Australia To Test Cars That Won't Let You Speed
from the slow-down,-dave dept
About a year and a half ago, we wrote about plans by transportation authorities in London to test a system that would force drivers to slow down if they were going over the speed limit. We haven’t heard much about the tests since then, but it appears that similar tests will soon get underway in Australia (found via TLF). The system involves a GPS-based device that would track where you are against a database of speed limits to determine if you were going over the limit. The system can be programmed to react in three ways. At the lowest level, it would beep at you if you’re speeding. A step up from there is where it would automatically cut the gas to slow you down, though there would be a manual override if the driver needed it. Then, there’s a third level, where there would be no manual override. It’s unclear how widespread the use of this device would be, but apparently there are some discussions about requiring it on all cars — or (more likely) just for repeat speeding offenders. As we noted when the London tests began, this is attacking the symptom (speeding) rather than the actual disease (bad driving).
Comments on “Australia To Test Cars That Won't Let You Speed”
Another stupid rule made by stupid people
I’m just so happy to live in a world where other people are more capable of making decisions ahead of time about my immediate needs and environment than I am. Hey, maybe we should adopt this in the U.S. so we can do away with car insurance. If the state wants to make driving decisions for me, it can inherit the legal and financial liabilities as well.
Re: Another stupid rule made by stupid people
If the state wants to make driving decisions for me, it can inherit the legal and financial liabilities as well.
That’s not government works. Government makes the decisions and then makes you bear the consequences. Of course, sometimes people don’t like that. That’s why government has guns too.
Yikes
Here’s the original story.
“The Australasian Intelligent Speed Adaptation Initiative has largely remained out of the public gaze, with governments worried it would attract strong criticism.”
No kidding. If “no manual override” terrifies you when you consider that this involves a machine that you operate under conditions where errors can be fatal… you’re perfectly justified in feeling that way.
This seems like a good time to bring up some of Don Norman’s repeated warnings over the past few years over the harm auto designers can do to their customers by refusing to learn from the mistakes of other industries, especially aviation. Here, here, and here are just some of them.
In particular, the aviation industry has already had its flirtation with software that had no manual override and deemed it to be a bad idea. (I’m not sure if the software ever made it into any actual aircraft; the story I’ve heard involved consulting pilots on it and them saying, “But here’s an example of how I might need to do that with the plane in an emergency…”)
not likely in the US
Re: not likely in the US
hmm guess that will teach me to hit return on the subject line.
I don’t think this kind of thing is likely to appear in the U.S. Local Govt. makes way too much money catching speeders to eliminate them. If anything they might have one that signals a nearby traffic cop when you speed or perhaps just issues a ticket through the mail like the traffic light cameras.
Re: Re: not likely in the US
I don’t think this kind of thing is likely to appear in the U.S. Local Govt. makes way too much money catching speeders to eliminate them. If anything they might have one that signals a nearby traffic cop when you speed or perhaps just issues a ticket through the mail like the traffic light cameras.
That’s just about what I was going to write. No way would they go for anything that would reduce tickets.
Does anyone read Bradbury?
Speed limiting, self-steering accident avoiding cars on controlled highways for the public good. Then some hacker rips out the guts and drives the wrong way on a high-speed road land for kicks.
The real problem with this idea is uniform enforcement. That is going to be expensive. So, that just means more tickets/taxes.
Aren’t traffic tickets just a stupidity tax?
Emergency
Good luck being rushed to the hospital by a friend. Might see a lot more babies born in cars. Screwed!
Where I live the speed limit changes every few hundred yards, from 30 to 55 to 50 to 45 to 30 mph all within a mile on a secondary road. This has resulted in me getting a couple of speeding tickets from not paying attention to the transitions. I have since wished that my car could warn me when I am speeding so I can avoid getting another and having my license revoked or paying a much larger fine.
But I would be violently opposed to mandatory machine control of my speed. In fact I would try very hard to disable it.
Would a GPS-based system be cost effective if it had to map speed limits on a scale of yards?
Would I be liable for speeding if the system map was incorrect?
A much more sensible design, in my view, would be one that used smart chips embedded in speed limit signs which my car could interpret..the technology would be similar the speed-pass systems used on toll roads. If you drove into a lower speed limit area and were going too fast, you car would beep at you.. similar to the radar equipped signs used widely now, which warn but do not control. The driver remains in control.
I would consider it as an option
Especially the second level. If it gave me better insurance rates.
Deadly Idea
I can think of more than a few times when I had to speed up in order to prevent getting killed (one was a situation on a hightway where two lanes merged into one, and the crazed truck driver in the other lane wasn’t slowing down, forcing me to drive at about 85 in order to keep my car from getting squashed). I hope the Australian government is prepared to pay millions of dollars in lawsuits if they use this system, because people will die on the road because of it.
