Mandatory Speed Limiters On All New Cars In Europe

"Thunder" (Thunder)
02/25/2019 at 11:28 • Filed to: None

Never before have I wanted a story to be fake news as much as I do this one.

Dubbed Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA), the limiters will use GPS data and/or traffic sign recognition cameras to determine the speed limit of the road a vehicle is travelling on. Engine power will then be limited to match this, preventing the car from exceeding the speed limit. It will be possible to override the system by pushing hard on the throttle, however the system will be engaged every time a car is started.

DISCUSSION (26)

ttyymmnn > Thunder
02/25/2019 at 11:33

Begin rioting now.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > Thunder
02/25/2019 at 11:33

“ part of a proposal from the European Transport Safety Council, recently approved by a group of key MEPs”

Seems like it’s got a way to go before it’s law.

vondon302 > Thunder
02/25/2019 at 11:35

Fight the future!

The Crazy Kanuck; RIP Oppositelock > Thunder
02/25/2019 at 11:37

One more thing for tuners to defeat.

facw > Thunder
02/25/2019 at 11:37

So this doesn’t seem to be quite what that article makes it out to be. From ETSC :

Members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) voted today to approve a range of new vehicle safety standards initially proposed by the European Commission in May last year. The measures include new crash testing requirements, mandatory installation of driver assistance systems including Automated Emergency Braking (AEB) with pedestrian and cyclist detection, overridable Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) and Emergency Lane Keeping, as well as a new direct vision standard for lorries and buses to enable drivers to have a better view of other road users around their vehicle.

The requirements also include installation of Event Data Recorders, which record critical information on the status of a vehicle in the moments before a collision and, as in the aviation sector, could help crash investigators understand the causes of collisions in order to help prevent them in the future.

Note that this is Intelligent Speed Assistance, which is a bit different than a limiter. More importantly, note that it is overridable . If not overridden , they way it is supposed to work is to use computer vision and GPS combined with speed limit maps to determine the local speed limit and limit power to cars trying to exceed it. This is better than a traditional dumb limiter in that wouldn’t limit speed on unlimited sections of the Autobahn, but would keep someone from doing 60 in a 15 (or whatever the kph equivalent is) . Still, it does depend on reasonable limits being set (I don’t know if Europe is better about this than the US), and you can imagine some circumstances where going over the limit might be necessary regardless to avoid a collision in an emergency.

The loggers are no big deal, most cars have these already.

Spanfeller is a twat > Thunder
02/25/2019 at 11:41

Meh.... most roads I travel in Spain have irrealistically high speed limits except the highways, which is what this device is for.

You don’t care if a B road has a 90kmh speed limit cus five cars use it everyday, a highway on the other hand, with hundreds of thousands of cars.... limiters could be a very good safety feature, cus cars do 160 if there’s no cameras and trucks can’t do above 100 because of the existing logging machines: it’s an accident waiting to happen and speed diference is the real killer.

For Sweden > Thunder
02/25/2019 at 11:44

RIP European Union

facw > The Crazy Kanuck; RIP Oppositelock
02/25/2019 at 11:46

The proposed legislation has the ISA be overridable, so there shouldn’t be anything for tuners to do (unless they do something dumb like require it to be overriden each time you start the car).

fintail > Thunder
02/25/2019 at 11:48

Faceless overpaid untouchable bureaucrats in Brussels and Strasbourg are every bit as productive and lovable as those in DC, this will be fine.

Nick Has an Exocet > facw
02/25/2019 at 11:50

I wish the article considered security. For people concerned about privacy, they sure don’t care much about hacking. What are the odds that these things will be secure? I’m sure they’ll be on the CAN bus along with the car’s Wifi and that every company will buy them from the same Chinese manufacturer so they’ll all have the same security flaws. Not to mention that eventually, someone will build in an override for law enforcement to slow you down.

Also, have you been on any of these digitally controlled speed-changing roads? The number of times I’ve been in Glasgow and it’s 100% traffic free but the digital road signage has been turned down to 45mph is ridiculous. The trade off here (a ton of time lost - even if it’s just a fraction of a percent, for almost zero practical benefit) is nuts.

For Sweden > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com
02/25/2019 at 11:54

Does MEP rhyme with Jeep or with prep?

facw > Nick Has an Exocet
02/25/2019 at 11:55

So it’s estimated that ISA will save 1300 lives annually in the EU, which is probably more than 0 practical benefit (I don’t know exactly how lives lost vs. time wasted by going slower vs. time wasted waiting for accidents that would be prevented vs. other accident costs plays out, but it seems very likely there’s a net benefit).

But yeah, obviously with fixed or variable speed limits, you want your speed limit to be appropriate to the road, the traffic, to pedestrian and cyclist activity, and to modern cars.

From a security standpoint, I do think a lot of the V2V/smart sign/etc. technologies seem like they are being designed in a manner that seems hopelessly naive, and way to non-adversarial. I don’t think just having this limiter makes much difference though, modern cars have tons of drive by wire systems, and if they can hack you through wifi or whatever, they can exploit that to do whatever they want, whether you have one of these limiters or not (the limiter might make it easier to stop the car, but there’s no reason to believe they couldn’t do that anyway). I don’t see much problem with giving the police the ability to override the limiter, as long as that back door is well secured, and there’s accountability for abuse (I realize both those things are suspect). I don’t see it as much different than allowing them to pull over cars. In any event, that’s not part of the proposed legislation .

