Volvo is introducing a 112mph speed limiter to all its new cars
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Of course you're not comfortable driving faster than that in a Honda Fit. That's like saying you're not comfortable going faster than 30 in a golf cart.
In the right car and on the right roads, hitting 120 is as simple and easy as hitting 70 in typical econoboxes. And actually, I'm not even talking about a Porsche 911; more like, every German car, especially Audi/BMW/Merc and up. Effortless is the best word for it, like you push the pedal down and you don't even realize you're in the triple digits because it's so smooth.
But the big problem is the roads and the culture around speed. America doesn't have either of those things, and probably never will.
A culture of safety is not a "big problem" IMO. The "big problem" is that a vehicle at 120mph requires an insane stopping distance.
On dry asphalt:
* 60mph: 172 ft * 120mph: 688 ft
[1] http://forensicdynamics.com/stopping-braking-distance-calcul...
So, take a sporty car with twice the braking performance of a basic car, and you can go 1.44x as fast as the basic car while still having the same stopping distance.
I have a very light car that I use on the track, with an amazing amount of braking for its weight. Full deceleration happens at 2.5g, that's not pleasant. There are also comfort limits here.
https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/best-car-safety-p...
https://fastestlaps.com/lists/top-quickest-stoppers-60mph
That's a pretty good performance (but it's a $100K car), but at 200 km/hr, the stopping distance of the M5 increase to 124m (which makes sense since a 200 km/h car has 4X the kinetic energy of a 100 km/h car)
Once out of the specialty racing cars, all of the cars "faster stoppers" list took about 27m-30m to stop from 100 km/h so that seems about the best that can be achieved today.
German cars are feel AMAZING at high speeds. They're not the only ones, but dollar for dollar its easier to take a German car to 120 than any other nationality. Why? Because they're made to be driven on the Autobahn. They are, all else equal, safer to drive at high speed than American or Japanese cars because Germany has a stronger culture and laws around allowing cars to drive fast.
As we add assistive tech, it becomes safer to take cars this fast. Of course, there's a lot of other things to solve; roads, adoption, etc. And we can't solve the physics of stopping and impact force. But the benefits might outweigh the costs.
But Volvo, if we take them at their word, is saying "we don't care. This is as fast as you can go. Enjoy."
And sure, maybe their speed limit is fast enough. But, really, this move is just posturing. The tangible effect that it will have on vehicle safety likely won't be large; at best, it might stop some dumb kids from taking their dad's car out for a joyride and driving it off a bridge at 130, but its not going to stop them from doing the exact same thing at 100, or even 60 (on some backroads that speed is just as deadly).
When they limit their top speed, what they're also quietly saying "these cars are only engineered to go this fast". That engineering is why German cars are so great to drive in the triple digits. Its not just the platform; Volvo has computerized assistive tech. Is it tested to actually work at triple digits? Probably. Now that they have a corporate-wide mandated speed limit, will they continue to develop and test it at triple digits? I don't know.
And that's the real disappointment. We're now just "alright" with the speed we've always been driving. Cars could become "personal bullet trains". With enough assistive tech, give certified models their own barriered lane and, if the weather conditions permit, let them go 140. But Volvo isn't interested in that future, and that's very sad indeed.
German drivers are simply not like American drivers. American drivers have almost no training at all, and certainly don't have the training or discipline necessary to drive at Autobahn speeds. American drivers can't even practice proper lane etiquette (staying right except to pass), and really don't understand it.
The last thing American roads need is any assumption that American drivers are remotely like German drivers in ability.
Remember, in America, almost everyone drives because there's no public transit in most places, and even where it exists, it's kinda lousy at best. In Germany, it's perfectly possible to get around without a car, unless you're going to small villages or towns or rural places. Because of this, not all Germans drive! It costs a lot of money to get the private training required to obtain a license there, and driver testing is strict. None of this is true in America.
Finally, if you want bullet trains, build bullet trains. Bullet trains are very safe at speed because they're on rails, and are maintained by professionals on a strict schedule. You don't get that with privately-owned vehicles. And cars are horrifically bad for pollution and fuel economy compared to trains when operating at high speeds. We're spewing way too much carbon into the atmosphere as it is. If you want to move people around faster, you need to build the proper infrastructure for this, like the Japanese have with the Shinkansen.
