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EU is trying to implement speed limiters to electronically prevent drivers from speeding. Is this idea bad, awful, or terrible?
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Sep 2, 2013 16:28
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Lots of countries already have speed limiters required on commercial vehicles, and many trucking/delivery and transit companies in the US also have them required for their drivers.
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Sep 2, 2013 16:31
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grover posted:EU is trying to implement speed limiters to electronically prevent drivers from speeding. Is this idea bad, awful, or terrible? No they're not trying to do that at all. What's being sent round everywhere today is the Telegraph (a right wing anti-EU paper) rewriting a piece from the Mail on Sunday (a right wing anti-EU paper), both conflating the European Commission and the European Union when one is only part of the other, and saying that something suggested in a survey is definitely going to happen when the report the survey is for isn't published until later this autumn. Meanwhile in other actual news, City of London planners are helping to reduce congestion by building a skyscraper that melts cars http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-23930675
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Sep 2, 2013 18:23
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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad posted:No they're not trying to do that at all. What's being sent round everywhere today is the Telegraph (a right wing anti-EU paper) rewriting a piece from the Mail on Sunday (a right wing anti-EU paper), both conflating the European Commission and the European Union when one is only part of the other, and saying that something suggested in a survey is definitely going to happen when the report the survey is for isn't published until later this autumn.
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Sep 2, 2013 18:37
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grover posted:Oh good; that measure seemed a bit ridiculous and extreme, even by european standards. The stupid "you're speeding" chime is bad enough. YES, I KNOW. The only GPS enabled speed warnings I want to see are the ones that tell me I'm getting close to a speed camera. Even if they ever really tried look forward to having it shot down by the German auto industry.
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Sep 2, 2013 18:43
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I looked it up closer, the only EU regulations for speed limiters are on "heavy goods vehicles" and buses. Apparently HGVs are limited to 56 mph (90 km/h) or 53 mph (85 km/h) depending on size and buses are limited to 62 mph (100 km/h). Oh and these regulations have been in place since the 90s, but it seems like the tabloid trash like to bring it up as proof your car's going to be limited every few years since...
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Sep 2, 2013 18:51
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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad posted:No they're not trying to do that at all. What's being sent round everywhere today is the Telegraph (a right wing anti-EU paper) rewriting a piece from the Mail on Sunday (a right wing anti-EU paper), both conflating the European Commission and the European Union when one is only part of the other, and saying that something suggested in a survey is definitely going to happen when the report the survey is for isn't published until later this autumn. How many wild conspiracy theories did these articles have about Agenda 21, I wonder?  Also, 20 Fenchurch Street is a hideous building and never should have been built on aesthetic principles alone. Unfortunately, "should have been" is not the same as "was"...
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Sep 2, 2013 19:49
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Hedera Helix posted:How many wild conspiracy theories did these articles have about Agenda 21, I wonder? The papers in this country write so much bullshit about the EU that the EC set up a blog to refute their crap claims and, oh would you look at that http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/reports-of-brussels-big-brother-bid-to-impose-speed-controls-are-inaccurate-beyond-the-limit-2/ posted:Reports in the press over the last day or two have suggested that the EU intends to bring forward “formal proposals this autumn” to introduce automatic speed controls -known as “Intelligent Speed Adaptation” or ISA, into cars. This is quite simply not true and the Commission had made this very clear to the journalists concerned prior to publication.
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Sep 2, 2013 20:55
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grover posted:EU is trying to implement speed limiters to electronically prevent drivers from speeding. Is this idea bad, awful, or terrible? Aside from an argument about "MAH FREEDOM!  " I don't know why we should automatically assume it's a bad idea. I don't know that it's a good idea either, but it seems like if it's cool that we have limits, it should also be cool to judicially enforce them.
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Sep 3, 2013 04:18
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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It depends. If the limit is a hard enforce, what if you need to speed up for a short amount of time to overtake a truck, or even to prevent an accident? It would be horrible if the pedal just isn't responsive because you're driving at the limit.
