“Neither of you answered the question- ever driven a vehicle with a limiter (or, equivalent, a vehicle that can’t go at the speed limit?”

french toll road in a vehicle that did 80 max ….

a vehicle that when going uphills had to get into the truck lane because the french would just drive into you otherwise regardless of lane.

i have decided that if i go to france again im taking a car at least capible of the speed limit and enough power to climb hills…..

taking a nice powerful vehicle and limiting it is just idiotic- it creates ALOT more problems than it solves.

and saying its GPS based – well if i drove at the speed limit my GPS tells me half the time – id be limited to go through roadworks far too fast hitting NSL’s at 30 and it would just be chaos.

You did quote me asking, so that’s weird.

Jeez…

Did I answer or was I addressing something else in the quote? Sometimes I just copy a whole paragraph (as it’s easier on a jellybone rather than pinching fingers all night, I dunno… Anyway, I’ve answered now. Why?

It’s clear why I was asking when you read what I wrote (I generally do that before responding to people or quoting them, fwiw). If you’ve driven a limited vehicle, you must know how you can use it to set the speed at the limiter, and how that’s different from constantly controlling the speed yourself.

Again…Jeez. I explained myself and answered. Why labour on it dude?

Anyway…it was quite different driving the car on cc rather than using the limiter. As the limiter only kicked in at a top end whereas with cc, the car was being maintained at a constant speed by a combination of engine braking and acceleration. I guess I wasn’t driving to the limit constantly and maybe fall outside that particular subset of road users.

FWIW I agree with NW.

No practical difference between a speed limited car and cruise control.

On the speed limited car you are just using the accelerator as a foot rest rather than the foot rest.

Once you are at maximum speed you aren’t thinking about controlling the speed of the car anymore.

Ok, how about an annoying warning bing that you can’t disable when you go over the limit?

Ok, how about an annoying warning bing that you can’t disable when you go over the limit?

I have one of them already fitted to the passenger seat, called the wife

in a way (bit of a reach here) my car already has something similar.

you’d need to be deaf to ignore the excessive revs required to go much over 30 in 2nd gear.

Had a nice succinct answer typed out but this shoddy hotel wifi lost it an I can’t be arsed to type it all again.

Gist was black doesn’t equal white… Pissing in the wind… Yes, a Morris Minor 1000

ahwiles – Member

in a way (bit of a reach here) my car already has something similar.

you’d need to be deaf to ignore the excessive revs required to go much over 30 in 2nd gear.

I’ve owned two cars that could break the national speed limit in 2nd gear. 🙂

What a sad little thread. No because of the question but because of the obvious blood spitting anger that occurs when someone suggests we might limit top speeds.

It should be part of the test, ask someone the question, if they get angry they’re not ready to drive a vehicle. Give ’em a bike and let them experience speeding idiots for a while, then ask them the question again.

As for the original question. It’s unworkable at a voluntary level and would make more problems than it solves. It’d need to be mandatory, across the board, which would be impossible.

What a sad little thread. No because of the question but because of the obvious blood spitting anger that occurs when someone suggests we might limit top speeds.

+1

As for the original question. It’s unworkable at a voluntary level and would make more problems than it solves. It’d need to be mandatory, across the board, which would be impossible.

Agree with this completely.

I’ve read the thread and i didn’t notice any blood splitting anger. A bit of frustration from some quarters at the lack of understanding or foresight from some posters and that’s it. Maybe i’m not melodramatic enough.

Perhaps I’m good at reading undertones, but a bit of melodrama is good too.

Not sure it would be impossible. Most cars don’t last much more than a decade. Anything over three years needs an MOT. MOTs could include GPS based limiters in a few years. All new cars currently require ABS and DRLs, neither of which were around a while ago. Most new large goods and PCVs have simple, not GPS, limiters installed. Legislation requiring GPS based limiters on new build private vehicles isn’t much of a leap. GPS detectors at every speed limit sign is technologically achievable.
The stumbling block is a UK Legislature having the balls to pass the legislation, which would be political suicide. Ultimately, this will probably come from the EU.

Current speed limits are antiquated and irrelevant.