If so, I don't think automotive performance and lack of "smooth feel" at high speed are the things governing our speed limits.
We should be celebrating companies which push the limits of assistive technology to make high speeds safer; this can only be done by companies who optimize around high speeds and have cars on the road gathering data at high speed. This conclusion is evidenced by the fact that similarly priced German and Japanese/American cars drive totally differently at high speeds, because German cars are designed to run at high speeds. The environment and corporate policy matters, a lot.
The reason our speed limits in America are generally low isn't really because of road feel or reliability at speed or any of that. Its more complex. But one step in a positive direction is definitely having more cars on the road with companies behind them who say "the cameras on this thing? they can detect a stopped car 300 meters out and take progressive action without any human intervention." Over time, we might see change. Or not. But that's a necessary factor.
On the other hand, Volvo is saying "don't drive faster than 112mph! that's dangerous, no one should ever do that and we'll never support it on our consumer cars" which is regressive. We can do better; we just need people and companies to Want to.
That means good road maintenance, no abrupt turns, properly protecting access (even from wild life, which can mean underpass for big animals), easy way out for people to go slow if they feel it won’t do it for them, frequent info panels in case anything happens.
Of course for all of that there needs to be an underlying safety culture.
Too bad no such roads exist, not even the Autobahn (warning, graphic photos):
http://www.montanaoutdoor.com/2013/10/deer-disintegrates-on-...
And not even race tracks are guaranteed to be animal-free:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristiano_da_Matta#Collision_w...
If you prefer starting from accident statistics, here are a variety of studies across a variety of locations that generally show a ~2% increase in accidents per 1 km/h of speed. [1]
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/specialist/knowle...
I've driven 180-200 km/h on the German autobahns (in a car that could handle it) and I could tell I was driving at the edge or slightly beyond my vision and reaction time. It was freaking scary. I don't know if every driver out there could tell when they were hitting that limit. The golf cart analogy doesn't apply here IMO.
That said, I don't think speeding is even close to the number 1 killer these days... Cell phones seem to be the leading cause of accidents these days. Maybe they should detect motion over 5mph and turn off display of messaging apps, only bluetooth voice interactions allowed.
https://www.media.volvocars.com/global/en-gb/media/pressrele...
But even if it didn't cause the accident, accidents at reasonable speeds (<30km/h for car-pedestrian, <120km/h for car-car) are usually survivable. At higher speeds, fatalities increase dramatically.
I prefer to use the term "collision" because "accident" implies there's nobody to blame.
Like, there's no such thing as a gun accident. If someone ever accidentally gets shot, it means someone wasn't following one of the prime rules of gun safety.
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2018/06/investigates/sig-sau...
But as long as you always treat your firearms as loaded and never point it at something you're not willing to kill or destroy, you shouldn't have any "accidents".
I would be willing to bet money that at least 90% of crashes are caused by at least 1 driver doing something stupid. Using their phone while driving, not adequately looking before changing lanes, ignoring signs or traffic lights, driving drunk, etc. Calling these types of crashes "accidents" lessens the responsibility on the person that caused it. When you're in control of a 2,000+ hunk of steel, there's no room for carelessness.
I don't see the point of a vehicle like this unless you drag race it on a regular basis. It has limited utility, is larger than an Abrams tank, guzzles fuel like it's 1998 and couldn't make it around a slalom cone course even with a skilled driver. It's a make a lot of noise and go really fast in a straight line car. That's what it does (nothing wrong with that).
I don’t have the 392, but a 345, and no other car hits those same bullet points.
In town driving I get around 19mpg average... by contrast, the last 4cyl car I had got around 24mpg in town, and was horrible to drive.
I also prefer the looks, and sit very comfortably compared to smaller cars (I'm big and tall). I don't sit comfortably in any other coupe.
entertainment has value to some people
Of course this is based off one car so I could be totally wrong.
The speedo on my Miata goes to 150, except in 6th gear you hit the rev limiter at 136. I'd rather them make the top end more reasonable and make the scale s bigger.
I don't know why electronic display isn't more of a thing. My 13 year old Toyota displays the number using LED lights, it's far easier to read.
