Time to map out a plan for Villa's future
- Says blogger Matthew Turvey
Cruise control can help to avoid fines
Tuesday 6th January 2009, 9:13AM GMT.
Experts are predicting that fitting speed limiters to cars will save lives.
While excessive speed certainly contributes to many accidents, a method of rigidly fixing the maximum speed of a vehicle has one serious drawback.
If you accelerate to pass a slower vehicle there are many times when you need to continue accelerating in order to safely pull back in, which would not be possible if a limiter was fitted.
I have a car fitted with a selectable speed limiter and at first thought this was a wonderful way not to exceeding the speed limit. Just set it at the applicable speed and drive normally. This is fine until you require a little more speed to avoid a situation and find that the car just won’t go any faster.
It very much depends on what speed is chosen as the maximum, but I prefer to use my cruise control, set at the prevailing limit, to avoid a speeding ticket.
This way, should you need to accelerate to avoid the unexpected, you always have the option. Full control of the vehicle is maintained as braking automatically disengages the cruise control. Current technology has given us satellite navigation, with all its shortcomings, which is capable of indicating the applicable speed limit.
I am sure that the next logical step is for this information to be used by the vehicle to adjust its speed.
However, this must only be done in such a way that the driver has ultimate control and responsibility for the vehicle.
John Harris, Chester Road South, Kidderminster.
Sponsored Links
Business Awards
Read the full story here
Full coverage of awards celebrating the region's best businesses.
Lifestyle
Interactive Dining Out map
Hundreds of reviews by the Express & Star and Shropshire Star's teams to help you decide where to eat.
LIVE traffic updates
Road, rail and airport - latest
Our new, live traffic and travel updates service - check before you set out.
OUR NEW APP
Get the new E&S app
Download the Express & Star’s new app to your iPad or iPhone to get one week of access to our digital newspapers absolutely FREE.
expressandstar.com
Popular sections
Useful links
I’d be happier that the driver has ultimate control and responsibility over their vehicle if more actually did so in a safe manner.
I agree that sometimes, such as overtaking, you need to do so quickly to do so in a safe manner. Which is where limiters can have a problem.
No easy solution. Any idiot proof solution can only work until a better group of idiots are on the roads.
Changing what cars can do will only go so far so long as humans continue to be the ones driving.
Report abuse
If speed limiters are voluntary, then the kind of people who don’t care about breaking speed limits are also the people who won’t want to have a speed limiter fitted.
Easier would be to make roads narrower, close more and more roads and let congestion control speeds. That gives drivers the incentives to get out of their cars and take a train, or just to move nearer to their place of work, or work nearer where they live.
Technological innovations designed to change behaviour are usually expensive and inefficient, and end up creating perverse outcomes that can’t be predicted. Same with satellite controlled congestion charging – why bother when it’s far more effective to simply push up fuel duty, impose massive rises on car parking charges and using that revenue to subsidise public transport fares.
Report abuse
Rebecca you talk tosh-you obviously don’t own a car! Car drivers subsidise you and the rest who don’t drive cars every move in life including the roads buses drive on. We pay enough already and its great sitting in conjestion just to get to your job and earn a living to pay taxes to keep the country going and the roads!Lets push interest rates up and the prices in the shops may be that will help create a better public transport system-oh but that affects all of us and not just drivers doesn’t it rebecca my dear? Car drivers pay enough already and they need full control what a load of crap about limiters-actually lorries already have them so it ain’t new is it? Take a train rebecca-yeah- right, have you caught the virgin train today or even yesterday? Try it , their not running due to this countries inability to cope with a bit of snow. Thats where extra revenue should also go into training people to handle bad weather conditions in a professional manner instead of panicking and causing more conjestion.
Report abuse
This makes you laugh – as if you could actually build any form of significant speed between say, Dudley and Great Bridge. It’s not so much how fast people are driving on main roads around these areas..it’s the way they drive and the sheer volume of traffic that creates the problem. It’s pity the council doesn’t put as much focus on this seemingly relentless nightmare as it does say, erecting speed camera’s and speed humps – to the point where you ask yourself why you continue to live here and put up with it.
Report abuse
rebbeca – wake up to the real world. you do talk tosh. Give me 350k and i will buy a basement close to where i work, get me a job closer to where i live that pays what i get now.. NO you cant do it can you. Why dont you drive a train at 3am to get me to work oh and make sure you pick me up outside my house. I like driving as it gives me more time with my children whom are my responsability and then i go work and travel 60miles….
Report abuse
Rebecca! there are indeed times when you do talk a lot of “Tosh” …… but not this time!…..
When are you car drivers/owners going to get it through your skulls that you are the problem! ….. and in ever increasing numbers! …… sheer volume is what is the problem! …… and the regaining of an efficient mass transit method is the answer ……… there was once the most comprehensive rail network in the World in Britain and it was destroyed by the very objects of your affection that you use today and the powerful lobby of the trucking industry sooner or later you are going to be bought kicking and screaming back to it or perish eventually in the Mass Commute! ………………
Report abuse
No woolibugga car drivers are not the only problem. Your correct we used to have a great transport net work but it wasn’t just cars that destroyed it. It was consecutive bad governments and privatisation of the railways. It would be nice to to have a mass transport system that worked, but i’m afraid thats not going to happen with governments relying on oil for our economic wealth. We all will perish if we loose the trucking industry and i’m afraid you’ll be screaming with us when your fighting for what little foods available on the shelves when our lorries and cars go. Nope the car is hear to stay and yes conjestion will get worse before it gets better if ever.
Report abuse
The car is here to stay because it is convenient.
Pumping up fuel duty and road tax doesn’t seem to have stopped many from using cars.
Now if only we can stop people talking on the mobile in one hand while trying to drink a coffee with the other (seen someone doing that in Walsall last week) while also driving.
Banning mobile phones while driving seems to be ignored even more than the speed limit is.
Report abuse
chrisc! …. my comments were meant to illustrate the fact that from the early Fifties the Great God Kar rose to its ascendancy and created such a shortfall in the revenues of the Railway companies that the actions of those Blind Stupid Governments that you refer to were made all the easier! …… add to this equation the vested interests of elements within those same Governments that saw a chance to usurp the Railway Companies of the lucrative movement of heavy payloads and to transfer that to road infrastructure with obvious advantage to themselves.
After the grouping in 1922 there emerged a much improved rail infrastructure with respect to both Payload and Mass People transport and each Company had its own intergrated road transport system for the short haul.
Apply this using Modern Technology and it can happen again with the bonus of reducing long haul HGV traffic usage on the road infrastructure.
What is needed is to remove the Greed of the vested interests and a modicum of willingness to make it happen! …….. and nobody will be forced to fight for food! …… and perhaps England will be once again “A Green and Pleasent Land”………………
Report abuse
England will only be a green and plesant land if we stop building poxy micro homes all over anything that can photosynthesize.
Report abuse
Sam – and cut the population by say 55 million too?
Seems like always a shortage of housing, especially with a lack of new build these days.
Population is a bit more than it was a couple of hundred years ago.
Report abuse
Don’t think theres a shortage of housing. I think its a shortage of money to buy them at the moment. Plenty of new build vacant properties by me.
Report abuse