Yeah, you can’t rush to the hospital and you die, tough luck. Fact is, if everyone went the speed limit, fewer people would die. Sure, you have the one off’s, but on the whole, more people would live.
Thats what its all about.
Re: Re:
That’s sort of true. More true, though, is that if everyone went the same speed, everyone would be safer, but the current speed limits don’t save lives because they encourage two speeds.
Slow drivers encourage unsafe behavior from people who can’t stand driving the 55 mph limit on a road that’s safe at 90 but are stuck behind someone doing 50.
The U.S. needs stricter licensing tests, higher speed limits and law enforcement that pays attention to unsafe driving instead of limit breakers.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been put in danger by people not using their blinkers when changing lanes or making a turn, but I can tell you how many times I’ve been put in danger by someone going faster than me: zero.
Re: Re:
That isn’t totally true. The problem is that the speed limits are unrealistic. The fact people are traveling at a higher speed than the limit isn’t the issue. The issue is that the vast majority of people on the road are traveling over the speed limit, while a few very poor drivers are traveling significantly under the limit. When the two speeds meet, bad things happen.
Several things need to happen. First, we need to figure out that not everyone should be on the road. Not everyone is a capable driver and those who are incapable should be removed. Second, the speed limits should be raised to something reasonable, and the police should work on safety issues rather than sign enforcement. Another change needs to be vehicle profiling. If a someone is driving an SUV/Truck at 80MPH, and their equipment is rated at a lower speed (tires, etc), then they should be given a safety violation. It makes no sense to target a performance vehicle for traveling 1/2 it’s maximum rated speed, yet not targeting vehicles traveling over their maximum safe speed.
minimum speed
Hey are they also going to make the cars go at least the posted speed and not slower? At least this way some of those drivers who refuse to go the posted limit while traveling in one lane would not be able to hold up traffic.
no more tickets?
If you couldn’t speed then I’d think cops would give out less tickets. Less tickets would mean less revenue for a city. Less revenue means…….less cops? In a way I don’t think the ‘authorities’ mind if you speed so long as you can pay up when you’re caught.
But I would be violently opposed to mandatory machine control of my speed. In fact I would try very hard to disable it.
With the right equipment and right software, it’s easy to change a car’s prom. In fact – after market proms are made as well, in the event that it’s ‘hard coded’. They are very common for performance cars.
I can’t see it – it would cut out a major source of revenue for the cities, after all if all cars will not exceed the speed limit then there will be no speeding tickets to write.
But… since it’s just a machine – and we all know how they can be quirky or malfunction at times – what if the device malfunctions, you have no override and it decides to just jam on the brakes at 65 MPH. Or perhaps, maybe it will determine you are ‘going too fast’ when you are simply stuck in mud/show/ice and are accelerating to get free? Or perhaps, it won’t let you accelerate to avoid an accident.
Lots of possibilities…
Eventually, it would get to the point where people pay less attention to what they are doing, than they do now.
Re: Re:
It cuts off the gas… has no control over your brakes
Stupidest Justification
The whole “rushing your friend to the hospital” justification is just bullshit. You want your friend to get to the hospital safely? Call 911 or the equivalent in your country. Stop putting the rest of us at risk with your shitty driving. Leave the rushing to the hospital to the experts, you know, the ones with SIRENS and flashing lights?
Re: Stupidest Justification
Here in Oklahoma, an ambulance with lights on is limited to 55mph. They turn off their lights to cruse at 75mph on the turnpikes…
Re: Stupidest Justification
Moron. Do you even think before you speak? Ok class, lets repeat, speeding is NOT an indication of bad driving its merely one possible symptom.
I could go on forever with examples, but, if you’re driving 80mph through a 25mph school zone with children present, the speed is a merely a symptom of the fact that you’re an idiot who doesn’t take your environment into account while operating your vehicle. You can say its the speed, but realistically its reckless driving/endangerment of others.
Going 80mph on a highway designed to handle cars at 90mph but with a rediculously low 55mph speed limit because you and the grandmas of the world can’t handle your vehicle, (and so cities can generate revenue) is just the rest of us using common sense.
In specific response to the article; its utterly rediculous. Why not make the license application process more difficult instead of just letting any idiot on the road like “DriversEd”.
Re: Stupidest Justification
Yeah…I sort of agree. However it is true. We all change when emergencies happen. Inhibition and sometimes common sense go out the window. No telling what I would do. Haven’t really been put in the situation, and besides I can make my lights flash, don’t have a siren, but will a horn work?
