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International road safety experts are calling for all vehicles to be fitted with speed warning devices, and drivers who exceed the speed limit may find their accelerators disabled by devices that are being considered in Australia.
According to the experts "Driving too fast causes 1.25 million road traffic deaths a year globally, and is a major contributor to the 6.9 per cent increase in deaths on Australian roads to 1275 in the year ending August 31."
The road safety experts called for all European vehicles to be fitted with Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) devices. These use speed sign recognition and satellite information to warn drivers with sounds or message if they exceed the limit.
The council launched a campaign on YouTube to build support for ISA, saying it had a huge potential to save lives.
Some devices, which have already been integrated into some new models of Ford cars, have an override function that can stop speeding drivers from using the accelerator until they return to the speed limit.
Anyone want this fitted to their car? I can see problems...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ledow on Tuesday October 04 2016, @11:16AM
Easy.
You put an option that says "Do you want to override?"
Which records, in an impermeable record, what time, what location, what speed, and what key was in the ignition when it was overrode.
Are you going to override it on every journey if it's going to be a permanent record of every time you broke the law? Likely not.
Are you going to care about overriding it in an emergency? Likely not.
Problem solved.
But what really pisses me off is that everyone complains about not being able to break the law (i.e. speed) but NOBODY ever campaigns for higher speed-limits.
And we know why that is. The irrefutable evidence that speeding is the primary cause of accidents, that the speed limits selected are the best compromise between "safe" and "gets you there", and that you just WANT to do more dangerous things that are against the law.
In no other part of daily life do people break the law so blatantly, regularly, deliberately and often. "Oh, sorry, officer, I know I'm only allowed to use items I paid for, but it was only ten items I stole..."
If you want to speed, make speeding legal.
If you can't make speeding legal, then don't speed.
If you want to carry a gun, make it legal.
If you can't make it legal, then don't carry a gun.
Honestly, I don't know what's so difficult about that concept. And yet people moan about being "caught" on a speed camera, that they are "money-making" (only if you're thick enough or dangerous enough to be caught by them), they are "unsafe" (because other drivers brake to the speed limit in their presence?! Really?!), etc.etc.
Don't break a law and complain about it, get it removed from the statute books or modified. And then you'll meet the exact reason why the limits are as they are - almost every country with higher limits has worse safety records.
Personally, I see no problem with the German Autobahn's. As fast as you like but if you're doing stupid speeds, any accident will be your fault. On a motorway, that's actually okay and fairly safe.
But if I was in charge, I'd allow that, and then take your licence away for 1mph over in a school zone or any other posted speed limit. Anything else is hypocritical.
There's no point in a limit if you are limited to it. You might as well say you can only take $10,000 in cash through an airport and then just let anyone through with any amount of money.
Unenforced laws are pointless, and people - generally - are too stupid and ignorant to stick to quite a simple, obvious and sensible law despite decades of warning. At this point, taking away their control of that is about the only way to restore any sense of order on the road.
(Score: 5, Informative) by stormreaver on Tuesday October 04 2016, @12:00PM
The irrefutable evidence that speeding is the primary cause of accidents....
Bullshit. Following too closely, regardless of speed, is orders of magnitude higher on the list of collision causes. But it's easier to ticket for speed than for d=rt, and therefore more profitable to make revenue-generating laws surrounding speed.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ledow on Tuesday October 04 2016, @01:29PM
If you are going too fast to stop in the distance, it's the same thing.
Semantics and variable substitution mean that measuring SPEED (rather than trying to measure a subjective distance between two fast-moving vehicles, at speed, accurately, and present to court) is infinitely easier and more prosecutable, and equivalent.
If you are up someone's butt, you're going too fast and need to slow down.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Tuesday October 04 2016, @02:46PM
No. You and the guy in front of you can both be going exactly the speed limit, either 30 feet apart, or 300 feet apart. You're saying there's no difference between these conditions?
There are already things to ticket people on for this circumstance--reckless driving, driving too fast for conditions (heavy traffic), stuff like that--without bringing absolute speed into it. If you're tailgating somebody you don't slow down, you back off then resume the same speed. Or better yet, just pass them if you can.
is infinitely easier and more prosecutable
God forbid the police actually have to do some work.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday October 04 2016, @03:18PM
Absolute speed affects your braking distance. Relative speed DOES NOT.
Above 90 your tyres might not even be rated to brake properly.
There are diminishing braking returns as you go faster as the tyres and brakes heat EXTREMELY quickly and degrade unless designed for that kind of speed. I've even seen a tyre blow under extreme braking, though I was one of those people who just drove past the moron involved so maybe his car was poorly maintained.
100->0 is incredibly stressful on the average consumer car.
30->0 isn't.
"If you're tailgating somebody you don't slow down, you back off..." GOSH! I wonder what backing off would involve?!
And what you're talking about is MATCHING SPEED. The speed there matters no matter what the distance.
If there is room to brake before you hit him, at 70mph or at 20mph, there isn't a problem.