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Sep 3, 2013 05:53
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Carbon dioxide posted:It depends. If the limit is a hard enforce, what if you need to speed up for a short amount of time to overtake a truck, or even to prevent an accident? It would be horrible if the pedal just isn't responsive because you're driving at the limit. Emergency acceleration is a real concern, but it could be worked around. Some speed limiters are programmed to disengage if the pedal is pressed firmly, others merely decrease acceleration and power as you increase speed beyond the limit. Alternatively, the speed limiter could simply be set higher than the actual speed limit. It's certainly possible that a speed limiter could have a positive impact on road safety - mostly by causing all vehicles to travel at the same speed and therefore reducing passing. But the larger issues with speed variance on slower streets and highways would remain. Kaal fucked around with this message at 07:04 on Sep 3, 2013 |
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Sep 3, 2013 06:54
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Carbon dioxide posted:It depends. If the limit is a hard enforce, what if you need to speed up for a short amount of time to overtake a truck, or even to prevent an accident? It would be horrible if the pedal just isn't responsive because you're driving at the limit. Totally with you on passing. I'm of the opinion that spending less time in the oncoming lane is more important than the speed limit, and by that logic I keep the pedal matted until I'm back in the proper lane. Of course I don't own anything with over 200 HP, so even a long pass usually doesn't exceed the low 90s. Obviously those with more power might have to back off mid-pass to keep things somewhat reasonable. The idea of speeding up to avoid an accident is sort of hard to come up with a situation for. It sounds great but I honestly can't come up with a single scenario where it would be useful that doesn't seem like a scene from a bad movie. Something death-causing (lava, mudslide, avalanche, tornado, monster, etc.) coming down a road right behind the vehicle or the Mopar v. Supra race scene from the original Fast and the Furious. I really do want that point to work, but it just doesn't seem realistic when you think about it. That said, maybe the answer would be a compromise of sorts. Put a tolerance on the limiter, basically making them exist to prevent excessive speeding rather than any at all. A warning or notification at 10-15% over and a hard limit at somewhere in the 50-100% over range maybe? Would there be any legitimate complaint against the car preventing you from exceeding 140 on a 70 MPH highway? What about 105 (50%)? Of course accuracy of speed information could be an issue no matter what the tolerance. If its based on GPS or similar, what happens when there's a highway built over (or under as the case may be in certain metro areas) an alley? Forget even the signal issue, how do you prevent vehicles on the highway legally traveling 65 MPH from deciding that they're actually in an alley with a 20 MPH limit, making the tolerance cutoff speed 40 and triggering the hard cut. If its based on road tags, they have to be so widely distributed and the encoding information so widely known that the Internet would eventually figure out how to make their own and all hell would break loose.
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Sep 3, 2013 07:23
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Carbon dioxide posted:It depends. If the limit is a hard enforce, what if you need to speed up for a short amount of time to overtake a truck, or even to prevent an accident? It would be horrible if the pedal just isn't responsive because you're driving at the limit. Yeah, you wouldn't want to make it a hard limit for these exact reasons. Though most of this could be accounted for in a soft limit that you were allowed to exceed, but perhaps only by a limited amount (10-15 kph) and only for a limited time (1-2 mins). wolrah posted:Of course accuracy of speed information could be an issue no matter what the tolerance. If its based on GPS or similar, what happens when there's a highway built over (or under as the case may be in certain metro areas) an alley? Forget even the signal issue, how do you prevent vehicles on the highway legally traveling 65 MPH from deciding that they're actually in an alley with a 20 MPH limit, making the tolerance cutoff speed 40 and triggering the hard cut. If its based on road tags, they have to be so widely distributed and the encoding information so widely known that the Internet would eventually figure out how to make their own and all hell would break loose. There's a lot of technical reasons why this isn't a great idea. Stuff like this being at the top of the list. GPS is a wonderful thing, but it has tons of caveats that make it less than reliable in an urban environment. Though this could be the sort of thing that was only enforced on major highways, most of which would be easy enough to pick out. Personally I much prefer the system that I think I read about existing in the Netherlands somewhere, where cameras on the highway road signage register license plates as people pass, and if you exceed the average speed limit between any two cameras they mail you a ticket.
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Sep 3, 2013 07:30
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Why would it be based on GPS and not the car's built-in speedometer? I mean I'm sure the speedo on a car is not 100% accurate, but it's probably accurate enough and pretty reliable. But yes, average speed cameras make a lot of sense. They tend to generate a lot of opposition, though, because how dare you make us obey the law? vv Yeah I didn't think of that. You could still have a "dumb" limit to the freeway maximum, though. vv Lead out in cuffs fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Sep 4, 2013 |
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Sep 4, 2013 20:28
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Why would it be based on GPS and not the car's built-in speedometer? I mean I'm sure the speedo on a car is not 100% accurate, but it's probably accurate enough and pretty reliable. It needs GPS to know which road you're driving on, so it can look up the speed limit. Any kind of roadside or in-road system would be giant on installation, maintenance, and be susceptible to spoofing or hacking.
