New EU rules on car speed limiters coming into force
breakingnews.ie
breakingnews.ie
The mandate is for intelligent speed assistance. I own a car with such a feature and I think it's already pretty common in higher-end vehicles even without the mandate.
The form it takes in my car is that there's a little symbol with the current speed limit displayed on the HUD. The speed limit is sourced from road signs or the car's navigation data. When you exceed the speed limit, the symbol turns red. Unless you engage "cruise control", that's it.
If you do engage "cruise control", a few things happen. First, when the speed limit changes, the targeted cruise control speed will change and the car will either gently accelerate or gently decelerate (think 1kph of change in speed every second or so). You can always choose to override this by using the pedals, changing the set speed manually or turning it off.
Another thing the car will do is use radar to maintain distance between you and the car in front of you (the distance is somewhat configurable), which will also mean maintaining speed and coming to a stop if the car in front of you does.
However if you never turn on "cruise control", the feature is nothing but an easy to ignore red symbol on your HUD.
I really like the feature. Combined with other features like lane keeping assist, it makes driving on the motorway quite relaxing (though you still need to pay attention, this isn't meant to allow you to fall asleep at the wheel or anything).
I think doing it in a way that's respectful of the owner is a good way to do it in the long term. It gets most of the benefit, and by not creating a "us vs. them" mentality, it avoids both political backlash that makes future regulations (including sensible ones) hard, and the backlash effect that causes people to behave in undesirable ways out of spite/defiance (think "coal rolling").
Edit: It seems (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31994739) like they explicitly mandated putting the driver in control. Bravo!
Examples?
The EU is not the lone offender in this of course, many other countries have similar issues, such as the USA's FATCA.
May be out of the loop here but do you have some source where we can catch up on the state of this?
In case you're referring specifically of the DSA/DMA (the recent interoperability bombshell), I don't see how that's currently an effort to remove E2EE.
Also keep in mind that only "gatekeepers" (as defined) are under scope here. E.g. Signal is small enough to not be in scope. As long as your chat program is not controlled by a multi-billion-dollar corporation you should be good.
Arathorn from New Vector has written a series of insightful blog posts about this[3].
References:
2022 EU parliament DSA amendment[0]:
> Member States should not prevent providers of intermediary services from providing end-to-end encrypted services. Applying effective end-to-end encryption to data is essential for trust in and security on the Internet, and effectively prevents unauthorised third party access. Furthermore, to ensure effective digital privacy, Member States should not impose a general obligation on providers of intermediary services to limit the anonymous use of their services. In accordance with the principle of data minimisation and in order to prevent unauthorised disclosure, identity theft and other forms of abuse of personal data, recipients should have the right to use and pay for services anonymously wherever reasonable efforts can make this possible
DSM FAQ[1]:
> The final agreement on the interoperability obligation also ensures that the levels of service integrity, security and encryption offered by the gatekeeper shall and will not be reduced.
...However, I can't seem able to find the referred final agreement. The publicized document is (still?) the 2020 version[2] which contains no references to encryption AFAICT.
I don't mean to imply that you are wrong here as contradictory (is there a better non-toxic way to say "schizophrenic"?) tech regulation initiatives seems to be a trend with the EU. But please provide more details as there has been a lot of confusion around this.
[0]: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-9-2022-0014...
[1]: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/QANDA_...
[2]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?qid=16081168...
[3]: https://matrix.org/blog/2022/03/30/technical-faq-on-the-digi...
So I drove a rental car that had this feature enabled and I found it not only infuriating but distracting as well.
It didn't help that it would come on at the worst possible times. Like when I was driving and had to change lanes to pass someone or let another car in. This is exactly the time where I want to be completely focused on what I'm doing and instead I have a notification on my dash going `ding! you went 5kph` over the speed limit.
I wouldn't assume that your experience applies to all cars. Different manufacturers will implement it differently.
The reasons other cars want to go fast/exceed the limit is not really something I worry about. What if they're going to the hospital? What if they're undercover cops getting to a scene? What if they just want to get to work fast? I don't care. I care about my safety, so better get out of their way safely. If I notice someone coming up behind me with 120km/hr in a 100km/hr zone, I am 100% speeding up so I can move out of their way. If I don't, all that's going to happen is them having to brake hard, causing other behind them to brake out of instinct... It's the fault of the person speeding of course, but people at fault aren't the only ones getting hurt by their actions.