Ash78, voting early and often > For Sweden
02/25/2019 at 12:02

MEParation H: It soothes the Nanny State butthurt

Nick Has an Exocet > facw
02/25/2019 at 12:29

I would love to know how they came up with that number. It seems like a continuation of trying to use overreaching technology to treat distracted driving.

I’m not happy accepting this trade-off and would be vehemently against it in the US.

If I were to play the “statistics can tell any story you want” game:
Not to be indelicate, but the “ U.S. Office of Management and Budget puts the value of a human life in the range of $7 million to $9 million”. Let’s say it’s $8M. Assuming that it’s only killing children (that number draws down as you age), it’s $10.4B worth of lives saved per year. 15,631,687 new cars were registered in Europe in 2017. Let’s say this device costs $100 to put in cars (device is probably less, but development/integration cost will be high and probably redone for each new platform). $1.56B is your device cost. The average commute time in Europe is 38 minutes. Around 40% of workers in Europe commute by car. There are 227 million workers in the EU. Now this last bit is the hardest to quantify. If everyone’s commute gains 1 minute and the average worker’s time is worth $ 10.80 per hour, the economy could (and this is probably the wrong way to do it) lose $41M per day. That’s $14.9B/yr. Add device cost to time loss, and you get $ 14 .7 B/year. That mean’s you’re overpaying by $ 4.3B per year.

Nick Has an Exocet > facw
02/25/2019 at 12:29

I would love to know how they came up with that number. It seems like a continuation of trying to use overreaching technology to treat distracted driving.

boredalways > Thunder
02/25/2019 at 12:42

“It will be possible to override the system by pushing hard on the throttle”

Translation: driver’s of the European Union will become world champions at laying elevens.

facw > Nick Has an Exocet
02/25/2019 at 12:43

You are of course skipping that there are lots of costs associated with crashes beyond the loss of life. Even just from a time loss perspective, consider how even a single crash can snarl a roadway at rush hour. But regardless, a detailed examination would be needed (and the EU may have done that. Here’s a relevant looking document, though I haven’t had a chance to read it: https://publications.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/77990533-9144-11e7-b92d-01aa75ed71a1 )

When you talk about treating distracted driving, do you have a better solution? Obviously technological measures like cell phone jammers are no good. Tougher traditional enforcement would be unpopular and arbitrary since most people still wouldn’t be caught. Using computer vision to identify people on their phones and fine everyone might work, but yeah, that’s going to piss off more people than this. Revoking licenses is excessively punitive , and would hurt people’s ability to work. And of course all of that supposes that distracted driving is the overwhelming cause of crashes, which seems unlikely to be true (we had plenty of crashes before smart phones, and while there are other distractions, there’s no question that that’s a major source of distracted driving).

promoted by the color red > Thunder
02/25/2019 at 12:55

It’s political lip service.

Fuckkinja > Thunder
02/25/2019 at 15:54

GM has had On Star to limit speed and ignition disable since 2010. Ford has My Key.

The tin foil hat people like myself are stuck driving old rusty vehicles. That said, I should start building custom faraday cages for new cars.

gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee > Fuckkinja
02/25/2019 at 17:27

One of the many reasons newer cars don’t much appeal to me. I wouldn’t consider myself particularly tin foil hattish, but I don’t really see an advantage in having all systems of a car connected to a central hub somewhere, even inside the car, let alone several thousand miles away. Or remote or even local systems that can disable critical functions of a vehicle. Or stuff that doesn't turn off when you shut the car off, so you can't leave your car parked somewhere for a while (like say a trailhead for a week) and then have it guaranteed to start when you get back. I'm more cynical myself than paranoid I think... Any system that has the capacity to disable your vehicle can and will malfunction and disable your vehicle at the least convenient moment.

Fuckkinja > gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee
02/25/2019 at 18:45

My biggest problem with the restricting tech is paying $50k for a vehicle than basically asking permission to use the vehicle on their terms.

My tin foil hat became useless when I bought an IPhone.

gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee > Fuckkinja
02/25/2019 at 21:25

There’s that too. So many garbage features I don’t want to pay for doing things I don’t want to have happen. And now they’re legislating them in place. Backup cameras are now mandatory, meaning were forced into a dumb screen taking up real estate on the dash with a backlight that doesn’t shut off reducing your ability to see out the windows and unnecessarily fatiguing your eyes with pulse-width modulated dimming. I’m not opposed to backup cameras per se, just the dumb things that happen because the automaker can’t handle just having a blank screen so it gets used for sound system , HVAC countries, etc.

Also I’ m still running iOS 9, so... yeah. Tracking still happens but when I hear about what “ features” have been incorporated in 11, and 12, I feel much happier about my decision to ignore the update prompts. Not all updates are upgrades.

Fuckkinja > gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee
02/25/2019 at 21:45

Most countries drive our old tech or donkeys.

Fully updated iPhone unfortunately

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > For Sweden
02/25/2019 at 23:09

Rhymes with STD.

pip bip - choose Corrour > Thunder
02/26/2019 at 04:15

IF introduced, how long before someone comes up with a way to defeat them?

a day or two?

pip bip - choose Corrour > For Sweden
02/26/2019 at 04:16

hopefully