Of course, a lot of new cars can do both. ;-)
Of course, newer cars have HUD speedometers which project your speed onto your windshield glass.
I think its mainly down to analog giving you feedback as to whether you're increasing or decreasing in speed. If I'm approaching a speed camera in a 30mph zone, a glance at an analog speedo, and peripheral vision to confirm it isn't increasing is enough. Digital I need at least 2 full readings.
Plus you have a spacial element to analog speedos. I know where 30mph is, I don't need to read 30mph.
My wife’s car has an analog speedometer in the left and a center digital display between the speedometer and the tach which can show many things, one of which is a nice big digital speed indicator.
When the digital display is showing something else it takes me 2x-3x as much time to ascertain the current speed from the speedometer.
I think the studies are possibly being influenced by people’s familiarity with speedometers in cars. If you asked someone to tell you the temperature in the room and gave them an analog gauge and a digital display, which one would be faster?
Once you acclimate to the digital display I’ve found I can read it faster and more precisely.
It may be possible to see “under 60” on the gauge faster than read “57” on the display, but I doubt even that. And when I’m trying to check or set my speed to be exactly 9 over the limit, the digital is much, much faster.
It’s facilitated if you mentaly divide in quadrants: you can identify the first bold tick above the horizontal middle line as 60 for instance, and it becomes extremely quick to know if you’re under, at, or above 60, at one two units of error at most.
You’ll also only need to remember two or three relevant positions.
I tbink digital is fine, I’d just see optimisations when on analog in this specific use case (but it needs to be center and big and clear, a small dial on the side is bothersome)
For your answer, take a look at this modern Ferrari speedo:
https://www.straight.com/files/v3/styles/gs_large/public/ima...
If the link doesn't work, the key thing is: the bottom right quadrant of the speedo is just blank. Top speed is indicated at three o'clock on the face of the speedo. You'll see a similar layout on some of their modern tachometers.
This is by no means universal but it's more popular nowadays. The idea is that when you're travelling at high speed you've minimized the amount of time and effort involved in looking at the instruments. You can sort-of, kind-of rely on your peripheral vision, but that's harder to do as the needle moves further and further downward, away from the road and closer to the center of the steering wheel.
With collectible sports cars with traditional instruments, you can often see examples of this that involve having rotated the speedo, or more likely just the tachometer, to a position where it's most easily readable when the redline is reached. That invovles getting the needle vertical and/or putting it where it's not obscured by the steering wheel, also an important factor.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-911-technical-forum/2...
It's also becoming common to see replacement faces for those old instruments available for sale, so they look a little less goofy when rotated ninety degrees (or whatever) counterclockwise.
With a subcompact car that isn't super fast, these visibility purposes can be served but the owner can also sort of feel like their car is a lot faster than it actually is if the speed numbers keep increasing down and to the right. That part is stupid, but it actually does make the speedo more readable most of the time.
It used to be that car companies would simply put the same speedometer in every vehicle to cut costs and make production easier. So that's why you could see a minivan and a race car with the same speedometer. Car companies cut weird corners.
I agree that either way it's easier to use a single speedometer with a different overlay.
It's likely way easier to flip a switch on the spedometer, then swap out the faceplate than you think.
It's why on MPH cars the MPG dial counts down, whereas the litres/100km counts up on metric cars (which makes more sense)
It's a standard dial they stick in all models / engines
I'm an amateur race car driver (Champcar). Our Honda Civic is fitted with a professional roll cage, hans device and fire suppression system (not to mention the fireproof suit and helmet). I'd be nervous in any vehicle over 100mph without these added protections.
At least, in Formula 1 that's what it is.
Is there particular energy threshold for impact they were looking at? I am not sure that speed is survivable in any front end or offset crash with current technology but a crash where the car spins of control and doesn't impact anything won't much care unless the speed they picked is at the threshold for the average car to lose total control at.
My assumption is that they used the tires' speed rating. "S" rated tires are intended for a maximum speed of 112 MPH, while "H" rated tires are intended for a maximum speed of 130 MPH.
Presumably if the speedo only went to 112mph, it would be impossible to go faster (that's how it works, right?), so you'd know what speed you were doing anyway.
Exactly -- it would be hard to discriminate between 120 and 140 on a log scale speedometer, but when you're going that fast, does the speed really matter?