Its not just safety. The speed of car contribute significantly to the noise pollution as well as air pollution traffic makes. Something most people who talk about driving fast on public roads seem to forget.

well as someone who has just moved onto 9 (nine) points I think it might not be such a bad idea! I’m actually thinking of buying an even less powerful car next time as mine does get to 70 mph v quickly and when the dual carriageway is 40 or 50 that is trouble.

I rather assume that in 20 years time all cars will be GPS / computer driven and at that point will be programmed to follow the precise speed limit. The technology for this must exist already?

If every vehicle on the road was automatic, it might work.

Again – the Transport Lab tried all this several years ago and walked away after it increased accidents.
Imagine having the power cut mid corner because the gps says it must do so? Bikes actually tucked the front and crashed because the throttle was cut, cars ran wide when the same happened and the power came back in!

Imagine having the power cut mid corner because the gps says it must do so?

What would happen then? You would adjust speed limit points so that didn’t happen, and you wouldn’t have it slam on the anchors obviously. You also would not have it change speed automatically – just stop you driving over a certain speed.

Crap implementation doesn’t mean it’s a bad concept.

Auto driving completely autonomous cars would be perfect as far as I’m concerned. I’ve got better things to do than drive I just want to get where I’m going cheaply and in comfort and hopefully without delays caused by the incompetence of “better drivers than me”.

Whilst I know you lot are probably arguing about the colour of stitching on the steering wheel by now. Could I just point out (again) that cars WILL be speed limited within the next ten year.

Reason being only cocks and those trying to sell cars think differently.

Anyway… Carry on.

Autonomous is the only way it will work – limiting “driven” vehicles won’t.
Too many variables.
Molgrips – they tried multiple implementations of it and it still posed dangerous problems.
The gps files only give certain points, limits, etc. they can’t allow for variables or other drivers for example.
Whether it will or won’t happen in the near future is irrelevant – unless it is automated they have already proved it is unsafe even using the best technology available allowing a human to still have an element of control.

“As for the original question. It’s unworkable at a voluntary level and would make more problems than it solves. It’d need to be mandatory, across the board, which would be impossible.“

I wouldn’t be remotely surprised if it comes in via voluntary black boxes for cheaper and/or PAYG insurance, and AFAIK the EU is looking at a mandatory approach anyway.

Molgrips – they tried multiple implementations of it and it still posed dangerous problems.

Again, just because they couldn’t solve the problems doesn’t mean they were insoluble.

Autonomous is the only way it will work – limiting “driven” vehicles won’t.

Fully automated cars with all the safety features they could cram into them? Ideal, but it’s a long way off on anything other than small scale and between times could prove interesting. Wish that guy would hurry up and invent his teleporter.

There’s a lot of naivety on this thread, which I can’t be arsed to comment on directly, but for speed limiting to work *safely, we’d need reliable and accurate GPS.
We don’t have reliable and accurate GPS.

*That’s ignoring the overwhelming evidence that speed limited vehicles (such as HGVs) are more likely to be driven at that limit, no matter what the circumstances, and lead to increased tail-gating, et cetera.

I’m sure many HGVs are driven badly, but is that because they are speed limited, or for some other reason?

I’m sure many HGVs are driven badly, but is that because they are speed limited, or for some other reason?

Well, frequent tailgating, and overtakes at 54.0000000000001 mph blocking a carriageway for miles do seem the de riguer. If they they weren’t limited, the futile overtaking wouldn’t happen, and id bet there would be less tailgating. My reason for this supposition is that if 54 is as fast as they can go, they’ll damn well go that fast. Unlimited, they may well just hang back knowing they can make the time up on the next dualled section. Perhaps.

Speeding HGVs would be worse than limited ones. Just go to America and find out. HGV drivers need to stop being idiots, nothing to do with limiting speed.

I wouldn’t be remotely surprised if it comes in via voluntary black boxes for cheaper and/or PAYG insurance,

Indeed, and then what will happen is loads of accidents will be attributed to them for the reasons people have highlighted (shit driving) and the speed freaks (more melodrama) will jump on on this victoriously to point out how dangerous limiting is.