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Sep 4, 2013 20:36
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An alternative would be use cameras in the vehicles themselves that could just read the actual speed limit signs, but that then gives you the same problem where you need to upgrade most of the vehicle fleet to have any effect, and that takes like 20 years.
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Sep 4, 2013 20:55
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PittTheElder posted:An alternative would be use cameras in the vehicles themselves that could just read the actual speed limit signs, but that then gives you the same problem where you need to upgrade most of the vehicle fleet to have any effect, and that takes like 20 years. Oh boy, I'd have SO much fun with a roll of electrical tape... (BMW 7-series already has that technology, as it turns out.)
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Sep 4, 2013 21:50
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It's also what Google's self-driving cars use, as far as I know. After all, navigation software will always lag behind the real-world situation, so you can't rely on it for autonomous driving.
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Sep 4, 2013 22:28
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Cichlidae posted:Oh boy, I'd have SO much fun with a roll of electrical tape... Not just the 7, you can get it on the 3 already.
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Sep 4, 2013 23:52
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nielsm posted:It needs GPS to know which road you're driving on, so it can look up the speed limit. Any kind of roadside or in-road system would be giant on installation, maintenance, and be susceptible to spoofing or hacking. In urbanized areas, there's already a much-used roadside system for geolocation: cell towers and wi-fi access points. Google collects this data with their street view cars, and most smartphones both collect and correlate that data with GPS readings.
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Sep 5, 2013 16:39
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Neither of them is particularly effective though, especially in urban areas. You have similar multipathing issues with cell reception as you do with GPS. It also depends quite a bit on exactly which cell communication technology you're using (CDMA vs. TDMA). The key with cell phone navigation is that knowing which cell tower you're closest too, and roughly how far away you are, is already enough to have an easier go of using a better location method (namely, GPS). Road side navigation also tends to take shortcuts and hold your position to a road it thinks you're on. If it's initial fix was wrong, or the map data is out of date, you're in trouble.
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Sep 5, 2013 19:03
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Most toll roads have had the capability to identify the exact entry and exit times of vehicles using the road, with clear knowledge of the distance between them, for decades. They don't get used for speeding tickets. I mean hello, you pull a toll ticket/EZ-Pass in at exit X and hand it in/EZ-Pass out at exit Y with 75 miles between them and you do it in 60 minutes, with the speed limit along the way never going above 65 mph? Wouldn't take a genius to put it together.
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Sep 5, 2013 20:55
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Or we could, you know, post reasonable speed limits, thus obviating the need to treat ordinary lawful citizens like criminals.
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Sep 5, 2013 23:41
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Cichlidae has already been over the fact that speed limits aren't arbitrary, and have to be set considering the needs of vehicles and drivers other than a young guy in a fast car. Which is not to say that all speed limits are correct, I believe he specifically pointed out that many residential speed limits get lowered simply because people complained hard enough. But I'd wager that most speed limits are set to what the highway was designed for. Even with the argument that the top speed for American highways is mandated to some number to save fuel, I imagine most highways designed after that point have been designed with that speed limit as an upper bound, so upping it now would make no sense.
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Sep 6, 2013 00:24
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Also, this ends up being the result if everyone where to go exactly the speed limit:
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Sep 6, 2013 00:50
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Install Windows posted:Most toll roads have had the capability to identify the exact entry and exit times of vehicles using the road, with clear knowledge of the distance between them, for decades. They don't get used for speeding tickets. I'm guessing there is some kind of legal reason why this doesn't occur, in any country (I think). For example France has its national network of tolled motorways which could be used in this manner but (contrary to rumours) are not. Instead France has set up a dedicated system of cameras to enforce an average speed limit in certain areas. In the UK there are few spots which have average speed cameras and I really hate them. My car doesn't have cruise control so I have to spend way too much attention at my speedometer than I would like.
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Sep 6, 2013 01:31
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Speed cameras are no match for a caravan dirigible.
