[Closed] Speed limiters on cars

Oh, genius. So I should’ve just closed my eyes and braced for impact because it could’ve been a child’s face, should I?

No, but your argument is not dissimilar to manufacturing increasingly bigger cars, improving the safety of the occupants, but to the detriment of everybody outside of them.

I think if we were to look at the evidence, many more serious accidents would be avoided than accidents resulting as a consequence. The sad fact is, it often is a child's face, and technologies such as this can potentially make it less so.

For clarity: that situation occured because he ran a red light. I was not experienced enough to anticipate that.

I always expect someone to be running a red light.

In most junctions this means I don't have to slow much because you generally can see. When you can't, it's usually suburban enough to justify going more slowly.

Anyway, the general point about 'accelerating out of trouble' is this: In my experience even with a decent amount of horsepower a car doesn't surge forward instantly when you bury the throttle. When I was younger I thought I could, and I tried accelerating out of an impending situation and whilst something happened, it didn't happen anywhere near as quickly as it did in my mind and I nearly got into significant trouble. This taught me that braking is likely to be a better tactic, and later experiences taught me that swerving is even better still.

I still feel that there's likely to be a bit more luck in Cougar's situation than he realises. It's possible that he hit the gas and the oncoming driver actually swerved a bit to avoid the collision but Cougar didn't notice.

Oh and on the subject of driving aids - in 20 years' time Cougar's scenario would be unlikely to result in a collision, because the red-light-runner's car would hit its own brakes anyway.

I will be interested to see if there is a significant reduction in collisions (not KSIs) as auto-braking becomes widespread.

filtering at 30+ mph is really really dangerous and should never be done

That's not really true though.

There are few occasions when you do filter above 30 or so, but it happens, and no one dies.

I've been doing it for over 30 yrs and it's perfectly safe if you have a brain in yer heed.

yes you should filter but never at 30+ mph – thats just unsafe. You filter in stationary and very slow traffic only

filtering at 30+ mph is really really dangerous and should never be done

More codswallop.

Spent +10 years of my life filtering in very heavy traffic, and often fast traffic. It's as safe to filter often as it is to sit in the traffic - my only real accident in that time was a bloke running into me from behind - how he missed a tall boke in full-on traffic cop type dayglo gear on a Yamaha Fazer 1000 sat straight in front of him, no idea.

No - filtering at speed is dangerous and illegal and should not be taught.

Ask any advanced rider. You should only filter at low speed and with a small speed differential.

I've only had my bike license 40 years and have been a courier and once traffic is up to 15 / 20 mph you stop filtering

The "accelerate out if trouble" thing has long been discussed as a positive in motorcycle circles. In theory, it has more benefits than in a car. Not only are you likely to have a better power:weight ratio and hence the acceleration required, you may not have the same ability to stop/slow and you don't have the benefit of a protective cage around you to absorb the energy of a collision.

Having said that, in 45 years of holding a licence I've yet to be in the position, in car or on bike, when that would have been a good course of action.

filtering at 30+ mph is really really dangerous and should never be done

Filtering is all about speed differential. Filtering at 30mph+ through standing traffic is indeed "really really dangerous," filtering at 30mph through traffic doing 25mph not so much.

Proper observation would have prevented you being in that situation.

Have you got your browser set to write-only again?

I still feel that there’s likely to be a bit more luck in Cougar’s situation than he realises. It’s possible that he hit the gas and the oncoming driver actually swerved a bit to avoid the collision but Cougar didn’t notice.

If he'd swerved right to try and go behind me and I'd hit the brakes instead of the gas, what do you suggest would've happened?

Sure, luck was probably an element. I didn't exactly have time to produce a six-page risk analysis. Though I love how everyone is an expert on an incident from twenty-odd years ago that they weren't present for.

It’s very easy to work all this out with the benefit of a calculator, a lot of assumptions and twenty years, isn’t it.

The bottom line is, I reacted. I took the option I thought best in the split-second I had to try and avoid a collision.

my point was that your objection to speed limiters is based on an anecdotal scenario of 'accelerating out of trouble' that doesn't stack up.

you got lucky.

in a parallel universe, you did exactly the same thing and the other car did something different and everybody died...

Though I love how everyone is an expert on an incident from twenty-odd years ago that they weren’t present for.

We have our own incidents though.

If it happened in a split second, how much speed do you think your car gained in that time?

I just don't get the parochial nature of the hard speed limit enthusiasts.

I'd have to skate very fast on the ice to say there's any convincing road safety argument against it, but, sweet Jesus on a unicycle, has history taught nothing?