If there is not room to brake, you need to REDUCE YOUR SPEED. That's the factor.
If he's doing 70mph and you've only left a 2s gap for 10mph? You need to SLOW DOWN or - congratulations, you're an idiot!
If he's doing 10mph on a 70mph road but you've only left a 2s gap for travelling at 10mph? Congratulations, slow down or you're an idiot!
The single most important factor is speed (which single-handedly determines the safe-braking distance), appropriate to the road and conditions.
Rather than have people get out their cars and argue over 5cm, you just need to be doing an appropriate speed.
And you CANNOT judge distance. You can't. You might be able to tap a car as it passes you but you CANNOT tell when that car is 50, 60, 70 metres away. No human can. And even worse when at speed and not expecting to have to. That's why all that kind of stuff disappears in court because humans can't judge speed or distance by numbers, only by instinct. "I thought I was far enough away" is a pointless argument that courts don't even try to argue with you, it's too subjective. "I was doing 30 and had a 2 second gap" is easily provable or disprovable from the car alone, or from the fact you hit him (i.e. if you were doing 30, we will know. If you were doing 30 with a 2 second gap, in the absence of MAJOR brake failure, you're never going to be able to hit him if you were paying attention - and the skidmarks will tell you that). In a court, NOBODY is going to get out a tape measure for such things.
And there's a little dial in your car that accurately-enough tells you your speed. Pretty much it's your ONLY indicator of anything useful. It's even BIASED IN YOUR FAVOUR by law in my country, so that when you do 30 on the speedo, it's not ACTUALLY 30 on the road (because you're such an idiot you can't be trusted to stick to 30 by yourself). And that dial is required by law to be maintained to within a certain accuracy as it's your ONLY guide. Distance guides, though I'm sure some cars might have them with their fancy LIDAR, are not standard.
And there's a thing called the 2-second rule. 2-seconds, AT ANY SPEED, gives you your safe distance. No judgement necessary, and there's a saying that takes exactly 2 seconds to say. Works at any speed, for any vehicle, in any condition, for any driver.
But you cannot judge distance, so basing things on the road on distance for anything more than casual use (i.e. next town in 10 miles) is STUPID. You have no idea how far apart you are, especially if you're driving a different car, for instance. But the speedo will be accurate enough and the 2s rule still applies.
And the police certainly shouldn't need to be wasting their time on you AT ALL on this junk, so don't make them, and don't make them jump through hoops to prosecute people breaking a very easy-to-follow, easy-to-understand, easy-to-proof-violation law. When it says 30 and you did 34, why the hell would you want to cost the police money for "catching you" other than to deter them to the point you get freedom/anarchy on the road to do what you want? Shut up, pay up, don't do it again.
Plenty of laws that the police CHOOSE not to prosecute end up dying out and becoming unenforced. Speeding isn't one of them. Ask a copper why.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by stormreaver on Tuesday October 04 2016, @03:51PM
[mechanical suitability arguments snipped]
That is all a red herring, and is almost entirely irrelevant. The entire argument is assuming that speeds are within the limits of the machine being driven. It's already understood that machines have limits, so that is not at all relevant to the discussion.
Following too closely and speed are two entirely separate issues. Conflating the two is how we end up with absurd speed laws.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday October 04 2016, @05:18PM
I believe it's 3 seconds. You need a full second to react and get your foot on the brake pedal. The other 2 seconds assume the vehicle's brakes are in pristine condition and probably equipped with ABS. At 60mph you only got 176 feet to stop without hitting anything.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 04 2016, @05:59PM
+1 it's 3 seconds
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday October 05 2016, @02:11AM
My memory of when there was an ad campaign was 2 slow seconds, eg "1 and 2 and". And that was before there was ABS and even (front) disc brakes were still a new thing on normal cars
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday October 07 2016, @10:07PM
When I took driver's ed about ten years ago we were taught that it used to be 2 seconds based on the assumption that you wouldn't need to stop entirely in that space, you just needed to be able to react and hit your brakes, and then you and the car ahead of you would slow down to a stop together.
The current guideline is apparently 4 seconds, based on the assumption that the guy in front of you might not be making a controlled stop. If he hits a concrete barrier and goes 60 to 0 in an instant, you won't have any hope of stopping in only 2 seconds. Not the most likely scenario ever, but I suppose it happens.
Of course, around here people seem to think two car lengths at 70MPH means you're leaving room for them to merge in...
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday October 05 2016, @02:25AM
While its nice to leave a space between you and the car in front, around here, when busy, another car will fill in that gap pretty quick. So you slow down again and another car fills in the gap. Pretty quick you're not moving and now you're in danger of getting rear ended.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 04 2016, @03:15PM
when the state runs the propaganda machinery it's nearly impossible to convince enough people that they are capable of making any decision in quantities necessary for changing laws.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday October 04 2016, @08:35PM
NOBODY ever campaigns for higher speed-limits
Bullshit, people do it all the time. Which is why the speed limits on the new really good paid access roads around here have 70mph limits.
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