really change when it came in as the traffic is horrendous anyway). It's somewhat common for people (generally visitors) to ignore this completely, barreling along far too fast and putting people in danger. I'd be quite keen on anything that would stop that.
One I can think of is long steep down hills with a large truck in back of you. Cases could exist were you could not get out of the way and you cannot speed up. I do not remember the details.
In many places in the US, this scenario does exist.
Edit: another comment mentioned merging- this too can be huge. If your car isn't keeping up with the flow of traffic, or unable to move faster, that could also directly cause accidents if there's a space in front but no space behind.
When I press hard on the accelerator to cancel a speed limit, does the car accelerate hard too? Or is this signal trapped for the cancel operation?
I like how confidently you say that as if "the law" was something universal
At least they have given an almost measurable outcome. If only they would choose some measurable metric that had a clear cause and effect and link the legislation to scientific outcomes.
Unlike the other bullshit statement "The European Commission has said the speed limiters could prevent 140,000 serious road traffic injuries"...
Dangerous drivers speed. Reducing top speeds should prevent some serious crashes, but I am curious whether it would be as effective as hoped. And sure as shit it is nobodies job to check reality against hopes.
So, I am pretty sure this system will be effective in the long run. Right now, it just seems like a trial, which may require fine-tuning, but fast forward a few years, and everyone will be completely accustomed to it.
I'm quite doubtful about the latter statement:
- I know quite some people (in Germany) who still complain about the mandatory seat belt laws that were introduced in 1976 in Germany for front seats (and since 1984 for back seats if they had seat belts).
- Another example: in 2009 light bulbs were banned in the EU. I know quite a lot of people who still deeply hate the EU for this.
As I feel the current political climate, the hate against the EU in the wider public is insane. Every new such legislation is another kindled fuse for the powder keg of the fury in the public against the EU.
For the sake of anyone confused by this, incandescent lightbulbs, and even then a phase-out — Halogen was 2018 according to Wikipedia, but this news doesn't seem to have reached my local hardware store in Berlin: https://www.obi.de/search/halogen/
Plenty of light bulbs for sale, they're just different than the ones I had as a kid.
Might just be different circles/different attitudes in Ireland vs wherever you are, but I have never met an actual human in real life who is annoyed about the death of incandescent light bulbs. I've seen it from people on the internet, but to be honest mostly from Americans.
I could see why people might feel that way about seatbelts (e.g. people feeling "don't tell me I'm a bad driver!"), but I don't see how that feeling could attach to environmental issues like the aggregate emissions from (reducing from 100W to 10W * 2.5h/day * about 1 bulb/person * 400 million people =) 3.75 GW over the continent?
Never really heard of this anywhere in Europe _outside_ the UK, tho.
The _fury_ is an emotional overreaction, but to be fair this is exactly the kind of thing you can add to the ever growing pile of ammo for EU haters.
It has all the typical attributes:
- Well meaning
- Infective
- Good on paper
- Designed by committee
- Solves nothing
I think on balance the EU does more good than harm, but only just.
* light bulbs
* unified chargers
* GDPR
* making Apple screw its customers less
As I said, I value what GDPR is trying to achieve.
[0] https://www.bmi.gv.at/202/Verkehrsangelegenheiten/unfallstat... [1] https://www.oeamtc.at/presse/oeamtc-erhebung-jeder-13-pkw-in...
Why not let these people decimate themselves?
Or: a law to reduce the amount of accidental deaths seems like something good for the population in general.
And I have contacts with 70+ persons, not just teenagers.
I do not tell why now, because I'm curious how many guess correctly, if someone ask I'll tell why, and yes there is pre-modern-web research on that topic, buried of course, similar to various researches about seed oils, colza hepatic toxicity in particular, others about plastic films to wrap food and so on.
3 point seat belts means much more visceral traumas, witch tend to be more serious and not immediate to spot than orthopedic traumas, also much more chest traumas where broken ribs perforate a lung or they make the heart explode. No seat belts (with tempered and stratified glass) means much more broken legs and arms, NOT much skull damage and NOT much visceral trauma.
