Safe Speed Forums

Just to let you know that insanity with regards to speeding is not confined to the UK........this is from a local paper.
(http://www.stuff.co.nz/4349063a28.html)


Big Brother speed control may hit Aust, NZ


The Victorian and Queensland governments are evaluating a device that can automatically slow a speeding car using satellite technology.


The Australasian Intelligent Speed Adaptation initiative could be trialled in Victoria, the Herald Sun reported today.

All states and territory governments and the New Zealand government have been in talks to introduce of the system.

Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon, several Victorian ministers, a former Victorian coroner and 45 other participants would be the first to try the speed reduction system, the report said.

Other trials are planned this year in NSW and Western Australia, the report said.

The technology uses GPS and a database that identifies speed limits on all roads and operates on three levels.

Drivers get an audible warning they are over the limit at level one.

At level two, the device cuts power to the engine to prevent the driver from speeding, but the system can be adjusted or overridden.

At level three, the system cannot be switched off or adjusted and all speeding is cut.

The device could be fitted to repeat speeding offenders, or to all vehicles.

A spokeswoman for Roads Minister Tim Pallas would not confirm any trial, but Queensland Transport Minister John Mickel said his government was involved in the talks.

"Technology is evolving all the time with these things, and my view with road safety is to see what the latest technology is and see if we can improve safety.

Queensland Transport vehicle safety consultant Michael Paine said the system could cut the number of serious accidents by 20 per cent.

The Herald Sun quoted an unnamed Victorian government website, which estimated the number of fatalities could be cut by almost 60 per cent if it was fitted to all cars.

The system would cost between $A700 and $A2000 per vehicle and would first be fitted to fleet cars, the Herald Sun said.

So, if 60% of fatalities occur in 20% of the speed related accidents?, wouldn't efforts to resolve the real causes of those 20% be more beneficial to road safety?

Yeek!
I wonder where they insert it.

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Andrew.

I'd LOVE this to happen - sooner the better! (no I haven't "defected")! I just think that as soon as this gets tried and proved not to deliver, the sooner we can move on. The problem will be the same as it is here though. "it's not working! - well, that's because there aren't enough of them". Nothing scares a government more than seing another government booted out of office for trying something similar to what they've always wanted to do!

Just when I was thinking NZ looked like a nice place to live.

Same place they've inserted the "speed kills" device in Govt ministers some where that's kept at constant temperature (like an egg),and where the Government "safety experts " all talk out of , i presume.

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

I'll wait for the [inevitable] time when el-crooks develop a device to turn off someones engine and then rob [or worse] them.

What a fantastic idea! Well, no.

Here are two scenarios which means this idea is dead in the water: Illustrated by two imaginary headlines

1) Woman and newborn infant die at roadside after "safety device" cuts engine of husband's car. Government murdered my family" accuses grieving husband.

2) Fleet car driver and 20 others killed after M-Way pile-up caused when safety device cuts fleet car engine. "Utter carnage!" reveals police officer.

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www.thatsnews.org.uk / www.thatsnews.blogspot.com / http://thatsmotoring.blogspot.com/

Hasn't stopped them letting white vans/HATO sit on top of motorway bridges.
Nor has it stopped the dubious parking of SCP vans ---the answer IMHO will be "all in the name of road safety "(and yes I think the idea ,if brought out ,stinks )

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

can't see where in the original article this is mentioned or even implied

On a related note, I was reading an article about the new Nissan GT-R. Apparently the Japanese version is electrically limited to 112mph (as all Japanese cars are) but if the GPS determines that you are not on a public road (it's unclear if this is known racetracks or unknown roads) then this restriction is removed.

I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I suppose it's good that it's removing a restriction that would have been in place anyway, but it's bad that the technology has gotten that far. It would not be too hard for that ECU to be flashed with ISA software.

I can see GPS jammers becoming more common, if not a device to generate fake GPS signals altogether. Assuming that you can't just disconnect the thing.

Someone has already made a small device to generate fake GPS data, I believe over a serial line which you can attach to the box they give you for 'road pricing' logging.

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Andrew.

Well I know nothing about the technical aspects of this, but as far as I'm concerned there is no way this abominable scheme should be allowed to be implemented here.

This is not the way to make meaningful improvements in our road safety performance. It is by no means clear that it would yield a benefit in road safety, and it might even have the reverse effect in some ways. Once again it relates only to the matter of speed, and as such it is self-evidently a singularly ineffective way of achieving better safety.

Instead of this sort of nonsense we must have a policy whereby the government talks to, or talks with, the driving community, not talks at us, constantly imposing or threatening further constraints and penalties.

We need to acknowledge that all things considered the road using population is not doing badly, and it now deserves some recognition of this before we promptly move on to a campaign of support, encouragement and education, following which I think we could very soon find we're doing quite a bit better in safety terms.

We need a properly organised campaign that reminds all road user groups of the key elements of safe behaviour. This campaign should start as soon as possible and be a continuing feature of government/road user communications. There are plenty of people around who could play a constructive part in this, but unfortunately they seem to be mostly outside government circles. They need to be inside the government machine, or at least closely associated with it and effective, instead of some of the deadbeats already in there.

Best wishes all,
Dave.

"At level two, the device cuts power to the engine..." - it's about halfway through.

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Chris

Oh that's really easy to do. I have a piece of software to do that which I use for testing navigation software and similar from the comfort of my computer room. I would expect that the road pricing box would have it's own internal GPS receiver and just an external antenna though, so you'd have to fake it at the analogue signal level rather than just sending it a pre-recorded NMEA stream over the serial port.

Awful, awful idea / concept.

I refer you to http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16665
as just one example of non-fatal near misses that could have had disastrous consequences if such a system was in place. Imagine if you were overtaking one of the "I travel 50mph everywhere but overtaking is evil so I will accelerate to stop you" brigade as well as a "I'll close the gap so you can't get back in if you need to" club and this happened. You'd be hung out to die on the wrong side of the road without the means to accelerate to safety. Likewise, on slip roads and merging on motorways. Just yesterday I found myself having to rapidly accelerate up to speeds that would have seen my engine cut off as a vehicle pulled out in front of me. It was safer to pull into L3 and get up to speed to avoid traffic coming up behind than it was to slam all on in L2.

Like Mole said though, the sooner this happens and fails the better. Although, obviously not with loss of life.

I'm becoming increasingly worried about some "safety" technologies. For example, the new Volvo advert where the driver can safely not bother to look at the road because of the technology. "In recent years, Volvo Car Corporation has concentrated their safety development on systems that help the driver read surrounding traffic." We all have FREE collision detection devices. EYES.

I can see where you're coming from but I read this as 'reducing power'....because the full quote is:

and is followed by:

So, if 'Level 2' cuts out the engine, how can it be over-ridden (short of restarting) - and why, then, is there a need for Level 3 (which doesn't mention cutting power but cuts speeding)?

To immobilise the vehicle at speed would be the antithesis of improving safety - exactly as freddieflintoff describes above

Cheers "FreddieFlintoff2005" someone who is talking common sense for once as this is the daftest idea that anyone could have come up with

How many times have you come across the "Thou Shalt not pass" idiot who as you say accelerates just to keep you where you were "behind them" and as you say you have to speed up to get past just to get yourself out of a tight spot (I call it Self Preservation) and if some idiot of a despot in this govnmt. says it is the right way to go then we might as well all stop driving and go back to horse and carts for transport but then we will have the anti horse brigade saying horses can be startled and should be left in the stables

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"There But For The Grace of God Go I"

"He Who Ain,t Made Mistakes Ain,t Made Anything"

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