GPS-based?
Like the car that told its driver to turn right — onto railroad tracks — in the face of an oncoming train?
It's called a govenor
A governor is a device installed on an engine to keep it under a set speed. pretty darn simple (and cheap). I agree we won’t get anything like this (in the USA) because of the lost revenue.
Re: It's called a govenor
Actually…most cars in the states have them…for example min e is set at 135mph. (at least in cruise control anyway)
Probably not a problem in the Land down Under
However I remember when Mt Saint Helens blew it’s top many years ago. (I’m doing this from memory so bear with me)
A survivor who was driving along saw the volcano blow and the pyroclastic flow heading his way. (Back then all he knew was it was a cloud of smoke)
He did a quick 180 and headed in the other direction. He said he passed a station wagon doing 90mph. If I recall correctly, the survivor said he was doing 120mph.
He got away. I remember seeing a picture of the station wagon smashed up against downed trees covered in ash. The passengers didn’t make it.
If some govt. clown tries this on any of my cars, I’ll make sure it’s ripped out. There have been to many times I’ve had to exceed the speed limit significantly in life threatening situations.
Just my $0.05
I wondered how long it would be before the nuts tried something like this. And even though it’s GPS-based, which I believe is doomed to failure, the concept does have some merits.
Level 1 is useless (people will just tune out the beeping or find some way to shut it off) and level 3 is too extreme (imagine the lawsuits over emergency situations), but level 2 should be a good setting. What this would do is keep accidental speeders (not all speeding is intentional) in check. However, in the case of an emergency like, say, a tornado or tidal wave coming at you from behind (feel free to insert non-sarcastic real-world scenarios here), you could hit the override and floor it.
Now as far as law enforcement, if your car is equipped with such a device and you’re still caught speeding, that means you had to intentionally hit the override option to go faster, which means lame excuses won’t get you out of a ticket anymore. I think that would help change a few habits.
On the flip side though, I also agree that this is a band-aid, not a cure for the real problem. I’m thinking that we need a more strict method of licensing drivers, and that we should retest more often. Driving is a privilege, and it is taken for granted far too much. I don’t think a written re-test every two years would be out of line, and a driving re-test at least once every 4 years.
People can get bad driving habits that are never touched on during written tests, and they need to be corrected for the safety of all. Plus that would make a good opportunity to make sure people know how to properly maintain their vehicles too, to ensure we don’t have dangerous pieces of junk being driven around.
And finally, the testing fees would give the states more revenue to (hopefully) put towards road and bridge repairs that are far, far overdue.
As for the GPS part, that is a bad, bad, bad idea. My vote would be something like RFID tags embedded in speed limit sign posts that the car would scan as it drove by. That, IMO, would be much more reliable than a stupid database somewhere which could easily be inaccurate or out of date. Imagine this in a construction zone on the highway. The road workers plop down a reduced speed sign, and the cars instantly slow down, keeping everyone safer.
Re: rfid tag "idea"
now that creepy guy with the bloody ax in the middle of the night on a forest road can make your car go 3 miles an hour, while he climbs aboard.
Re: Re:
“My vote would be something like RFID tags embedded in speed limit sign posts that the car would scan as it drove by”
Then, all I have to do is put a hacked RFID tag by the side of the road:
“You were exceeding the speed limit by 25 mph”
“But officer, my car’s computer said that the speed limit was 90 mph”
Re: Re: Re:
Well then, we better get rid of speed limit signs too because the same could be done with them but even easier. Someone could just whip up a big “90” sticker to go over the sign:
“You were exceeding the speed limit by 25 mph”
“But officer, the sign said that the speed limit was 90 mph”
Insert gadget, remove brain
If flooring the accelerator means the car automatically goes the current speed limit, wouldn’t people use it like cruise control?
And if they do, then the car could accelerate rapidly if the GPS signal were lost or if the care entered an unmapped area.
Imaging jamming GPS reception along some stretch of highway and watching a bunch of cars suddenly accelerate out of control.
Re: Insert gadget, remove brain
Yeah try driving in Southern California.
Enough is Enough
Time for a revolution.
We have reached the point where the government no longer does what we want it to do, we do what it wants us to do, all under the guise of safety and security.
They want to filter online content. They want to control how fast you drive. They want to monitor your email and phone lines. They want you to take off your shoes in airports. They want this. They want that.
Why are we letting them do this?
Australia for the lose. Man–do they do anything right over there?
Vincent, the fact is, politicians do generally do what the people want. You might not like how they do it, but that is their goal.
People want safe streets, they don’t want to die. Some see limiting cars to the speed limit as a life saving thing. Overall, it would be a life saving thing.