Other car companies make a few innovative models, but (apart from Tesla) I don't know any other companies which have made sweeping statements about every model they'll ever make. I think Volvo has the strongest brand today, in the sense that I know what they stand for. They've come a long way from "boxy but good".
[1]: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/volvo-xc60-moves-to-al... [2]: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a15340510/volvo-electrifyi... [3]: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a18725989/driving-on-e-cur...
It's fun and all and a few years ago I would have hated that type of "paternalism" by Volvo. But now, with self-driving cars around the corner and my own more mature understanding of human fallibility, I would argue that it makes little sense that humans do drive at speeds higher than around what Volvo is aiming at.
The few cars that drive really fast are creating a stressful experience for everyone on the Autobahn.
You can be the world's best fast driver on the German Autobahn with an entire accident-free record, yet you might have caused anxiety and dangerous situations for hundreds of other drivers as "byproduct" of your own driving.
And I am writing that while I do love the Autobahn. I am even a bit shocked that I am now basically ending up arguing for speed limits... :P
I hear that all the time, do you have a source?
With that said, I wouldn't really want to do sustained high speed driving anyway due to fuel economy. Going from 100kmh to 180kmh, fuel economy drops by half.
Surely I'm not the only one? Intended out of real curiosity
Also not everyone has access to long stretches of highway with little traffic to do this in a way that doesn't endanger other people
That seems a strange way to characterise breaking the law.
should people in wyoming, with access to long stretches of highway with little traffic, not be able to drive their vehicles in the way they want to because manhattan doesn't have highways and has lots of traffic?
seems to me like you're trying to shame OP and make him feel bad for some reason, but I can't figure out why.
whats your point?
You'd blame the "aggressive" driver doing 80, when it fact this is 99% the fault of the slower driver.
I see slow drivers in the left lane CONSTANTLY, and it irritates me both as someone who drives faster, and someone who understands basic principles of driving and statistics.
If you want to drive slow, fine, go for it, but do it in the right-hand lane.
The amount of traffic collisions and fatalities from speed would be drastically reduced if people in the US just drove like decent people. We have a much higher rate of fatalities than even on the Autobahn, because of people impeding the flow of traffic and generally failing to signal intent before making erratic movements much too slow.
I saw a near collision this weekend when someone in a BMW was driving significantly faster than traffic, and a pickup driver not paying attention ran out of road when the right-lane ended, so he cut off an 18 wheeler in the middle lane. The ~55mph 18 wheeler immediately moved into the left lane... He apparently didn't see or didn't care about the ~85mph BMW and cut him off, so the BMW ended up slamming on the brakes to avoid rear-ending the truck, I could smell the burning rubber from his tires when I caught up to them.
The whole thing could have been avoided if the BMW driver had a little more situational awareness - I saw the pickup's lane was ending while he was alongside the 18 wheeler and was already slowing down since I was afraid it wouldn't end well.
So stop with this b.s. I'd much rather drive on a road with someone drive slower than an asshole who thinks everyone is going to slow. People weaving through traffic, going 80, 90, 100MPH while everyone else is doing 65, are FAR more dangerous, than the elderly driver doing 60 in the far left.
Depends on where you are. If you're on private property or a track (lots of them open to the public), you're only a danger to yourself.
OP didn't say he was on a public roadway when he hit the limiter.
Very few people are in that position and I don't give a crap about their "needs" on the track.
You're being unnecessarily rude and confrontational, which isn't justified despite you thinking you have the moral high ground.
Or, you know, to get where you're going faster. Driving faster adds up over long distances.
However, with most vehicles on the road, the tires are more susceptible to failure than the powertrain is to not delivering the speed. (i.e. my all-season, mid-grade tires are only rated to safely operate up to about 130mph). I would expect this from Volvo, and for the people who care it's more of a moot point.
edit: Apparently even the Autobahn has a recommended speed of 80 mph (I'm aware you can go faster, but then why have a limit at all?)
Sure there are high efficiency tires with harder compounds and are more efficient.
But if you get the sporty tire from whatever brand the higher speed ratings generally have the less flexible/harder material. The limiting factor being the heat generated from the flexing builds up. So generally a 150 mph rated tire gets less traction, costs more, and is worse when it's cold than a 112 mph rated tire.