Kinda like programming.
And it does have an override -- I can step on the gas any time I want -- but I've never used it.
On the B roads it had no more idea of what the speed limit was than I did. On roundabouts it was hit (almost) and miss.
And C roads, especially with a bit of morning ice and sunshine it actively tried to kill me, on dozens of occasions trying to steer me into oncoming traffic or off the sides of steep embankments. Even when it was technically correct in tracking me round a bend, to have to forcefully correct the car mid corner to avoid an oncoming lorry wandering into my lane is just bloody dangerous.
Personally, I just prefer to just pay attention to the road myself.
All it does is keep you from plowing into the car in front of you on the freeway. It also does a so so job helping you stay in your lane. Helping, not doing it all on its own.
Bad UI? or just bloody dangerous?
edit: checked and apparently it is also on by default, no permanent off switch, and there were quite a few comments from owners indicating they couldn't find the switch.. so I don't feel so bad for missing it
> In some versions, the vehicle’s speed is automatically reduced.
Sounds to me like it isn't so optional, and of course how hard would it be to move it from optional to non-optional?
It also gets confused when there are overpasses or tunnels crossing the road, and the nav-based speed limit flips from 70mph to 15mph to 70mph.
I've wanted something like this in my vehicles for many years.
this is incredibly dangerous as sometimes you need to drive over the speed limit to avoid accidents or dangerous drivers.
instead of introducing this they should send drivers to driving school and make the police check driver licenses more often and arrest those driving without a license.
in germany you can drive at any speed you want in certain areas of the autobahn and that’s great and actually important to be able to get where you want efficiently. i doubt there are more accidents there. but people actually know how to drive and that is the difference.
these kind of speed limiters are just introduced by politicians to gain votes, it’s easy to sell the population on an idea to punish those driving too fast. easier than to do the right thing, which is to remove idiots who can’t drive from traffic.
3.6.1.4. It shall be possible for the driver to override the SCF intervention by performing a positive action, for example by pressing the accelerator control harder or deeper.
from https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:...
You'll be driving at 120kph and you'll notice the car has slowed to 118kph because it thinks the speed limit is 100kph. You push the accelerator and update the speed limit. Done.
I honestly can't see this causing an accident. The thing isn't performing an emergency stop or anything.
There is. Or rather, there might be. In the US, some states allow you speed while passing. The qualifications on how much you can speed range from "reasonable margin of safety" to specific numbers. And, some states further limit the situations where you can do this, for instance to only allowing it on two lane roads where you're pulling into the oncoming lane to pass.
My car will regularly detect speed signs that are adjacent to the highway, including those next to interchanges and exists. On many other occasion the camera detects signs from parallel roads and railroads, where the sign sits simply on the other side of a chain fence.
Naturally as a human driver I know that 170km/h doesn't exist on roads, or that a 30km/h isn't a legal speed for highway (except if there is road maintenance or accidents, which has their own contextual clues), but the computer don't know that. Trying to make computers understand context is the running theme of most failures in self driving cars.
The only way I could see a speed limiter like this would work is if there were a central control system with local knowledge of the road and those on the road, similar to how a subway control, airport control or rail way control works. cameras and satnavs is only good as an advising tool for an human operative.
Now you're getting, it's all about the control. Once they've got the device in what's to stop the government from saying your car can go 0 miles an hour if they decide it is necessary? It's all about control my friend, all about control.
If someone puts up a fake speed limit sign and tricks your self-driving car to travel 30 mph under the actual limit, then you might not care, if you're having a snooze on a nice reclining seat.
Still, I think it's not too early for governments to pass harsh laws against interfering with or obscuring road signs. With some clever networking and an open dataset, it might be possible for cars to detect such missing or altered signs within minutes of the crime being committed.
This has already been achieved in the US without any regulation at all, simply by increasing the amount of traffic on most roads.
Maybe it's just that I'm getting old, but driving has gotten to be such a chore that I'm happy to let everything be automated. I've already switched to automatic transmission, lane assist, and adaptive cruise control.
It works most of the time, but where it doesn't, it would be a major pain if it was automatic or audible.
My onramp to the Autobahn is limited to 80km/h due to a construction zone with the same limit on the Autobahn itself that ends just before the merge.
The limit on the Autobahn is ended with a sign, but the one on my onramp is not. Technically I would have to keep driving 80 until I reach my exit, because that was the last posted limit and there are no other signs to change that. Since there are no signs, my car keeps showing me the 80 limit all the way.