It is hard to take seriously someone’s right to break the law.
Re: Re:
Ah, hence the problem with populism. That’s why the founding fathers put into place certain restrictions on what our government can and cannot regulate. In other words, they wanted to save us from the whims of popular sentiment when it could interfere with personal liberty.
And what is law? Law is supposed to reflect morality. Is speeding in a motor vehicle of itself a moral offense? No, as it causes no harm to others in of itself. Show me the person that is hurt by someone going 70 on a 60 limit freeway? You can’t. Causing property damage and personal injury with a car are true crimes as they are moral offenses when they are caused by either malice or negligence.
Just because the law books say something is a crime doesn’t make it morally wrong.
Re: Re:
Vincent, the fact is, politicians do generally do what the people want.
Bull. They generally do what those with the most money want.
Revenue????
Exactly why do you think that speeders are a cash cow for municipalities. By the time they balance the revenues against the expenses of court, law enforcement and the typical deadbeat law breaker it ain’t all that you would imagine. In fact, it’s not unusual to come out in the red.
Still a bad idea though.
Re: Revenue????
Exactly why do you think that speeders are a cash cow for municipalities. By the time they balance the revenues against the expenses of court, law enforcement and the typical deadbeat law breaker it ain’t all that you would imagine.
That’s just how they split up the “loot”. In case you hadn’t noticed, all those court and law enforcement people are government employees and thus part of government. That ticket money eventually winds up in their paychecks.
And as for your assertion that most speeders never pay their tickets, I say bullshit.
In fact, it’s not unusual to come out in the red.
That’s what happens when you spend more than you take in. No matter how much they take in, there’s never enough money for some people, is there?
If it keeps me from getting a ticket, I'm for it.
In the mode where this thing just beeps, I would buy it and use it.
When used with a radar detector, this system just provides more information. The radar detector tells me if someone is openly watching me, the speed limit checker tells me if I fail to see a speed limit sign.
I want every tool I can get that will help me avoid unnecessary tickets. This could be just another tool to help keep money in *MY* pocket.
Couple Things
First, disclaimer, I do not currently have time to read all above comments.
1) A hacker could get in and either raise the speed limit on all roads. Or be malicious and set the speed limit to 5.
2) What in the cases where you really need to speed, like a wife giving birth? And usually the police go to stop you, and you tell them whats going on, and they freaking clear you a path. Would the police be able to disable these systems for cases like that?
Seems like a dumb idea.
And like Mike said, addressing the symptom and not the cause.
hmm
How long would it take for someone to hack the system and wreak havoc … hours?.. time and again we see that tools used to protect us are often turned against us, yet we continue to make these tools, and allow them to become law.. how about we just stick it on a shelf in walmart, and let the people with kids or whatever use it to monitor underage drivers, makes more since to me.
In health emergencies, it is much better to wait for the EMT to arrive. I know a person that died after eating food she was allergic to, she was driven to the hospital. When the EMT arrived, they would have been able to administer drugs to save her life. The driver taking her to a hospital obviously couldn’t and didn’t. I know another person that died of a heart attack in the same situation. An EMT could have used a defibrillator on him, the driver couldn’t.
All these hypotheticals are nice, but the fact is, if everyone went the speed limit, everyone would be safer. I know you are all expert drivers out there, but the fact is if everyone went the speed limit, less people would die on our roads. You want to drive fast? Change the law.
Re: Re:
How about the person who was taken to the hospital by car even after EMS was called? They were already at the hospital being treated when EMS called to ask for more directions. The doctor said the patient would have died if they had waited.
Re: Re:
All these hypotheticals are nice, but the fact is, if everyone went the speed limit, everyone would be safer. I know you are all expert drivers out there, but the fact is if everyone went the speed limit, less people would die on our roads.
Yeah, people driving under the limit are a real danger. I have yet to hear of a rear-end wreck where the car in front wasn’t going too slow for the car behind them. Get the slow-asses off the road and save lives!
Re: Re:
The point is that, though all these hypotheticals don’t happen to everyone – they do happen all the time.
Speed doesn’t kill anyone – sudden stops do. You don’t hear stories about people dying “speed” cause a car exceeded the speed limit. Theres always some form of either driver negligence or a random event that would’ve been an accident regardless of speed.
The driver should always be in total control and should be rigorously taught and tested before being given it.
That and penalties for driving offenses should be much more strict, especially driving under the influence.
Being caught driving with alcohol in the system should be an instant loss of the license.
imagine this
you are driving along a quiet road in Kansas.
there is a tornado closing in on you from behind.
you die, because the fucking car would not agree to go more than 25 miles an hour.
