Safe Speed Forums

The spread of speed cameras forces law abiding drivers to spend more time looking down at their speedometer and scanning the sides of the road for speed limit changes. It’s hard to say for sure that this distracts attention from other road hazards but given the steep and non-discretionary penalties involved watching the speedo is now a high priority for many drivers.

Hang on though -- isn’t this exactly the sort of thing that some new fangled gadget should take care of for us? Couldn’t out GPS navigation system give us a discreet ping or even vibrate the accelerator pedal when we are exceeding the limit for the road we are on?

The answer is yes and no. The technology could do it – and do it cheaply. (There are already GPS devices that provide warnings about speed cameras and safety black spots.) But there is a problem -- there is no coordinated record of the speed limits of all the roads in the UK. The data is held by all the individual local highway authorities and there is no central record for the whole country.

Pulling this data together isn’t totally trivial because the different highway authorities use different systems but it also doesn’t seem like it would above the abilities of half a dozen good computer science graduates. It certainly seems worth the effort in order to allow law abiding citizens to remain law abiding without taking their eyes off the road to check their speedometer every few seconds.

If you agree, then you please sign the ePetition with the government at: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/SPEEDAUTOPILOT/

Given that we have over a hundred different highway authorities, many of whom don't seem to know what the speed limits are on their own roads, this would prove rather more complicated than it might at first appear.

There are also a fair number of roads where the speed limit is genuinely ambiguous (for example, when does a central island become a central reservation and thus produce a dual carriageway).

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

There are also issues with....

Variable speed limits (M42, school zones etc)
road works (temp speed limits)
Accuracy of GPS where you have roads near to each other, slip roads etc
GPS blind spots (hills, tunnels, tall buildings etc)

and they are just limitations on the technology, then you have the "human" element in charge of it all.............

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Speed camera policy Kills

This is exactly what the Government want to do after they introduce road pricing - not to help drivers but instead to fine them. Let's not encourage them.

In any event, use of eyes is a pretty good speed limit indicator most of the time and what about he confusion which will inevitably occur when the GPS and eyes disagree.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

Agreed – there is some work to do. On the other hand at least this would make the highway authorities get their act together and put a stake in ground on the ambiguous areas. Even if there are some ambiguous areas with more than one possible option for a limit the database could hold the lowest limit (or maybe several limits for that section of road).

When it comes down to it I suspect there are a lot of people that don’t mind following the law as long as they are given the tools to do so safely. A central, publicly available, golden database of clearly stated speed limits for each section of road seems like a reasonable tool to ask for.

The down side for the government is that income from speed cameras would drop because less people would make mistakes but if road safety is the real issue (as opposed to generation of extra income) then here is an opportunity to demonstrate it.

So there are a couple of other things that might be worth a thought –

* Making this database public means that users can load it into their own GPS units and the GPS units does the speed comparison i.e. individual users have control over the data relating to them. This helps to avoid the need for a big brother speed monitoring network by keeping the data in the hands of the individual.

* In order to improve safety the unit only has to work for the majority of the time – that way the majority of the time the driver is 100% focused on the road. As long as there is a clear indication when it is not active (e.g. when entering a tunnel) the driver can pay extra attention to speed for a short time. On average, safety is improved.

* A similar thing can be said for variable speed limits and road works – the driver has to respond the unusual conditions but only while they persist – they do not have to continually monitoring the speedometer during all driving.

* According to Wikipedia GPS accuracy is about15 meters but there’s a bit more to it that that – the GPS does not only know where you are it knows where you’ve been so it can figure out which road you are on (otherwise navigation systems would not work either). It makes some assumptions like that your car has not jumped over a barrier on to a slip road but that doesn’t seem unreasonable.

* Eyes are an OK judge of speed but mine at least are not good enough to keep me out of trouble now that the allowable error margin has been dialed down on the cameras.