Realistically I can see the canceled limit sign across the bit of grass and divider at the end of the constructio,n and drive whatever speed seems appropriate in this unrestricted stretch.
If the system was audible, would it beep at me the entire way? If it was automatic and try to limit me to 80, I'd cause a major traffic jam, because I'd be constantly passed by every single truck, blocking both of the available lanes. Their speedometers are better calibrated than mine, and I'd be going 77 while they keep at 89.
For now, there's no way this doesn't expand in scope at some point in the future.
The fine details of implementation are not noted so we can only speculate. I would hope it's designed to very gradually start limiting the speed after X seconds of alerting the driver. That said, even the most naive design, which would work the same as RPM limiters (which all cars have to avoid engine damage) would just cut fuel injection whenever over the limit. This produces about the same effect as coasting in neutral, so even then you are going to coast to a stop very very gradually and have lots of time to make it to a shoulder.
That said, even that does present some danger -- not to me or you of course, but you know, to shitty drivers who might not be accustomed to driving cars that fail at random and might panic and fail to cope appropriately with the situation. I mean, I have even ridden with drivers who are afraid to stop on the shoulder, even in a situation that warranted it, so it's bound to happen now and then. A manual override if available, will help here, but the pool of drivers dumb enough to still be startled into making a mistake will merely shrink then, not disappear.
Now queue this. This has the potential to really go incredibly wrong. You mention shoddy drivers for who it can be pretty unsafe. Even if there's only a tiny percentage of drivers out there that is shoddy, multiplied by the number of drivers, it's still a lot. And I would argue that the percentage of shoddy drivers is actually not such a tiny percentage but a larger one.
This has to be automatically overridable. I.e. by simply hitting the gas pedal. It can't be something special you need to do. If there's a dangerous situation on the road that can only be avoided by speeding up beyond the speed limit, I don't have time to remember where that extra special button is that I almost never use. I need to be able to just hit the gas pedal. If you're wondering what situation that might be, there's actually such a situation that I remember from my driver's license test. Basically something unforeseen happens (don't remember the specific, but let's say a car shoots out of a hidden driveways or something) and you have no space on the left or right (let's say a bunch of trees, houses etc.) so you can't just go there. You don't have enough space to stop the car before hitting that car, so hitting the brakes is out of the question. You have oncoming traffic on the other lane as well but that car is still far enough away that if you shift down one gear and hit the gas pedal, you can swerve around the unforeseen obstacle without crashing head-on with the oncoming traffic on the other lane. I need one hand to shift, the other to steer and those two things already take all of my concentration not to mention the split second decision to see that braking will cause a crash while speeding up will save the day.
Nice "trick question" though :)
I do disagree with your justifications though. To start with for indicators it is true that sometimes they aren't necessary, in fact with everyone driving appropriately they shouldn't ever be needed to avoid crashes. However people are pretty bad at judging their abilities and habits are a pretty strong effect. So sometimes you mess up your observations but then if you indicate anyway the other road users are more able to fix your mistake. Also by indicating every time you build the habit and are much less likely to forget to indicate when you should.
It is fun trying to come up with situations where speeding up to avoid a collision is needed but in practice this is really dangerous. If you brake to avoid a collision then if the avoidance fails the result is less bad. Any cases where braking isn't going to let you avoid a collision must be situations where you have very little time to react since cars can change speed more rapidly by braking (limited by traction in any vaguely modern car). So the situations where you need to speed to avoid a collision are ones with very little time to process, where you have one known bad road user (since otherwise you wouldn't be at risk of a collision). Bad road users are unpredictable. All these factors make it really dangerous to accelerate into a hazardous situation. Instead you should train yourself to drive defensively and react to road dangers by braking as a first response. Again it is best to build a habit since you have very little time to evaluate and react to these situations.
I agree with you about the shoddy drivers, I don't drive a large amount so I'm aware that my driving skills aren't super high. Because of this I consciously drive defensively, don't drive fast to give more reaction time, leave a larger gap to other vehicles. Having lots of shoddy drivers is a great reason to have speed limiting technology because most of them overestimate their skill and speed. In the UK a large majority of drivers regularly speed and this has a pretty direct link to increased injuries and deaths.
