Mandatory speed limiters on EU cars from 2024

After living for 15 years in the Middle East and frequently traveling to other countries around the world, including the US, Egypt, Thailand, and more, I trust European traffic and car regulators and their policies 100%. Landing back in my home country in Europe makes me marvel at how fast, yet safe and organized, the traffic is.

So, I am pretty sure this system will be effective in the long run. Right now, it just seems like a trial, which may require fine-tuning, but fast forward a few years, and everyone will be completely accustomed to it.

I hope that a device that prevents people from tapping on their phones while driving will also be made and become mandatory. I see people doing that literally every single day, and it's proven it can kill people (because it did actually happen). And those who do, they are not driving fancy cars with some limited self-driving capability, just regular cars that you need to actually drive.

The article seems to mix up several systems.

On the one hand, there's the limiter set by the driver (that you can override by pushing the pedal down hard), which is usually activated by the same lever or buttons as cruise control but works differently - you accelerate to 50mph in a 50 zone, activate the limiter, and the car will not accelerate above that limit. You can just push the gas pedal down and hold your speed as long as the road is free.

The other system is the sign detection (sometimes GPS assisted) which displays a limit sign on your dashboard and beeps at you if you go over it. My experiences as a passenger in the UK in a 2016 registration car:

  - It does not recognise that "chopsticks" (start of motorway) raises the limit to 70 mph unless stated otherwise.
  - It does not recognise a National Speed Limit sign built into an "end of roadworks" sign (which is the normal UK way to end a roadworks-based speed restriction on a motorway).
  - When one lane is out for works, there's usually big 60 (sometimes 50) signs for the cars and a very small 15 sign for the works vehicles. Sometimes, the camera picks up the 15 sign and beeps at you about that. 

I don't know if the technology has got better since. Maybe we can use AI or something.

Speed limiters? I think I'm gonna keep my 12 year old do-whatever-you-want mad max driving machine as long as humanly possible.

Everywhere I’ve driven people go ~10% above the limit because everyone knows the speedometer isn’t accurate (confirmed by those radar stations that report your speed live). Will this limiter use the true speed or the car's reported speed?

I fear we will see many more overtakes as this limiter makes its way onto the roads.

Could be very unsafe if this kicks in unexpectedly during an overtaking manoeuvre on a single carriageway. Less speed during the overtake is less margin to oncoming traffic (more time spent in the oncoming lane), and a small speed difference can have a big effect.

Edit: another comment mentioned merging- this too can be huge. If your car isn't keeping up with the flow of traffic, or unable to move faster, that could also directly cause accidents if there's a space in front but no space behind.

I can think of so many ways this can go terribly wrong, for little to no pay off.

If they ever attempt this in America looks like I’ll be driving older vehicles for the rest of my life.

Edit: looks like it’s a warning not a limiter - so that’s still just as silly, it’s not going to really stop anyone from speeding, it’s just going to become another annoying non-feature of new cars that everyone hates like auto start-stop.

In addition to Intelligent Speed Assistance the same regulation mandates automakers to equip cars with "black boxes" akin to those in planes. On the other hand, I could not find anything in there saying that manufacturers will have only four options to inform the driver about speeding, this must come from somewhere else (hard to say from the article almost without references).

beeps when you turn the corner. beeps when you change lanes. beeps when you take your hands off the wheel. beeps when the engine starts. beeps when you open the door with the engine running. beeps when you don't have your seatbelt on before the engine is started. beeps when you open the trunk. beeps when you close the trunk. beeps when you stop the engine and it's not in neutral. beeps when you drive with something heavy resting on the back seats.

i guess i won't notice these beeps when you speed too much.

My understanding was that some sort of warning system was mandatory, but that physical speed limitation is not. (Edit: it does clarify this in the article—not sure how I missed that)

In any case: I hate this. Having an intuitive understanding of the handling characteristics of your vehicle is critical to driving safely, and if you go to overtake someone or try to merge, only to discover that the car isn’t accelerating because it’s decided the speed limit is lower than it is, accidents will happen.

I have an older Civic which will read road signs but doesn’t do anything but display them on the dash—and thank god, because it’s constantly getting it wrong.

Modern cars have so many beeps and bongs and touch controls that I can’t help wonder if the extra distraction is a net negative. It’s also a bit of a trope that the various lane keep assist features on modern cars will repeatedly try to drive you into a hedge or oncoming traffic the second you take them on a twisty British country road.

It’s quite common for motoring enthusiasts to tune ECUs for performance; I suspect hacking the thing to make them remember that you’ve turned them off will be equally popular.

It will stop you from exceeding speed limits based on gps or cameras reading speed limit signs.

Can disable with a hard acceleration or disable each time you start driving with a button press.

In my area, everyone goes about 10mph above the limit. Police don’t ticket.

Will this system limit exactly at the speed limit? Or will it have some buffer threshold?

This seems like pretty bad tech that I don’t want. And the way it’s written seems very gaslighty… “ the speed limiter technology is simply there to prevent ‘momentary lapses of concentration’ that could result in speeding”

I don’t think my speeding is the result of momentary lapses of concentration, but calculated decisions about immediate road conditions or long term travel goals (eg, if I go 9 over the limit on a 10 hour trip, it reduces the trip by an hour).

A sound alert is fine.

Any actual interference with driving will not prevent, but cause, accidents.

An example of this would be resistance on the pedal causing added latency on acceleration attempt.

I have a so-called "intelligent speed limited" in my 2 year old car.

It's absolutely terrible.

On the highway it picks up the 50km/h panel intended for the bus lanes.

Close to where I live it hallucinates a 5km/h limit.

In random places it will miss limitations.

Right now it simply decreases engine power. On a highway that's already dangerous enough. Can't wait till they use the same visual/audio warnings as they do for the pre-collision assistant...

By the way, that's bullshit too. Triggering for no good reason and scary enough to take my eyes off the road. Love it.

I hope there is some kind of emergency override, like applying full accelerator input, to get out of danger spots. (Edit: article says it would indeed have this)

> The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has said the move will reduce collisions by 30%.

At least they have given an almost measurable outcome. If only they would choose some measurable metric that had a clear cause and effect and link the legislation to scientific outcomes.

Unlike the other bullshit statement "The European Commission has said the speed limiters could prevent 140,000 serious road traffic injuries"...

Dangerous drivers speed. Reducing top speeds should prevent some serious crashes, but I am curious whether it would be as effective as hoped. And sure as shit it is nobodies job to check reality against hopes.

That means that the Northern Ireland will be united with Ireland. That's really good news. It's long time overdue.

It is set by .. . The driver???

Next step: have a speed tracker on the car that will report speeding straight to the cops, no need for them to see you with a radar or anything like that.

In general there's lots of politicians and "administrators" who salivate at tech like this that constrain people and make them manageable. I find these attempts very undignified and totalitarian.

I'm hoping backstreet reprogrammers will be able to patch the ECUs to ignore this tosh. I'm the person best placed to decide how fast I drive.