So even on a fairly sporty car and tire you are best off getting the lowest rated tire that will accommodate your max speed.
I think part of it is they also don’t want people to hit the limit often. It’s for egregious drivers. Driving at that speed and suddenly decelerating to a stop is not the safest thing either.
Not bad for a normal highway.
112 is 25% faster, way more lethal. I'm guessing it's 112mi*1.6km/mi = 180kph.
Which one?
I doubt the Venn diagram of both groups shows much overlap anyway.
- A speed limit of 140km/h would be fine for me, although sometimes disappointing when the road is really empty and there's a lot of distance to cover.
- A speed limit of 160km/h would be totally fine for me. Around that +-10km/h is somewhere around the limit that I find comfortable on the Autobahn.
- A limit of 180km/h probably also satisfies most of the other customers, and might be the sweet spot between still being very fast and not losing a lot of customers that would want to go even faster.
https://www.bfgoodrichtires.com/tires-101/tire-basics/about-...
Many cars use S-rated tires and that's the 112mph limit. It's all about liability.
Sports cars usually use higher speed ratings, whereas a truck or van might be limited ~ 100mph. They typicaly have off-road or tires with higher towing capabilities which have lower speed ratings.
And good luck getting politicians to push them to do otherwise.
I'm not a fan of limiting (besides for warranty, electronics reasons) and prefer to educate rather than restrict. However, if taking this approach I believe you should consider that some people might drive in the limit and they deserve to be in power of their vehicles regardless.
Imagine if you drive near this software-limited speed and suddenly need to speed up a little bit more to avoid a dangerous situation. You simply can't. This may dangerous specially if you don't have in your mind that your speed is limited by software.
Just allow breaking out of this limit for, say, 5s so your drivers can get out of a dangerous situation instead... And if they try to abuse the system, disappoint them by blocking acceleration.
I live in Brazil. There is a tax supposed to cause road accidents here. If your powertrain is > 1.0, the tax you pay when buying cars has a sudden increase. Therefore, many if not most people buy 1.0 cars here (). This is valid even for some that are not consider lower end here (though would be anywhere else in the civilized world).
It's actually the most common type of crash on highways here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3907522/
Anyways, one great reason of accidents here is frontal collisions. People either don't take into account that they are driving snails, not cars, and try to take over on the road but fail to do so at an adequate distance.
The thing is if you are at, say, 80km/h it gets really hard to increase your speed 5 or 10km/h in short amount of time. I believe that people driving powerful cars don't think about this often, and all it takes is an idiot to tailgate you while you are trying to take over to make shit happens. Another unfortunate thing is that you might find yourself tailgating the vehicle upfront before taking over it to reduce the needed distance.
* highways here are usually one lane each way most times. Sometimes two. I love when I go to southern California for work, and there are 12 lanes with almost no traffic (yes, traffic here is worse than there).
What do you mean? Engine displacement>1L? Transmission overdrive? Something else?
Not sure if these values are still valid, but if they are not they should be even worse nowadays.
Made in Brazil: < 1L: 30.6% 1L to 2L - 34.6 or 36.6% (gas + ethanol) > 2L - 41.6% or 48.6% (gas + ethanol)
Imports: < 1L: 60,6% 1L to 2L - 64,6% or 66,6% (gas + ethanol) > 2L - 71,6% or 78,6% (gas + ethanol)
Also, immediate availability is lower and most cars are manual with no cruise control :(
And obviously you'd already be paying a little bit more for a more powerful engine, so the increase is actually at least 10%, and most lower income people just get stuck with 1.0 for their whole lives...
https://www.noticiasautomotivas.com.br/automovel-recolhe-de-...
However, it certainly was not at highway speeds. There's simply no reason to need to go faster than 180kmh on public roads.
There’s no situation that can be solved by increasing speed at this velocity. You simply won’t have the time to react. Unless, of course, you’re trying to outrun a train in a car chase in a movie.
But if this is your fear, you should probably drive an off-road motorcycle so you have more options to get out of town when the disaster strikes, limiting yourself to the roads sounds risky.
But it is an edge case.
- In a forest fire or in a storm visibility is low, so you wouldn’t be able to drive at speeds over 112mph anyway (see any footage of people driving through forest fires).