I have actually been in situations where swerving around an obstacle that appeared suddenly was the best option more than once. If I had hit the brakes, someone could have been seriously hurt (not just talking about making metal and plastic trash out of a car) - sometimes that someone being me, by being squished by something much larger, heavier and better built than my car's tiny crumple zone. Think huge - probably full of heavy stuff too - truck trailer coming at me with its broad side. If I had hit the brakes instead of speeding around it, I would not be writing this.
In such a situation you do not have time to think about a button you have to press to disable some "please adhere to the speed limit" software. You ideally want to be in an automatic transmission car where you can just floor the pedal and it makes a jump, unless you're a able to shift down quickly like a race car driver and floor it. I guess my point is that these system really do need to take into account the worst case you can imagine and make that worst case safe.
It's a nice idea, but the tech really isn't there yet. I guess a few high profile incidents and they'll be forced to fix it.
That alone probably makes it a nonstarter in the USA, right?
And it's not a lot. Being caught a bit over 3 times will lose you a licence, or 2 if you're a new driver. Sometimes you can get an awareness course and get a "pass" on the first time but I think only once every few years. Exceed the limit by too much and you don't get that option and you also get more points. You also will find insurance punishingly expensive for years afterwards.
On autopilot they do periodically do absolutely insane stuff like this due to bad map data, gps drift, lack of recent speed sign reading etc
And they are supposed to be best in class
I hope they take this a step further. Cars should not be able to exceed 90mph unless you have a special license for the track. 99.9% of drivers are not tracking their car and theres absolutely no reason a 6000lb pick up truck needs to go 150mph under any circumstance.
One major reason why ignition locks that uses breathalyzers has failed to gain popularity is false positives. Police always do a blood test after a positive breath test, because those breathalyzers have know faults when it comes to a number of substances, including bread, fruit, chewing gum, vanilla extract, vinegar and energy drinks...
Never, in any car I’ve ever been in, have I seen a false positive seatbelt warning.
As far as making someone get a special track license, that just seems like overkill.
Im not saying beeping will stop all of this but I think its a large low hanging fruit in terms of road safety. You will strongly disagree with this but mandatory breathalyzers are another.
I would love if these rules were not necessary but drivers (in the US at least) have proven that they are not responsible in aggregate.
I dont think anyone disagrees with speed limits, I dont understand the moral panic that comes from taking it a step further and building it into the car.
Youre right about needing to speed sometimes though, maybe they need to add a 15% buffer or some kind of "10/10 data points in the last 5 mins required" condition.
https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/motor-vehicle-safe...
Hello there, I disagree with speed limits on any highway, as well as most well built roads that don't have pedestrians adjacent. I'm not a civil engineer or traffic researcher, but I do disagree with them. Having ridden on the autobahn I also didn't feel less safe there.
People driving on racetracks do not necessarily have licenses. They neither necessarily have a license to drive a car on the road, nor do they necessarily have sanctioned racing licenses.
Even if this suggestion did make sense, we have no mechanism to enforce it. People in the US drive without valid licenses all of the time. The car has no idea if you have a license at all, let alone which ones.
It is dangerous.
I tried it yesterday for the first - and last - time. On the highway, it picked up a speed limit sign that was intended for the side lane, and started reducing my speed fast and unexpectedly.
I love the speed limiter, the dumb version. I think it's a super nice way to avoid accidentally going over the speed limit without having to keep an eye on the speedometer, and therefore off the road.
I would love to use an intelligent speed limiter. But let's face it, there are always cases where those things will fail unexpectedly and dangerously.
That's not even considering voluntary tampering with the road signs. What if I put up a 5km/h sign along the highway. How would the car determine it's bogus?
I wouldn't mind a global limiter that prevents going to unsafe speeds well over the highway speed limits.
I use Waze in NL and so far, for every road it knows the limit.
I'm in Belgium, and around here we have a lot of poorly organized road works.
See a 130 sign for the train next to the road?
Haha, we're going to break really hard down to 30 now.
Literally no sign at all anywhere on a 120 road? Haha, we're going 60 now.
It doesn't even do it gently.
It's terrible. It's an Audi Etron something if anyone is wondering.
Implementing a max speed of 120 would be good though. It’s never legal to exceed that so why does the car allow it?
Smoothbrain take. It is. If I'm driving on the highway and a dam broke behind me and a 5 meter tall wall of water is coming at me at 180, I am allowed to speed to stay ahead.
Very convenient.