Back then (my mother was a young emergency room surgeon) many doctors state that the idea of seat belt is good for 4 point anchoring who can dislocate or fracture your shoulders but no more, and in case of fire/drowning you can exit them without needing to cut them, but automakers oppose that because it means making much more expensive seats while three point seat belts are pretty cheap.
After there was a gazillion of additions to makes the three point seat belts less dangerous, some have tried a small "embedded airbag", some have tried "dynamic deceleration instead of a sudden block, but most of them dramatically fails. Embedded air-bags are simply too slow to open, too easy to misplace, too little absorbent, dynamic decelerators do sglitly better but they are still not dynamic enough and so on.
Another automotive scandal is about day lights on cars, they are pushed "because various studies have proven them to be useful", no one tell than those studies are only a couple and done in the Sweden Lapland in conditions where "day lights" are essentially "position light in late evening" for most other climate. But again they are useful to sell a bit more without any benefit.
There are many others, nothing so "devastating" but enough to understand that academia need to be public and TOTALLY, RELIGIOUSLY SEPARATED form the private sector to avoid the spread of "false commercial science" for some large enough lobbyist interests. Oh BTW you can try to dig the history witch tend to be less biased as the time passes, you'll find for instance some example from Eduard Bernays campaigns https://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/12/consumer like one for the British American Tobacco company where he literally create a scientific journal publishing some real scientific articles from small universities, young PhDs and so on gaining a certain traction thanks to a free distribution models among all doctors. Slowly he insert false, but realistic scientific papers stating how smoking is good for human health and many doctors believe them and recommend smoking as a healthy habit. In few years almost all doctors if interviewed they'll state "smoking is good for health".
So well... I opposite such kind of deployments without a single, easy to locate physical button you can hit to "clear all ADAS pushing here" like an emergency button. Some examples:
- due to a health emergency you purposely want to ignore speed limits, and of course you do not want to waste time digging in car tablet preferences;
- due to a sudden emergency you need to ignore speed limits, like a landslide you see started dropping from above;
- you are actually passing another car and still at safe distance but quickly approaching another car appear in the opposite direction;
These are just few rares and far less rare examples why it's a good reason to pass limits and you have no time to deactivate the adas digging in some touch menus.
If anything it shows how little control NI, and indeed the Republic, has over its own laws.
As long as possible might be shorter than you would like.
It's absolutely terrible.
On the highway it picks up the 50km/h panel intended for the bus lanes.
Close to where I live it hallucinates a 5km/h limit.
In random places it will miss limitations.
Right now it simply decreases engine power. On a highway that's already dangerous enough. Can't wait till they use the same visual/audio warnings as they do for the pre-collision assistant...
By the way, that's bullshit too. Triggering for no good reason and scary enough to take my eyes off the road. Love it.
On the one hand, there's the limiter set by the driver (that you can override by pushing the pedal down hard), which is usually activated by the same lever or buttons as cruise control but works differently - you accelerate to 50mph in a 50 zone, activate the limiter, and the car will not accelerate above that limit. You can just push the gas pedal down and hold your speed as long as the road is free.
The other system is the sign detection (sometimes GPS assisted) which displays a limit sign on your dashboard and beeps at you if you go over it. My experiences as a passenger in the UK in a 2016 registration car:
I don't know if the technology has got better since. Maybe we can use AI or something.I’ve been driving for a long time but I’ve never heard this term until today
https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Chopstic...
i guess i won't notice these beeps when you speed too much.
I fear we will see many more overtakes as this limiter makes its way onto the roads.
If they ever attempt this in America looks like I’ll be driving older vehicles for the rest of my life.
Edit: looks like it’s a warning not a limiter - so that’s still just as silly, it’s not going to really stop anyone from speeding, it’s just going to become another annoying non-feature of new cars that everyone hates like auto start-stop.