Minimum and maximum speeds
Two points:
1) If this device is going to restrict how fast you go, it should also restrict how slow you go. If the posted speed limit on a highway is 70 mph, obviously that means you shouldn’t go 80 mph… but it also means you shouldn’t go 55 to 60 mph!
On I-75, between Tampa and Ft Myers, the posted speed limit is 70 mph, yet I have driven that stretch of road over and over and over again where an RV was doing 60 mph in the right lane and an 18-wheeler had to pass him in the left lane, at 65 mph. So the 18-wheeler is going below the speed limit in the “fast lane”.
And, as usual, traffic that wanted to go 75 to 80 mph (or even the 70 mph speed limit) backed up for miles as the 18-wheeler slowly passed the RV.
Or does it take education, like some posters suggestion? Maybe the idea is to teach drivers that not every highway in the US has a 55 mph speed limit and that they should actually read the posted speed limit signs on each highway.
And what about vehicles that aren’t capable of going to 70 mph speed limit, such as the RV towing a car or a large construction vehicle? Would the speed device actually put the driver in danger? Or should we start a debate about how RV’s and construction vehicles shouldn’t be on that highway in the first place?
2) If this device limits your speed, but not everyone else’s, will it actually put you in danger by not allowing you to keep up with traffic?
I’ve driven on numerous roads where the posted speed limit was 55 mph, yet even when I did 70 to keep up with traffic, other people still blew past me.
If I stuck to 55 mph and everyone else was doing 75 to 80, how long would it be until I was the one who created an accident?
Going the set speed limit (55mph) it takes 55 minutes to get from my parents house to the nearest hospital. The average EMT response time from call to pulling up to the hospital doors is 2 hours. You want me to wait that long when I can get them there in 30-45 minutes? Screw you. If I’d listened to your advice my ex would have died when her pancreas flamed up while we were out visiting.
Funny thing though: even the EMT services around here recommend you drive in from the country because it’s so much faster.
I sincerely hope that someone in your life goes trough what my ex has and you’re stuck driving them in to save their life; maybe then you won’t be such a prick.
Australia has HUGE fines for speeding
Ummm… speed camera revenue is VERY high in Australia.
Western Australia is four times the size of Texas with a population of ~2 million. You can leave the capital (Perth) and drive at 110Kmh for 24 hours and not leave the state!
Not many police around, much more likely to encounter a large (2m) Kangaroo or Emu (>1.5m) on the roads here.
The police have many mobile speed radar cameras, ‘multinovas’. These cameras are set to record anyone exceeding the speed limit by 5Kmh.
Fines are
Cut off the last post...
Fines are;
5-9Kmh (~5m) costs Au$75.
10-19Kmh (~10m) costs Au$150.
GPS
A problem I haven’t seen mentioned yet (I did scan through the responses) is that GPS isn’t accurate enough to enforce this. When hiking with my GPS I frequently see minor position corrections (occasionally seeing drifts of up to 15 meters) even when I have four or more sats in view.
Big cities frequently have freeways very close to/above/below surface streets. What happens if you are cruising along at 70 in heavy traffic and the GPS decides you aren’t on the freeway and slows you down to 25? The corollary is also true because it may not prevent someone from speeding through a neighborhood.
This looks like security theatre to me, so politicians can say they did something.
“I sincerely hope that someone in your life goes trough what my ex has and you’re stuck driving them in to save their life; maybe then you won’t be such a prick.”
Maybe if your parents didn’t live in the sticks, people would actually care about what they have to say.
Nice. Apparently neither my parents nor the 61 million rural residents in America matter when discussing public policy? Screw off and get real.
Not everyone lives within 15 minutes of a hospital; get used to it and respond to the facts according to reality, not your adolescent superiority fantasies.
Australia is clueless
Oz still has not gotten it. I am an assue and lived in Euopre for 12 years.
Just because you can do somthing technologicaly to make things “rigth” does not mean you should. Period. Aussie politicians are such arse wipres in this area. Balance the trae offs to the other less obvious aspects of free choice, indirect taxation (the system would cost a bucket load), personal freedoms.
For example if you follow the currnt logic down under with the internet censoring and now this, then it wont be long until they make smoking illegal because it bad for you, and they they can even go all out and start fining you for not doing things. E.g you failed to go to the Gym, thats a fine..
Australia is only 200 years old, and although very forthright and young, really gets it wrong in terms of how to apply that to a society.
I wonder how broken the election voting system is in Oz, because dump laws ofetn come from countries where the election system is not really representational. Represents a small percentgae of the population or companies for example.
Glad i left oZ many moons ago..