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Sep 6, 2013 02:17
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PittTheElder posted:Which is not to say that all speed limits are correct, I believe he specifically pointed out that many residential speed limits get lowered simply because people complained hard enough. But I'd wager that most speed limits are set to what the highway was designed for. Even with the argument that the top speed for American highways is mandated to some number to save fuel, I imagine most highways designed after that point have been designed with that speed limit as an upper bound, so upping it now would make no sense. No, most freeway and highway speed limits are set by statute on a statewide basis, not based on a speed survey. Most freeways were designed for higher speeds than the posted limit.
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Sep 6, 2013 02:19
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grover posted:Or we could, you know, post reasonable speed limits, thus obviating the need to treat ordinary lawful citizens like criminals. Because speeding is a victimless crime? PittTheElder posted:Cichlidae has already been over the fact that speed limits aren't arbitrary, and have to be set considering the needs of vehicles and drivers other than a young guy in a fast car. For the residential roads, I think Cichlidae has vacillated between being frustrated by having the limit decreased where people have complained and acknowledging that you need a lower limit where there are lots of pedestrians and cyclists around. nm posted:No, most freeway and highway speed limits are set by statute on a statewide basis, not based on a speed survey. Most freeways were designed for higher speeds than the posted limit. That said, speed differential is a huge factor in accident rates. Even if the road were designed for people to hypothetically go faster, unless everyone (including HGVs) are going at that speed, you create unsafe conditions. There are also social reasons for keeping the limit lower than the maximum design speed that a high performance vehicle could go, like noise, air pollution and fuel economy.
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Sep 6, 2013 07:46
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Lead out in cuffs posted:There are also social reasons for keeping the limit lower than the maximum design speed that a high performance vehicle could go, like noise, air pollution and fuel economy. There's speeding, and then there's speeding. I've oft heard said that speed limits are intentionally set about 10mph slower than the intended speed because it's cheaper to enforce that way. The drawback is that now, in most states, when one car is going 71 in a 55, he's given a ticket for 16mph over, even when all the traffic around him is doing 70. The way our justice system works, it just seems patently unfair. And it also creates a large speed disparity. Set the speed limits properly (including reasonably minimum speed limits. Why is 41mph legal on a highway?) and only nail those who are actually driving an unsafe speed. And then ticket them appropriately. What really pisses me off is that in Virginia, it's an automatic reckless driving charge (punishable by a massive fine and 6 months in jail) for going 80mph in a 70mph zone. Which is infuriatingly stupid and unfair. Especially when traffic usually flows at 85mph+ on those 70mph roads and it's almost arbitrary who gets picked out. No, driving 5-10mph faster than everyone else might be speeding, but it sure as hell isn't automatically reckless.
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Sep 6, 2013 10:55
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New Zealand currently is the reverse trend and recent changes in enforcement result in oddities like $30 tickets for 4kmh over. One change that I think is being reasonably successful is enforcement of school zone limits. They are now A local interchange has been remade recently and one of those trailer signs with the radar was set up. It gave you a smiley face if you were under the 30kmh roadworks limit. I was stunned to the vast majority of motorists actually going at the limit - I don't think i've ever seen traffic slowing down for roadworks unless the road was loose metal or had traffic control dudes. What a difference a glorified emoticon makes!
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Sep 6, 2013 13:14
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The claim of reducing fuel consumption by speed limits is kind of funny. The best speed for that varies heavily by car. My own car seems to do best at 70-75 mph steady cruising, while the old truck I used to drive did best at 55 mph and a lot of clunky 60s/70s cars di best at around 45 mph.
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Sep 6, 2013 15:06
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I don't get the hate for speed limits? If a deer runs out in front of you it's easier to stop from 70 than 130. If you're in that much of a hurry you should have left earlier.
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Sep 6, 2013 15:14
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Peanut President posted:I don't get the hate for speed limits? If a deer runs out in front of you it's easier to stop from 70 than 130. If you're in that much of a hurry you should have left earlier. Most people's cars won't get up to 110 reliably in the first place, let alone 130 though. And 70 is faster then most states allow at all. This is how we have freeways designed after all:  (Old ad for the PA turnpike in the 1940s. It's true too, when you travel on the original segment of the road, you often find yourself creeping up to 90 mph and more so long as the traffic's light)
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Sep 6, 2013 16:18
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The problem is that speed limits are often far lower than design speeds. Not just on freeways, but on local streets too. If you give a car a 12 foot wide lane on a residential street of course they're going to speed, you built the road so they would!