- A tsunami’s speed doesn’t exceed 20-30 mph on land
- a pyroclastic flow moves at 100kmh (62 mph)
In any case these edge cases do not outweigh the lives (potentially) saved by capping a car’s speed.
To escape the tsunami, you first have to drive down a road that runs along the beach. After doing that for a while, you may then turn onto a road that takes you away from the ocean.
Visibility is usually fine in a storm. Hurricanes have intermittent periods of severe rain and insignificant drizzle. Forrest fire visibility all depends on the wind direction, and is often fine if you aren't already surrounded.
At speeds over 100kmh (62 mph) you gain only 36 seconds or less per 10 kmh (6.2 mph) of speed increase per 10 km (6.2 miles) of distance.
So, you need to be in a dire situation, already traveling at top speed, on a road that doesn’t lead away from danger, where ~30 seconds of time would make a difference.
That’s a lot of ifs and edge cases.
When reality usually looks like this: https://youtu.be/coPW6unxeY8 (a three-point turn before tsunami) or this: https://youtu.be/7J6O4HkKxlo (driving through a forest fire)
But imagine that you had this 5 second burst and you used it to pass a truck, but you misjudged and you actually needed 6 seconds so your car drops back down to the slower speed, that sounds worse.
I doubt my car can go much over 90mph on a flat road (if it can, it'll take it a while to get there, since even getting to 80 is slow), and I've never had a case where I felt a burst of 100mph speed would get me out of danger.
Those things matter, but not as much as reflex response time, which is mostly a fixed constant for most people.
Going faster means you travel further before even getting to the brakes.
Couple of times a year I see drivers blowing by a school bus as kids are getting off and trying to cross the street right in front of them. Be nice if the car decided for the driver that it was stopping.
Preconditions:
* You have an analog speedometer which is in both miles and km/h. [1]
* You are on a road trip on a highway, driving at or near 100km/h.
In Canada on the 400 class highways, both are often true.[2]
The trick is simple. It must be, I figured it our when I was a kid looking of my father's shoulder while he drove.
Notice how 100km/h nearly aligns with 60 mph on the speedometer? You can use the mph gauge as the approximate number of minutes required to travel a given distance in km.
Say you just saw a sign saying a rest stop was in 42 km.
To estimate the time to your rest stop, just line up 42 km/h with the corresponding number on the mph scale, which in this case gives about 27 min.
[1] http://www.storiesfromschoolaz.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/0...
[2] I drive at 110 because the trucks drive at the same speed, so you don't have to pass as often.
It's easy to get a new set of rubber that has a speed rating higher than what the factory provided; It's a lot more difficult for a layman to flash out a speed limit.
It's a shame that less and less companies are producing products that take into account that perhaps the potential buyer might actually know better.
I'm guessing this could be extended to tracks (in the other direction).
Limiters are nothing new.
The difference here is that I would choose this speed, instead of it being set only by the manufacturer.
It is also OK if the car had both limits, a manufacturer max and a lower max speed configurable by the driver.
On an EV it will. Well, it uses the regenerative braking but I could clearly see the flow of regenerative energy going back to the battery while on cruise control and going down a hill. (This was on a Nissan LEAF.)
The point is that it should be configurable by the driver and easy to enable and disable. Like the parking lights.
It has features like:
- Maximum speed limiter
- Maximum speed warning
- Audio volume limit
- No seat belt audio mute (i.e. if someone hasn't buckled up, the infotainment unit won't play audio)
- Cannot disable safety features inc.: Stability Control, Traction Control, Daytime Running Lights, Forward Automatic Braking, etc
I actually found this to be far more intuitive than cruise control with a minimum speed, because I just kept my foot constantly depressed on the accelerator, and the car never went above the maximum. But when I needed to slow down slightly, e.g., for a car in front of me, I could lift off the pedal and let the car natually slow down.
Conversely with minimum speed cruise control it always feels to me as if I'm zooming along and constantly need to disable it/etc.
You got it, that's what I want.
My (otherwise terrible) 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid did this. It would brake (thereby recharging its battery and improving mileage) whenever the speed went above the cruise-control setting -- usually due to hills, not due to over-zealous automated acceleration.
