It is a bad idea - but hopefully if or when pay per mile car insurance becomes popular perhaps computers could automatically raise the insurance rate when you're going over the limit. That's a hell of a discouragement.
That crap would never work here in PA I hit a buck 10 daily down the freeway just like everyone else in the lefthand lane I understand the need for safe driving and all but there are times where the speed limit just isnt needed and its easier to go with the flow
Things like this will never get put into place completely. The cost is simply too high, manufactures are having a hard enough time selling new cars, imagine if they had the extra cost of this system and then having to try and convince people that they should buy a new car with this in it, over a perfectly good car without it. Also you cannot force people to pay for it themselves the motorist gets taxed and charged to high heavens, and more and people will just refuse. Then the police have to waste time filling out paperwork on people who refused to pay £100 for a system in their car which they do not need. My general views on the matter are as follows... Speed cameras do very little to stop accidents (IMO), people who where all happily going 35 have all just hit their brakes and are now glued to their speedo. Oh no look the person behind who isn't from the area and who wasn't paying attention didn't realise everyone was about to slow and has run into the back of someone. Average speed cameras are the worst, whenever you are in an ASC area you might stray over 70 and then think "oh noes better slow down for a bit" so you may change lanes to get into slower moving traffic, then after a bit of that you have to move out again, needless lane changing and speedo staring. What is wrong with 75-80mph when the roads are huge and if you have some sort of accident going 70mph instead of 80mph isn't going to save your life. Sat navs have a tendency to get things wrong, very wrong. I have been driving across many fields, where I am sure a road was built even before the sat nav was. My friend's sat nav tried to send him the wrong way down a one way street. I do not want to be doing 30mph the wrong way down a motorway thank you very much. And as ramble said about pay per mile insurance/tax, that is a diabolical idea (the pay per mile, not your raised insurance proposal, even though I don't agree with that either). Can you imagine the amount business men and women and haulage companies will be paying, arguably these people are the only ones keeping our economy going, yet we would still tax/charge them into bankruptcy. Everyday there seems to be more and more pushing me away from the UK...shame. /RANT
The worst ones are the people who BRAAAAAAKE! to 30 when they see a speed camera on a 60-limit road - even when there's a 60 limit sign NEXT TO THE CAMERA!
Are we talking about the Terminator skynet, or the military satellites? If the first is true, then worryingly so is the second
As a side note, this is a voluntary scheme. The only people likely to get one are those that are already considerate in their driving, whereas those that need reigning in aren't ever going to bother.
Right. There is a reason we have speed limits. They are even more important here in the US where driving isn't taken as seriously as other countries. Case in point: Granted, you weren't speeding during the accident - though I question if it was safe to take a corner at 45mph; however, I shudder to think what would have happened if you had blacked out doing a buck 10 with other cars on the road. -monkey
My idea: Raise speed limits across the board by 10 mph or so, depending on the exact nature of the road. Offer voluntary speed limiting/warning devices Then make speed limits zero tolerance. Use various technology to increase the likelihood that you will be caught if speeding. If you are going even 1 mph over the speed limit you get points/fine and you are only allowed to drive a car with a speed limiter fitted. I think the problem is that most people read speed limits as speed suggestions. I mean, how often do you see someone obeying a 30mph limit? I would definitely say less often than not. The problem is not these people going 35 in a 30, but the idea that this is normal and expected. This means some people think, if everyone breaks the speed limit it is fine to go 45 in a 30. The same apples on a motorway, if speeding in general is accepted (see the outer lane of a motorway) people will always push the bounds of what is "safe" and end up killing people.
Won't work for the same reason that people don't stick to the present speed limits. People don't like limits, but they know that the risk (and penalty) of getting caught for speeding increases proportionally to the ammount by which they exceed it. So a cognitive balance is struck: people will exceed the limit by a certain ammount (say a nice 10mph, because people don't do complex additions and certainly not percentages) only. On a 30mph road they do 40. On a 60mph road they do 70. On the motorway they'll do 80. Similarly, if you raise the speed limit by 10mph they'll go 10mph over it. Zero tolerance won't work if enough people do it --you can't fine everybody all of the time...
You can't make speed limits zero tolerance, the speedo can be out by as much as 10% due to tyre wear eg a brand new tyre has a different circumference (rolling radius) than an identical size tyre with 6 months wear on it and then there's manufacturing tolerances etc, Older speedo's are mechanical and have tolerances that vary, the electronic types depend on a pulse from the ecu or gearbox and the sensors can pack up or give spurious readings. There are many reasons that the ACPO has guidelines about speedo error (approx 10%+-3mph), these are just a few. The only vehicles on the road that have speedometers that read exactly right are generally the traffic police cars as the speedo's are calibrated (supposedly) every 24 hrs or before a vehicle goes on patrol.
I am 20 with a 2003 nissan micra 1.2, I think you will find most people on here are sensible people, maybe if you were at a car forum you point would be valid, but here it is not.
I strangely remember being in a Nova 1.2 Saloon with you driving, chasing down a Porsche 911 on the A1....
Correct question, wrong forum. zero tolerance will make people even more paranoid than they are now and cause more problems due to loss of concentration... they will be looking at the speedometer instead of the road!