Do you need a list of countries that have tried/tying omnilaws with an associated panoply of control measures "for the public good"?

Is it to be "just this one" measure? Or, y'know - things like tracking of ebikes, location of bikes in general, etc.etc:
"Whaaats yeoor crime then?"
"Ridin' on the footpath(way) jester..."
"You bastard."

"'Es a complete fool, it's just a speed limiter. With location recording. And black box control and voice recording. In real time. With camera tie in to face recognition in case he's a wanted drug pedo. And a tie in to ECHELON from the car microphone in case he's a drug dealing pedo terrorist". Etc. And etc.

Education and visible, severe punishment where speed is a contributor or inappropriate is my position but clearly not a popular one.

my point was that your objection to speed limiters is

Fictional?

I've already explained this.

based on an anecdotal scenario of ‘accelerating out of trouble’

It's not "based" on anything. It is, as you say, just an anecdote.

The point I'm trying to make, and I rather regret providing an example now because it's merely given the STW bear pit something to throw stones at, is that taking tools away from a driver is a bad idea.

Did I make the right decision that day? Who knows. Would preventing me from carrying out those actions have improved the situation? Unlikely. TJ et al can argue all they like about how we all should drive like we have 40 years' experience when we're in our 20s but the real world doesn't work like that. I had the snap of fingers to react and it avoided a collision. Maybe I did get lucky.

that doesn’t stack up.

In your opinion.

In your opinion.

i provided my workings. 🙂 the difference in position between braking and accelerating in a reasonable timeframe is >30m (6 car lengths...) and a whole lot more energy...

taking tools away from a driver is a bad idea

I don't see how it is. Drivers as a whole (me included) have already proven themselves poor at managing their actions with the tools they already have.

Thing is, you've already said how you like to drive in a 'spirited' manner, as do I, but I think you're subconsciously retro-justifying it.

I think Cougar's point is that once he was in that situation, the acceleration past the speed limit helped him get out of it.
Yes better observation could've avoided it in the first place but that's irrelevant here - it happens that not everyone has perfect observation all the time (plus there are things entirely out of your control) and once there, you need a way to get out of it.

I have a similar story, yes again better observation could have avoided it in the first place but it's a good story anyway 😉

Many moons ago, my mother was passenger in a car going along behind 2 lorries closely following each other.
The driver pulled out to overtake both, and the car behind them followed them out blindly.
Halfway through the manoeuvre another lorry appears head-on in the opposite lane - can't brake and cancel the overtake, there's a car behind. Can't drop into the tiny gap between the 2 lorries, there's only room for 1 car and the car behind will get squished by the oncoming lorry.

Luckily the driver happened to be a professional rally driver and shot forwards, just overtaking in time and allowing the following car to duck into the gap.

Granted that 1) he probably shouldn't have tried overtaking without enough sight and 2) the muppet behind certainly shouldn't, but once they were there, a speed limiter would not have helped matters!

If it happened in a split second, how much speed do you think your car gained in that time?

Especially given that:

I was in a shitty courtesy car that I’d just got that day, it redlined at about twelve rpm and it instantly killed off what little power it had rather than merely limiting it.

Playing both sides here 😀

Two separate incidents there. The overtake in the Micra O' Doom was much more recent. I was passing someone doing maybe 30 in a 50, I was alongside them / mostly past when the car just went 'no' and cut all the power.

I think Cougar’s point is that once he was in that situation, the acceleration past the speed limit helped him get out of it.

I'm not entirely sure that I passed the speed limit, even. It was a long time ago.

My point in its entirety was, if the car had countered what I did then the outcome would have been worse.

Education and visible, severe punishment where speed is a contributor or inappropriate is my position but clearly not a popular one.

An armed police officer on every road shooting any drivers whose speed is inappropriate would be visible and severe. Or rather than employing 2 million people to do that we could just have speed limited cars...

I wonder if the ratio of ‘crashes prevented by accelerating out of trouble:crashes that would be prevented by speed limiters’ is greater or lesser than ‘lives saved by shooting a gun wielding nutter first with my every day carry gun:people killed by easy access to guns in the US’.

It’s not that there aren’t situations where the good guy having a gun/experienced driver being able to speed out of trouble don’t happen, it’s just that they’re outweighed by the bad guy having a gun/bad driver speeding into trouble.

I should note I’m making the comparison because of the parallels between plausible but small in effect justifications for ‘the good people having freedom to do x beneficially’ and he larger harms of ‘the rest/less good people able to do x detrimentally’. Not because I’m drawing any moral comparison between a fairly reasonable debate on speed limiters and the rather scary US gun control debate.

kerley & swanny - between you I think you've solved the problem:

Just give all drivers a gun and make it law that you're allowed to shoot anyone going faster than you. Hey presto: everyone going carefully and slowly at the same speed!

