It seems that no matter how often we are told, we just don't learn. Speed Kills, OK? Yet for some reason we take our many years of prang-free motoring – including those frequent excursions into the forbidden world of speeds beyond the legal limits – as proof enough that, in the right circumstances, there is no added danger to be had in making a little better progress than the rules say we should. Fools! We just don't know what's good for us! Fortunately, the ever-caring Department for Transport does.
As you may have read on the news pages at PistonHeads, later this year a small group of motorists are set to get a taste of a possible future where private cars vehemently obey the speed limit of whichever stretch of road they happen to be on. The External Vehicle Speed Control trial will involve twenty volunteers, each of whom will be given the keys to their own Skoda Fabia fitted with just such a limiter.
The alarm bells are ringing already, right? No, not the Skoda bit, but that word "volunteers". Who in their right mind would volunteer to drive around in a speed limited vehicle, putting themselves at the mercy of other traffic travelling at speeds, by and large, appropriate for the conditions? People lacking comfortable/reliable/modern/any transport of their own, perhaps? Or, just maybe, individuals wishing to ensure that this trial has a certain outcome.
I know I should have more faith in the integrity of good research, but it's hard not to be cynical when you've read that a survey conducted as an earlier part of this study found that, on average, drivers are willing to pay £145 per annum each to have "speed cameras everywhere", and £148 per annum each to have speed limiters fitted to everything. Conduct a quick poll at your workplace tomorrow and see if you can achieve similar results. If you can, you work for Brake.
But I guess we just have to trust that the 20 lab rats have been properly vetted for impostors. If they have, then there should be nothing stopping them from going on to faithfully exhibit the wonderful side-effects of the speed limiter: increased frustration, less consideration given to safe braking distances, an inclination to keep it nailed against the limiter where it might be prudent to ease off a little.
And that's before you start thinking through the many "what if" scenarios... You're in the outside lane, having passed 16 of the 22 wheels of an articulated lorry, when it unexpectedly indicates right and makes a move towards your passenger door. Where you would once have instinctively accelerated to safety, you now find yourself with no choice but to brake violently in an attempt to drop back the entire length of the lorry, all the while praying for quick reactions from the following drivers tailgating at the exact same 70mph, as enforced by their own concentration suffocating limiters.
Sure, some kind of emergency override is a possibility, but what's to stop the driver overriding it all the time, taking us right back to square one? Even restricting the number of overrides per time or distance unit is an accident waiting to happen in the hands of the careless or the reckless who find their quota used up at the very moment when they really need it. Just watch those "no win – no fee" ads make the leap from daytime TV into primetime slots.
But even if the nightmare does become a reality, it's not all bad news. The technology – a GPS receiver and an electronic map working in perverse harmony – is not rocket science. Not that it would matter if it were, because everyone knows that when it comes to unravelling a microchip puzzle the best brains don't work for NASA, usually because they haven't even finished high school yet.
"Unlimited speed" would soon become the second most popular search on Google as every other website hosted outside the participating nations offered cracked speed data downloadable at the click of a mouse button. After all, what would be the chances of you being caught? About as likely as you are to be caught speeding today. Probably less, in fact, as fixed cameras and mobile traps on those old urban favourites would soon be rendered ineffective by the do-gooder heading up every pack of cars, bang on the limit.
Even if the seemingly impossible is achieved, and a means of making speed limiters compulsory is found that doesn't contain more holes than a slice of gruyère, there will still be a silver lining: with speed tamed, when those annual accident statistics are totted up and found to have not shifted one iota there might – finally – be some time and money spent tackling all the other far more significant causes of accidents that have remained completely overlooked for so long. Only then, ironically, would speed limiters have helped to save lives.
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