A while back I did read that the gov't were looking into a national database of speed limits to that various future technologies could be easier to implement. It would be nice if this data was made freely available but I suspect it will be licensed to companies at huge cost.

You see, there you have made the error that being aware of the speed limit, or even obeying it, improves road safety.

Robin, you have completely missed the point.

cdg is suggesting that by not having to continually watch our speedo, so as to avoid a NIP, we would be improving road safety. There was never any suggestion that obeying the speed limit improves road safety.

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Ross

Yes I'm a hoon, but only on the track!!!!

Two comments.

First, I doubt if it will ever happen. The governmen't record on even fairly straightforward IT projects is lamentable. In this case the problems will be compounded by having to integrate almost as many different local authority systems as there are local authorities. Also, given the rate at which local authorities play around with speed limits, it will always be out of date in precisely the areas where we need it to be up to date - where a speed limit has recently been reduced and there is a camera waiting to trap those who were unaware of the fact. No the SCPs wouldn't do a thing like that, would they?

Second, if the OS is anything to go by, getting the information out of them will be rather like sucking blood from a stone. That's if they ever get the thing up and running in the first place.

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Brian

If you want a system like this it is already widely available. Go buy yourself one, I would rather not be forced to pay this extra tax.

If anything it would make the roads more dangerous by re-enforcing the message that the speed limit is a safe speed to drive at no matter what the conditions.

We need to take driver's attention away from the speedometer and put it back where it should be. There is a very simple way to do that without forcing everyone to purchase yet another gadget. Scrap speed cameras.

What a load of tosh!

Would you care to qualify that statement, or are you just planning on popping into threads for nebulous and unsubstantiated snipes?

1. The speed limit gives a maximum speed for the road and it is a statutory requirement and responsibilty of you as a driver to not travel at an appropriate speed NOT exceeding it. [1]

2. It is set by qualified people who determine the most appropriate value after risk assessments.

3. The Joksch curve tells us with some consistency the probability of death at certain impact speeds. [2]

4. The faster you are travelling means you will require further to stop and the energy expended in the collision will be greater. [3]

It is therefore deduced that by travelling above the speed limit, you are:

* Increasing potential risk by operating outside the design parameters of the system
* Contributing to an inconsistent environment

The key fact is:

* Reducing your chances of stopping if, for example a vehicle pulls out in front of you, a pedestrian steps out from behind parked cars, a dog runs out, a child runs into the road after a football. Granted you may still not stop in time, but point #3 tells us that the chances of death are reduced the slower the impact speed.

How's that?

Sources:

[1] Highway Code
[2] http://www.safespeed.org.uk/12mph02.gif
[3] Equations of motion, Conservation of momentum.

What about:

(a) the many documented cases where councillors have imposed "political" limits against the advice of police and professional highways officers, and
(b) the even more numerous cases where blanket policies have been applied across highway authority areas without any attempt at considering locations on a case-by-case basis?

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Where is the evidence that this has occured? I've not seen anything except anecdotal evidence.

I'm quite prepared to agree with you that this should not be the case and that Police and Traffic Engineers should take priority in road safety issues over Councillors.

LAUGHING.MY.ASS.OFF.

What a load of tosh!

By posting that quite ridiculous video, you are clearly an utter moron who has no interest whatsoever in improving road safety.

Tongue in cheek it may be, but can you deny the possibility that some accidents can be avoided by travelling faster instead of/as well as slower. Surely someone who puts such faith in physics as the savior of road safety can appreciate that? "Two objects on non-parallel collision courses will miss one another if the speed of one or other is decreased or increased".

If we are bandying insults, then you sir, are a chronic imbecile! How much longer do you intend to regale us with you dimwittedness in reducing road safety to unquestioning faith in the powers-that-be and the physics of collisions? You continually make a spectacle of yourself with your belligerent manner, but offer no convincing testimony, and close your mind to any points that threaten to shatter your halfwit paradigm!

That will do I think!