Granted that 1) he probably shouldn’t have tried overtaking without enough sight and 2) the muppet behind certainly shouldn’t, but once they were there, a speed limiter would not have helped matters!

If you had a speed limiter you wouldn't even try overtaking in such marginal conditions. Given the severe lack of power in the first car to which I had access, I can verify this.

It’s not that there aren’t situations where the good guy having a gun/experienced driver being able to speed out of trouble don’t happen

no one has actually been able to show any sort of circumstance where accelerating out of trouble is the best option

cougar is the only person to put up an incident and with better observaton he would not have been in that situation and he didn't exceed the speed limit anyway!

I simply do not believe the " accelerate out of danger to over the speed limit" is ever true. Its a nonsense

Edit - ossifys example is another where the answer is not to speed up but not to be in that situation

Removing options from drivers is not a good idea. Do you need examples?

I think I might TBH, given the current 'options' available, many choose the drive like a bellend option. A warning 'bingbong' as you drift past 30 isn't really a limiter it's either a distraction or a thing that will be routinely ignored, probably the latter.

I have adaptive cruise control. It serves exactly the same purpose

Well sort of, except it's not, you're happy to hand over throttle control to the car (mostly on motorways?) And it drives upto the set speed or throttles back when it detects a vehicle ahead, it's a mid-lane cruisers tool.
All a limiter does is set a cap, with the limiter on I still control the throttle up to that cap (and can override it by burying my foot in the floor or flicking a switch on the wheel), like I said I think it's most applicable/useful in towns in 20/30/40 limits, where I'm sure you already adhere to the limits anyway... If you're driving round town on adaptive cruise all the time that must get quite frustrating.

and doesn’t prevent me from overriding it.

And still, nobody is going to prevent you overiding these limiters, they will all have the facility to be bypassed/ignored. Your need for control can be still be satisfied. All that is really being removed is an excuse...

no one has actually been able to show any sort of circumstance where accelerating out of trouble is the best option

have you never had the back end let go in a FWD car?
admittingly it does usually take a bit of provoking to get into that posistion, i think the only times i've had it happen is when i've deliberately lifted of mid corner to cause it.

Well sort of, except it’s not, you’re happy to hand over throttle control to the car (mostly on motorways?) And it drives upto the set speed or throttles back when it detects a vehicle ahead, it’s a mid-lane cruisers tool.

Well no, it's not, you're right. It's better. I'm not handing over any controls, brakes still work to slow me down and the accelerator still works to speed me up.

I use it all the time. I set it to an indicated 33 around town, which is an actual 30mph verified by GPS. It's not perfect, it occasionally craps itself when passing parked cars or "undertaking" vehicles which are in right-hand lanes waiting to turn, but I'm used to that now and aside from that foible it's great. How is your overridable limiter preferable to my adaptive cruise? Will it slam on the brakes if the car in front does an emergency stop?

And before the usual suspects rock up with their usual suspecting: I'm quite capable of hitting 30mph within a couple of mph without looking at the dash, I've made a game out of it for years to train myself to do so. I don't need the cruise (or the limiter), it's just convenient. The headlights are on auto, they come on when it's dark and go off when it isn't, no driving in the dark and no flat batteries. Parking sensors squeal when I'm close to something. I don't jump out and chammy down the windscreen when it's raining, I turn the wipers on. (Except, I don't, cos they're on auto too.) Is it the 1970s again already?

It makes me laugh, in one corner we've got a stiffy for the pipe dream of driverless cars and in the other we're complaining about using driver aids being indicative of a lack of ability.

All I have to add to this thread is that I used to be against things like average speed cameras, speed limiters etc. I used to believe all of the kinds of stuff people are saying on here about being able to drive fast can be safer. In retrospect I was just trying to find a justification for the fact that I liked to drive fast.

(If anyone's interested, the thing that changed my mind was being forced to drive slowly by a slow car and realising it's nicer not to be stressed about speed).

I think one of the biggest contributing factors that really changed my attitude to driving like a utter **** in my cars was when I decided to cycle to work on a daily basis instead (and sticking to it). Really changed my sense of how unimportant speed is for getting somewhere.