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Sep 6, 2013 16:35
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FISHMANPET posted:The problem is that speed limits are often far lower than design speeds. Not just on freeways, but on local streets too. If you give a car a 12 foot wide lane on a residential street of course they're going to speed, you built the road so they would! I think people slowing down on narrower streets is more psychological than anything else (but yeah there are studies correlating street width with actual speed people drive at). And yeah, 12 foot wide lanes in residential areas is one of the gigantic fuckups of mid-century traffic engineering that is going to be with North America for some time to come. Of course, one of the ways Vancouver has been trying to correct for this is curb bulges (narrowing the lane at intersections). These help to slow motorists down and make it easier for pedestrians to cross. The City's other crazy-but-not-so-crazy idea was to take really wide streets and cut them in half, using the surplus half for housing. From an urban planning perspective it's fantastic -- it promotes densification and removes the problem of over-wide streets. From a private property owner perspective, though, who the gently caress wants a bunch of houses built between their house and the street? So yeah, that didn't fly. Maybe if they could offer big cash incentives (or just give the new land to the people with houses there already on the condition that they build on it).
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Sep 6, 2013 17:21
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Was just in Seattle on the weekend, holy poo poo that city loves highways. It's like vancouver if vancouver was utterly destroyed by criss-crossing highways in every direction. What the gently caress were they thinking destroying their downtown waterfront with that elevated highway? Glad they're finally getting rid of it. The downtown core was pretty walkable but the area north of downtown by the space needle was an absolute maze to walk. So many sort-of-highways right in the middle of what should be a walkable urban area with no way to cross them for hundreds of meters in each direction. We were trying to get from A to B which should have been like a 500m walk by the crow flies but due to lovely car sewers it was a 1km+ walk on some super unpleasant stroads. Also no bike lanes anywhere so everyone was riding on the sidewalk and the only people actually on the roads were Lycra-clad cycle-warriors getting honked at and tail-gated by cars. Seattle, get your poo poo together.
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Sep 6, 2013 19:51
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Baronjutter posted:Was just in Seattle on the weekend, holy poo poo that city loves highways. It's like vancouver if vancouver was utterly destroyed by criss-crossing highways in every direction. What the gently caress were they thinking destroying their downtown waterfront with that elevated highway? Glad they're finally getting rid of it. The downtown core was pretty walkable but the area north of downtown by the space needle was an absolute maze to walk. So many sort-of-highways right in the middle of what should be a walkable urban area with no way to cross them for hundreds of meters in each direction. We were trying to get from A to B which should have been like a 500m walk by the crow flies but due to lovely car sewers it was a 1km+ walk on some super unpleasant stroads. Also no bike lanes anywhere so everyone was riding on the sidewalk and the only people actually on the roads were Lycra-clad cycle-warriors getting honked at and tail-gated by cars. You shoulda taken the monorail 
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Sep 6, 2013 19:53
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Baronjutter posted:Was just in Seattle on the weekend, holy poo poo that city loves highways. It's like vancouver if vancouver was utterly destroyed by criss-crossing highways in every direction. One of the ways a friend of mine (and long-time Vancouver resident) described the push-back against freeways in the 70s was "people didn't want the city to end up like Seattle".
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Sep 6, 2013 20:22
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Baronjutter posted:Was just in Seattle on the weekend, holy poo poo that city loves highways. It's like vancouver if vancouver was utterly destroyed by criss-crossing highways in every direction. What the gently caress were they thinking destroying their downtown waterfront with that elevated highway? Glad they're finally getting rid of it. The downtown core was pretty walkable but the area north of downtown by the space needle was an absolute maze to walk. So many sort-of-highways right in the middle of what should be a walkable urban area with no way to cross them for hundreds of meters in each direction. We were trying to get from A to B which should have been like a 500m walk by the crow flies but due to lovely car sewers it was a 1km+ walk on some super unpleasant stroads. Also no bike lanes anywhere so everyone was riding on the sidewalk and the only people actually on the roads were Lycra-clad cycle-warriors getting honked at and tail-gated by cars. I thought that Seattle had a decent amount of bike lanes. Then again, when I was up there, I was accompanied by someone who knew the area by heart, and most of our riding downtown was done at night when there wasn't as much traffic. The city is very, very hilly, though, and there are parts where it's easier to simply dismount and walk. And they're not actually getting rid of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, they're putting it underground a la Boston's Big Dig. Apparently it's going just as well as it did in Boston. 
Hedera Helix fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Sep 6, 2013 |
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Sep 6, 2013 21:09
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