I suspect most electric and hybrid cars do the same today, but I have no data and have not googled it.
They hope you will break the speed limit so they can make money, that's why.
In the UK, for example, about GBP 80 million in speeding fines are issued each year. The annual police budget is GBP 12.5 billion though, so fines are a tiny 0.64% of that, hardly significant. Having said that, it looks like the road policing budget for 2018-19 is down by a large amount, from the GBP 200 million in 2016, to about GBP 90 million, so the fines would seem to cover most of that... Not sure what to make of that, now?
There are also groups of car enthusiasts and people that legally race cars and modify cars to squeeze every ounce of performance.
This whole page is filled with "Doesn't apply to me, so go for it", which seems like a really bad rationale to apply to hundreds of millions of people, potentially.
on the other hand, it looks like they are just limiting the speed based on the rating of the stock tires. as long as there's a straightforward (and legal) way to increase/remove the limit when you upgrade the tires, I'm not sure I have a huge problem with it.
Surely those who have track days can disable the limit or buy a car without it, while the vast majority of "casual speeders" won't be affected by it.
Even 112 is quite high compared to the speed limit in most of the world. 100 would be right, outside Germany.
It's from 2007: https://www.autoblog.com/2007/12/22/nissan-gt-r-recognizes-t...
Volvo does it so they can use cheaper tires without being liable.
So speed is not the main issue but it's a nice tool when you're a politician or you want to communicate.
For the Autobahn, wiki says:
In 2014, autobahns carried 31% of motorized road traffic while accounting for 11% of Germany's traffic deaths. The autobahn fatality rate of 1.6 deaths per billion travel-kilometres compared favorably with the 4.6 rate on urban streets and 6.5 rate on rural roads.
Cars could still drive into lakes or off cliffs, but knowing the max speed a car could rear end another car may lead to minor enhancements that could save lives
However, that was a very stupid choice, and I'm glad no one got hurt. Outside of a track there is no valid reason to go over 100 mph.
We had a couple of Ferrari's come up on our tail. I've no idea how fast they were going, but it was a fair bit faster than us!
0. https://www.volvocars.com/uk/cars/new-models/s60/variants/po...
disclosure: I'm a hard-core libertarian myself.
Due to this fear, many a person (including myself) will simply never buy one such car.
Doesn't meant I can't understand the concept of accelerating away from danger, or being unable to do so due to a stupid limiter and dying.
That's laughable. You could eliminate the gearbox at all then on better, extremely expensive cars.
Everyone here is talking about normal highway use, but, as everyone knows, not all situations are normal. Bad things happen.
My imagination is limited, but for example: Fires can spread quickly and surround you (e.g. a valley with one road out), a tsunami can happen with only a couple of minutes warning, some hospital trips can't wait for an ambulance, sometimes people try to kill you (jealous ex? opposing political group or religion in some countries, who knows what the future holds).
So, die in a fire I guess, it's for your own safety.
I've never once driven above 112mph in my life so far. Outside of fun, I've never even gotten close.
We should not allow a huge negative behaviour every single day, just on the off chance that there’s a possibility it would restrict us in a very unusual event.
Hundreds of people should die because maybe we can save a few?
Makes no sense.
Freedom has value. Just because we can force some people to do some things more safely in some cases doesn't mean we should always do it. Otherwise, we can just outlaw cars entirely and force everyone to only go places where rails take them at government-approved speeds.
"In Rheinland-Pfalz, a 130 km speed limit was also introduced on a 167km section of the A61 in 1991 and has been retained since then. This measure was combined with a ban on overtaking for heavy good vehicles. The impact of these two measures was a 30% reduction in fatal and severe injury accidents (comparing one year after and one year before their introduction – Rheinland-Pfalz Ministry of Transport)."
2] You can drive super dangerous without driving super fast
3] Almost no one drives super fast
4] The same pdf also says the death rate is exactly the same on roads without speed limits as those with speed limits... but I assume we're going to ignore that part and other contradictory studies to drive your point home?
i.e. 67% of roads have no permanent limit, 67% of deaths occur there...
And then you'll say "yes but that doesn't take into account the traffic volume on those stretches of road"
and I'll point to something else, and it'll get old, and you don't appear interested in considering other viewpoints anyway.
Fires can spread quickly and surround you