I think one of the biggest contributing factors that really changed my attitude to driving like a utter **** in my cars

Starting to sound like a speeders anonymous group but my driving changed as I got older and less irresponsible plus as above speed doesn't really get you there much faster and it is more relaxing to just go with the flow.
Between 17 and 30 years old I simply should not have been allowed to drive on the road but somehow got away with it (got pulled over a lot but never fined)

Things I'd like to see

1/ Black box recorders in all cars. I don't advocate the authorities being able to just access the data and use that against drivers, but in the event of a collision, or stopping someone for an offence in the traditional manner, then the BB data becomes accessible. See how many of the 'I don't usually speed, it was a momentary lack of attention' defences really stand up, and apply appropriate sanction based on behaviours rather than just the incident.

2/ Stop referring to people as bad drivers and good drivers. We're all just drivers, the actions are bad or good. You can be an expert driver but doing 35 on a road with a 20 limit is bad driving. Simple as. Does it make you a bad driver - not necessarily, but at that point in time your driving was not of the standard expected.

3/ And to refer to a post earlier from Downshep. If you KSI someone because of your bad driving, you go with the police to the house of the victim and stand there and explain why your text was so important that it justifies why Daddy's not coming home ever again. You created the consequences, you deal with the aftermath.

4/ Mobile phone use while driving. Instant confiscation, for a suitable period, and in the meantime a system generated voicemail / text message autoreply saying that this phone is currently out of action because the user was using it while driving. Shame the people that do it and make it unacceptable socially.

Theorherjonv for president.

Alternatively make everyone drive a 1.4 auto polo.

You can just about overtake a bike with a run up. So you drive everywhere super chill.

I don't really understand why it shouldn't be the case that all new cars come with towards and backwards cameras which are always on and can't be switched off.

I use it all the time. I set it to an indicated 33 around town, which is an actual 30mph verified by GPS. It’s not perfect, it occasionally craps itself when passing parked cars or “undertaking” vehicles which are in right-hand lanes waiting to turn, but I’m used to that now and aside from that foible it’s great. How is your overridable limiter preferable to my adaptive cruise? Will it slam on the brakes if the car in front does an emergency stop?

"Better"? Dunno, you're previous point about wanting to be able to stomp over the posted limit was about needing to be in "control" wasn't it? I have no excuses if I run someone over or fail to brake in time, but if that happens I definitely wasn't speeding which is the only point of the limiter TBF, it doesn't absolve me of responsibility, neither does your cruise control, they're both "Driver aids"...

But it still sounds like you'll let a computer and a radar system that occasionally "craps itself" decide if you breeze through town or heave on the anchors at Random, sort of the opposite of you controlling the vehicle's speed for yourself, I'm still not sure why you're so against having a limiter, it's not like your averse to letting the toys have input on your driving? I'm pretty sure braking assist is also available without enabling cruise control, at least on some cars.

I still don't know why I need to be able to speed for safety yet either...

I do wonder which one of us would have the easier time with the attending officer when we both inevitable kill a Child's face to death; The one having to explain that his cruise control was set above the posted limit cos his GPS said it was fine, or the one who had enabled his limiter?

Let's just both carry on testing our theories in the real world shall we?

Alternatively make everyone drive a 1.4 auto polo.

My middle-aged sensible driving epiphany had a double cause - one, seeing the difference in increased mileage and decreased stress by setting off early, not having to race the clock and just take it nice and easy, and two, driving an automatic Volvo estate. It wasn't a slow car but somehow.... it just makes you drive slow. 🙂

for me the answer is dashcams. I am surprised at how slowly insurance companies are making folk have them. Dashcam for free and lower insurance if you fit it.

That way after collisions ( they are NOT accidents) its easy to see who is at fault.

If I bought a car the first thing I would do is fit a dashcam

There's ongoing work for black boxes (AKA Event Data Recorders) to be fitted to an international standard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_data_recorder

for me the answer is dashcams.

dashcams make you angry or only angry people use them one or the other.

I don’t really understand why it shouldn’t be the case that all new cars come with towards and backwards cameras which are always on and can’t be switched off.

Now this, I'm happy with. I think (most) people will (mostly) behave when they know they are being watched.

for me the answer is dashcams. I am surprised at how slowly insurance companies are making folk have them. Dashcam for free and lower insurance if you fit it.

You assume that a dashcam will more often than not absolve the driver of blame. I suspect insurers are less confident about that - at least until virtually everyone has them - they will show the mistakes you make as well as others. Their 50/50 claims suddenly might have evidence you were are fault and none that I was.

For insurers dash cams are probably a zero-sum game. They would prove as many policy holder culpable as they would exonerate.

Judging my most of the dash cam footage you see online (admittedly its probably a biased sample) people with dash cams don't drive anymore safely then anyone else.