Drivers who speed will be slowed down by EU car tech

General Discussion Forums Life, The Universe and (almost) Everything!
1

Drivers who speed will be slowed down by EU car tech

The Telegraph

CARS will beep, vibrate or slow down if drivers are speeding under new mandatory safety technology that comes into effect this summer.

From July 6, new vehicles sold in the European Union and Northern Ireland will be fitted with intelligent speed assistance (ISA) to prevent accidents. Although the UK has opted out, meaning it will not be a requirement on British roads, the technology will still be installed in most cars, and drivers can choose to switch it off on a daily basis.

Steve Gooding, the director of the RAC Foundation, an independent research organisation, told The Sunday Times: “I think many motorists will tire of switching off ISA and they will just learn to live with it.”

Mr Gooding said it would take autonomy away from drivers, with cars increasingly deciding what drivers can and can’t do, and was the beginning of the end of people choosing cars based on top speed.

ISA has a forward-facing camera that can recognise speed limit signs and is integrated with GPS mapping data so the car always knows what limit applies to its location. When fitted, the technology will send a warning beep or the steering wheel will vibrate when drivers pass the speed limit. If the driver does not take action, the accelerator will ease up, reducing the speed to keep in line with the limit.

Manufacturers including Ford have been offering ISA as an option on new cars since 2015, and it has been mandatory on all new cars sold in Europe since 2022, but could be switched off.

The European Transport Safety Council said that while it took drivers a short time to adjust to the technology, the majority saw it as a positive step. It also helps drivers avoid speeding tickets.

Leeds University calculated that Britain could see up to 12 per cent reduction in injuries from road accidents, equating to thousands of people walking away from collisions unharmed or avoiding crashes altogether.

The European Transport Safety Council has also calculated it could reduce deaths by 20 per cent.

There are roughly 1,700 deaths on British roads annually, and the figures suggest that if the technology was adopted across the board in the UK it could save 340 lives.

1 Like
2

Our Jaguar F-Pace has an ‘Intelligent Speed Limiter’ which I have tried on occasions and it works okay. However, the camera sometimes misses (or possibly misreads) a speed limit sign or picks up one from a side road which can be interesting so I rarely bother these days.

2 Likes
3

Both the MX-5 and the C-HR regularly pick up on limit signs to the side of the actual route so I suppose the GPS would be expected to take precedence, or not.

4

Presumably there is a parallel requirement for local authorities to cut vegetation so that signs are all visible.

Presumably the system can also recognize lamp posts, being the main speed limit sign in UK urban areas?

3 Likes
5

Is that suggesting that 20% of the deaths are related to speed? Is it excessive speed? Are pedestrain casualtys included in this?

I don’t really care for this tech, this isn’t innovative it’s just invasive. Then there is the data issue, imagine them sharing this information to insurance firms lol.

1 Like
6

One thing they don’t openly tell you about these new “black boxes” - is that they record information.
And - although this data is currently private ( like a dash cam ) - the police will have the power to download the data following an accident.

Who Owns The Data Stored By The Car’s Black Box?

The information recorded by the EDR belongs to the driver or the vehicle’s owner. The device operates on a closed-loop system, and the data is gathered anonymously to ensure it’s not subject to manipulation if it falls into the wrong hands. For the same reason, the last four digits of the vehicle identification number (VIN) are not stored. Any other type of info that would uncover the owner’s identity is also not recorded.

Who Can Access The Data?

The data is made available only to competent authorities as an aid during the accident reconstruction process. Obtaining the info can be done through the OBD interface, but if the port is destroyed in the crash, the information must be accessible directly from the black box.

7

My Yaris speed sign display is next to useless, the camera often doesn’t see a sign and I’ve not got satnav built in, so it often shows 30 mph all day. Then it decides that the display should show kph, so goes a bit crazy when it thinks you are in a 30 kph zone but you are doing 30 mph. You can turn it off (same as auto lane correction steering) but it only stays off for each ignition on/off cycle.

8

My Eunos probably records it all in Kanji as its so old. They will probably need a samurai to translate it :rofl::joy:

3 Likes
9

Does anyone know if the MX5 RF 2 Litre ND (4th-gen) 2017 model has any black box inside it or data-recording facility? There is a sat-nav unit inside but I cannot get it to display MPH and my model for sure does not come with traffic-sign recognition.

Thanks.

10

I believe all modern cars do, I’ve been told my 2018 Mk4 does.