Zero tolerance is more or less impossible, even with cruise control; Incorrect size wheels (Boy racers), condition of tires, incorrect rear axle ratio etc, it's hard to monitor precisely, which is why the police normally allow up to 10% over the speed limit. I'm all for a GPS system installed in the car that uploads certain data to a police database. It checks you're speed against the speed limit (with the +/-10% factored in)/location/amount of traffic/weather/etc. If you're driving dangerously it flags your car. You still have full control over your vehicle, but should you choose to be a total git then it makes you very easy to find and punish. It should be calibrated with every 12 month MOT and checked for tampering - with any offenders fined heavily. Although such an option would be costly to he road user, it should be mandatory.
I'm 40 with a completely unmodified car, and I'm an ex-driving instructor. I oppose it vehemently for the reasons I outlined a couple of pages back.
I am 42 with a Honda Civic 2.2 TDI Type S. And a full no-claims discount. I am also a psychologist, so I know a little bit about human behaviour (I like to think, anyway). Speed limiters won't work in the same way that DRM, copy protection and phone locking doesn't work. People will hack it on principle, because they don't like their freedoms curtailed. It's a psychological reactance thing. The idea that speed kills is a reasoning error. Being a psychologist, I know a bit about that too. Examine the evidence: planes cruise happily at 300+ mph. Bullet trains move safely at 120+ mph. In Germany, motorways have no speed limit. Do they have more horrific car accidents than we do? In fact research shows that the fatality rates on unrestricted German autobahns are similar to those on 55mph restricted US freeways, and that most of the UK's fatal motorway accidents involve lorries that are speed-limited to 56mph. A 1985 report based on British and American crash data, found that driver error, intoxication and other human factors contribute wholly or partially to about 93% of crashes. A German study concluded that driver fatigue alone accounts for about 25% of fatal crashes (think of those speed-limited lorries again). It is inappropriate speed that kills: speed without sufficient control. Unfortunately, people are also susceptible to the Lake Wobegon Effect (or "Above Average effect"): everybody thinks that they are a better driver than the majority of other people. An RAC survey of British drivers found that most considered themselves to be "good" drivers, but that most other people were not. Nearly all drivers who had had an accident did not believe themselves to be to blame. It is not as if people don't know what is important in driving; one survey of drivers reported that they thought the key elements of good driving were: controlling a car including a good awareness of the car's size and capabilities reading and reacting to road conditions, weather, road signs and the environment alertness, reading and anticipating the behaviour of other drivers Although proficiency in these skills is taught and tested as part of the driving exam, a 'good' driver can still be at a high risk of accidents because: Most young drivers (mostly male) are high in confidence at the time they complete the test – though looking back, many describe this as overconfidence. This group of young people are passing the test with: a belief that much of what they have been taught is irrelevant to the what really constitutes good driving; confidence that they are masters of what really constitutes good driving; and a natural tendency for this confidence to feed itself, until an accident or nearmiss finally (and occasionally fatally) shakes them out of it. This is reinforced by the belief that driving ability is down to talent rather than competence. Whether someone is an accident prone or safe driver is attributed to personality traits rather than experience and skill. Driving is regarded as a physical activity (mastery), a social activity (in relation to other road users) and an emotional activity (in terms of driving pleasure). Hence the development of driving has three phases: Technical mastery – learning how to control and manoeuvre the vehicle; Reading the road – learning to read the clues and information to anticipate the actions of other road users, and how to handle unfamiliar road situations; Personal expression – the manner in which the driver drives as an expression of his or her personality, attitudes and motivations. And guess what: driving lessons tend to focus only on the first, and partly on the second, but not at all on the third. So what needs to happen? The DoT report suggests the following: Reposition the rules. A number of rules suffer from a serious lack of credibility with many young drivers. Moreover, this lack of credibility is clearly not limited to young people (consider, for instance, the widespread view that speed cameras are merely a money-making scheme). If young people are rebelling against authority, so are the rest of us. Co-opt the culture. Overconfidence is only one of many ways in which a young driver may seek to build and maintain a particular image and identity for themselves. If the image I have in mind for myself is modelled on Jeremy Clarkson, then bravado may be just what I need. If, however, I think Jeremy Clarkson is a prat, I may behave very differently. Overconfidence may be impervious to facts, evidence and argument, but it can be challenged by ridicule and shame. The starting point for any intervention here is to take more seriously the fact that driving is a social activity as well as a physical activity. For many young people in particular, the risk of being thought a prat (of which most will have plenty of experience), is a far more important motivator than the rather abstract idea of killing or injuring oneself. Finding new ways for people to be thought of as prats – that happen to coincide with genuine risk behaviour – is a potentially powerful tool for change. Tackle the "Talent Model": emphasise driving as a skill with ongoing driver development rather than a one-off test/hoop that people have to jump through to get on with the "real" learning to drive. Re-think the test: Driving tests need to look more at the social and emotional aspect of driving. Young learner drivers do not interact in a structured way with any other young learner drivers as part of the learning process. They are not invited to think about what good driving means to them, or why it matters to them. There is also no clear pathway to ongoing further development of driving skill (an incentive for which might be that further qualifications make you eligible to drive bigger, more powerful or performance cars).
