PowerSwitch

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47715415

Good idea IMHO, despite the distress caused to petrol heads. Speeds are often far in excess of that permitted and contribute towards the over 1,000 lives that are lost on the roads every year.

Excess speed also consumes more fuel and produces more pollution.

Reduced speeds will also make roads safer for pedestrians, cyclists, horse riders, and lightweight EVs.

adam2 wrote:.................Excess speed also consumes more fuel and produces more pollution.

Reduced speeds will also make roads safer for pedestrians, cyclists, horse riders, and lightweight EVs.

Probably, but more people will die of boredom and the accidents that it causes.

Looks like not a true speed limiter, more an advisory with speed recording as a bonus.

I would be perfectly happy to have the speed of my car restricted. Indeed, I’d like it to drive itself.

emordnilap wrote:Looks like not a true speed limiter, more an advisory with speed recording as a bonus.

I would be perfectly happy to have the speed of my car restricted. Indeed, I’d like it to drive itself.

The AI systems will have to get a lot more sophisticated before I'll buy one. Right now I have traction warning devises in both vehicles . A little beeper beeps and a dash light flashes when one of the wheels slips. If your driving in mud or snow this is always a NSS moment and totally useless. Also the traction control will cut power to the wheel that is slipping just when you need power to climb out of the rut you have fallen into or to power through the snow drift you are tying to break through. When the AI gets smart enough to view and access the road ahead and plot the best way to cross it then I'll think about it but a "wheel is spinning so must stop it" simplicity will not do.
At the rate the technology is progressing that might be just a few years away.

I have a speed limiter on my car which is very useful when driving on roads with average speed cameras. I don't know how much effect this will have on road safety but I suspect it will make traffic flow better during busy times.

My leaf has s similar function, I tend not to use it because it drains the battery faster . I use cruise control in my diesel for similar reasons. I drive through several miles of 40mph average speed control most days, as long as I keep below 44mph, the inevitable minor traffic delays keeps your average speed down below the camera trigger level.

A small amount of flexibility around a nominal speed limit does generally ease overall flow on a busy multilane road, but it only needs to be 2-3 mph, when combined with a bit of cooperation and flexibility by the drivers.

The sort of skill a self-driving car could never aquire

PS_RalphW wrote: The sort of skill a self-driving car could never aquire

I actually think they will acquire it much faster then one would think. Consider that the self driving car will probably be in contact with the other self driving cars on the street and is never distracted by the phone or passengers in the car. I give it less then five years.

vtsnowedin wrote:

PS_RalphW wrote: The sort of skill a self-driving car could never aquire

I actually think they will acquire it much faster then one would think. Consider that the self driving car will probably be in contact with the other self driving cars ...

Exactly this, huge benefits in self driving cars acting as a distributed whole, cooperating with other cars for miles in front and behind.

clv101 wrote:....... huge benefits in self driving cars acting as a distributed whole, cooperating with other cars for miles in front and behind.

They could effectively form trains!

Would there be a benefit in strings of individual cars being connected or would a standard spacing be better. It would certainly be easier to slot a car into a string if it was just a case of slotting into a gap and the cars behind gradually slowing to maintain the standard distance.

If they had automatic connectors they could click into and out of a train at will with the other car slowing to allow exit and picking up speed to join on again. If the slowing down was done using regenerative braking the extra energy use wouldn't be too high.

I think the biggest benefit in urban areas will be that the AI cars will be in contact with the street light system and know how fast to drive to get to the next light when it turns green. Human driven cars with an AI car in front of them will benefit just by following the AI car in front . Not a perfect system of course but I would not be surprised by a thirty percent reduction in the total times spent idling in front of a red light.

When the 50mph limit was imposed in the 1970s transplant surgeons at the time were complaining of the lack of spare parts available. So much for safety.

woodburner wrote:When the 50mph limit was imposed in the 1970s transplant surgeons at the time were complaining of the lack of spare parts available. So much for safety.

But wouldn't there be more people dying of stress-related heart attacks when they don't allow enough time for their journey and start thumping the steering wheel?

The speed limiters as fitted under the new regulations will have a kick-down function to override them. This is sensible because the technology will not be perfect and is bound to get it wrong on occasions. In practice this will mean that a high percentage of drivers will automatically override the limiter and continue driving as before (typically exceeding local speed limit by 10% on the assumption that they won't get caught) and the remainder will chug along at the limit speed. This will lead to a lot of grumpy, impatient drivers and a lot of dodgy overtaking and resulting accidents.

It will take time for the technology to be accepted and for the accident rate to come down. As the cars involved in the accidents will automatically register the speed limit override, I expect insurance companies to stop paying out in many cases.

That will change behaviour.