Wiki article…

The first such use of EDR evidence in the United Kingdom was at Birmingham Crown Court during the trial of Antonio Boparan-Singh who crashed the Range Rover Sport he was driving into a Jeep in 2006. The accident left a baby girl paralyzed and the driver, who was aged 19 at the time of the incident, was sentenced to 21 months in prison. The EDR evidence allowed investigators to determine the driver was speeding at 72 mph in a 30 mph zone.

1 Like
11

72 mph in a 30 mph zone? Crazy.

Luckily for me I never get tempted to speed in the busy/built-up areas. In those areas most likely mistake would be human error i.e. not looking or coming across a situation that would require too much multi-tasking leading to human error. Touch-wood there have been no issues so far. But it only takes that one-day.

Country roads have 60-70 mph limits and it is exceptionally hard to exceed those. Well that is what I find. So maybe night driving in those is best for safety. Same goes for motorway. Find a quite one at night. By safety I mean making sure others are not around. In both cases you can do legal-speeds without much coming the other way or behind you!

12

Yes it is. But its probably a huge under estimate.

13

Some interesting government data.

5 road fatalities per billion vehicle miles travelled in 2022 ( so you will get killed once every 200 million miles you drive)

In 2022, very few casualties were recorded on motorways, despite motorways accounting for a fifth of all road traffic in Great Britain, indicating that a person is less likely to be involved in a collision when travelling on a motorway compared to urban or rural roads.

In 2022, 44% of fatalities were car occupants, 22% were pedestrians, 20% were motorcyclists and 5% were pedal cyclists. HGV and bus casualties the rest. E-scooter deaths showed the biggest increase.

In 2022, the majority of road fatalities occurred on rural roads, whereas the majority of all casualties occurred on urban roads. Although motorways account for 21% of road traffic, they account for a much smaller proportion of road fatalities (6%) and casualties (4%). By contrast, rural road fatalities (59%) are over represented compared to the proportion of rural road traffic (44%).

1 Like
15

Just screwing the figures for their own ends. Speed cameras are only supposed to be located at places speed related accidents occur.

2 Likes
16

GPS tracked, guilty of 1 mph above limit, government analysis of your life data in about 5 milliseconds, judgement passed…blasted into oblivion by a previously secret laser weapon system orbiting the earth …paid for by speeding tickets :rofl:

1 Like
17

Yeah really interesting to note those figures. Rural vs Motorway is interesting. Motorway driving is much better for your car too with less strain on the brakes, transmission, engine etc etc but I feel more comfortable on rural roads. I also tend to go for those when travelling because the journey on motorways is very dull but when going through towns and thus rural roads you get to see more and it kind of is just the point of travelling.

1 Like
18

This is one of the main concerns.

If the car hasn’t got a clue what it should be doing - what is to stop it doing a brake check on a following driver when it thinks it is going too fast ??

19

Or a gang of lycra louts, four abreast, doing 35 downhill in a 30, on gravel and potholes, a couple of feet off your rear bumper.

The deep state in charge of your braking. What could possibly go wrong?

1 Like
20

That is a very valid point. They can’t just put a blanket reason behind all the deaths down to speed.

I fear this was only a matter of time before something like this was introduced.

I would like to see more efforts preventing drivers from texting and using phones behind the wheel. I bet the number of deaths relating to this are interesting.

Even in the highest spec cars drivers still don’t use a hands free or link them up properly.

1 Like
21

Well…i can assure you guys; it’s wrong info publicated mainly by “the daily telegraph” the mis-interpretation lies in the fact that the car would slow down when speeding. The system (ISA) will indeed throw a warning “beep” when going over the speed limit but slowing down the car to that limit will only happen trough the cruise-control AND when the driver selected it to do so. Downsides of the system is that beep and the cost of that system (which will univetably be added to the newprice of cars from then on).
Another issue with ISA is that it detects traffic signs and on various tests it seems that the reading is …doubtfull, the system reads ALL signs including the 90km/h signs on lorries, roads alongside the highway having their speed signs (70-90 kp/h instead of the 120 kp/h) and reacts accordingly (beep…for now). So if you have that system switched on the car will…slow down and … the driver behind you will think you’re an idiot.
As for the black-box it will also be mandatory on new cars from july 2024 (together with ISA) , the box will as known register many things (speed, impact, time, locations…) but can only be readed in case of accidents (with injury’s ) crime delicts and other “special” cases but only on request of a judge.
So…price yourselves lucky (at least for this matter…) you’re out of the EU.