Ford's New Car Tech Prevents You From Accidentally Speeding 287
An anonymous reader sends word of Ford's new "Intelligent Speed Limiter" technology, which they say will prevent drivers from unintentionally exceeding the speed limit. When the system is activated (voluntarily) by the driver, it asks for a current maximum speed. From then on, a camera mounted on the windshield will scan the road ahead for speed signs, and automatically adjust the maximum speed to match them. The system can also pull speed limit data from navigation systems. When the system detects the car exceeding the speed limit, it won't automatically apply the brakes — rather, it will deliver less fuel to the engine until the vehicle's speed drops below the limit. If the speed still doesn't drop, a warning noise will sound. The driver can override the speed limit by pressing "firmly" on the accelerator. The technology is being launched in Europe with the Ford S-MAX.
How many minutes until this is mandatory? (Score:2, Interesting)
My GPS already does a great job at noticing I'm speeding and warning me, even in the rain with poor lighting. The interface to a fuel cutoff would not be that hard.
I think Ford should invest in getting everyone a moving map GPS rather than letting pranksters plant signs that mess with their vehicles, which will speed at night in the rain slightly more often than I would, were I to care.
So, bad tech, toward a bad goal. Go Ford!
Re:How many minutes until this is mandatory? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget roads with variable speed limits and electronic speed signs. They should invest in up-to-the-minute over-the-air GPS map updates!
There's also temporary limits imposed by road works.
If the conditions are so bad you can't read road signs, you shouldn't be driving.
GPS is not the answer.
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there's also the problem of written speed limit versus the actual speed that will get you a ticket
so here in new york the limit might be 65 but i'll drive 75 all the time, not a problem
but if i drive over 80 i can get into trouble
sometimes i'll look down and see i'm going 85, without noticing or thinking about it
so it would help if the system rate limited me at a speed i choose, or automatically adjusted as some function {speed limit}+10/15
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so it would help if the system rate limited me at a speed i choose, or automatically adjusted as some function {speed limit}+10/15
Presumably the car still has cruise control for this function.
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exactly
"when it's clear"
this is not the case on the roads where/ when i drive 9-% of the time
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exactly
"when it's clear"
this is not the case on the roads where/ when i drive 9-% of the time
Why would anyone need to mind the speed limit in any situation not flowing smooth enough for cruise control??
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when everyone is going well above the speed limit
80% are hovering around 75 mph in a 65 mph zone
except for a few outliers going 60 mph and 90 mph
so you get bunching, then break out, then bunching, then break out, etc.
cruise control is impossible, and you're always occasionally going 85 mph without noticing
obviously the best solution is to change the fucking speed limit
or give us driverless cars, now. please!
i hate driving, driving sucks. i'm not talking about cinematic back roads, which represent 2% of driv
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yeah that enrages me
to not be aware of the 20 cars piled up behind you closely and unaware of that peripheral sense there is another car right alongside you... for 5-10 minutes. even if there are no other cars or you don't give a fuck, this positioning increases the danger to both of you for various reasons
people do it on sidewalks too
and it goes against basic human psychology. like being in a restroom with 20 empty urinals and a guy walks in and uses the one right next to you
people without this simple perc
Re: How many minutes until this is mandatory? (Score:4, Funny)
they were running your license plate. your car matched a current description of interest to them
you should have rolled down your window and thrown stuff at their windshield. establish dominance
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Re:I've never understood that claim. (Score:5, Interesting)
Dumbass, in the scenario posed the danger was coming from behind. How the fuck is slowing down gonna save your ass when a Semi is barreling down on you and has no room to stop before slamming you as it is. Or I have a real-life situation where burst speed got me out of certain death.
I'm cruising down a 2 lane (one lane each direction) road with my wife on the back of my bike at 55 (posted limit). Good visibiltiy and no blind curves for about 3 miles down the road, and I could see the road for 2 miles behind me in the mirror. There's a Bar-B-Q place on the right hand side of the road that we're coming up on about 500 feet ahead, Black Ford explorer is coming at me slowing down with the left turn blinker, I instinctively roll back off the throttle and now I'm 60 ft away at 52 MPH...then she turns left. I looked her dead in the eyes and she still turned left. I have two choices here, brake hard and slam into her, or gear down, lay on the throttle to pick up Gyro Force, and go into a swerve around the back of her. When I made the commit, I had about 20 ft of space and she was still in my lane, oblivious to the havoc she just caused. Once my swerve started, I put my thumb on the red button throwing the quad Stebel Air Horns on. I made sure that I did this after the path commit was going to be guaranteed to be behind her turn just to make sure that I didn't throw her into a panic that would have made the situation worse on me. In roughly 40 ft. passed the SUV I was back in my lane and at level cruise at 72 mph, letting off the throttle to get back down to the limit and continuing my Sunday ride to the next gas station where I could figuratively change my underwear. Another biker a ways behind us saw the scene unfold and caught up with me at that gas station and asked why I didn't stop and confront the woman as I would have loved the look on her eyes after she heard the Stebel go off right behind her. I just said "I have an aversion to 20 to Life," and left it at that.
If I had followed your logic, I'd be either dead or in the hospital right now as this only happened a week and a half ago and in no case would my bike have come out of it in ridable condition. If I had hit the brakes, I would have slammed into her and that's the end of our ride. If I slowed down to initiate the swerve, my tail would have fishtailed and either my wife would have been the first one into the SUV, or we would both be flying off the other side of the road into the ditch with the bike following us, again ending our ride. If I touched on the brakes at any time just before and during the swerve, as soon as I touched into the swerve, I'd lose all maneuvering traction to the brake traction and likely the 900 lbs of sport touring bike would have bit the pavement on the front wheel and done an end over end flip down the road behind the SUV, yet again, ending our ride.
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If the conditions are so bad you can't read road signs, you shouldn't be driving.
Under the right conditions snow will stick to the signs looking like [freefoto.com] these [nightskyhunter.com] signs [way-up-north.com] even though it's otherwise clear. It doesn't happen often, but when it does I think the self-driving car is pretty much screwed. Humans seem to get by on a combination of routine and heuristics.
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Problem also when passing another car - especially when the other car accelerates a bit at that moment. Sometimes you just need to be able to gain a few mph quickly and with no condition.
"The driver can override the speed limit by pressing "firmly" on the accelerator."
That's what you already have to do to make an automatic downshift. Have you driven one lately that didn't do this?
If there's multiple lanes, I have NO problem leaving the cruise control on, sliding over, and letting them fiddle with their speed for a minute.
I wouldn't use this tech in the left lane though, unless it had configurable +10ish offset at highway speeds at least. And if anyone really must go variable 15+ over the
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"The driver can override the speed limit by pressing "firmly" on the accelerator."
ok, but what if the driver, like me, didn't read the doc?
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Don't forget roads with variable speed limits and electronic speed signs. They should invest in up-to-the-minute over-the-air GPS map updates!
There's also temporary limits imposed by road works.
If the conditions are so bad you can't read road signs, you shouldn't be driving.
GPS is not the answer.
Or they could use the existing gps augmentation systems. SiriusXM and FM radio both provide traffic updates. It would probably be simple to add information for variable speed zones.
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That's not even the worst offender. CA has lots of freeways that sit right next to frontage roads and on the same level as them. The only thing that separates the two is a bit of chain link fence and about 10 feet of grass. Guess what those frontage roads have? Yep, speed signs. Guess what a car I test drove picked up on as the speed limit for the freeway? Yep, the speed on the frontage road.
This is a terribly thought out idea. I'd rather trust a GPS map that has the speedlimits assigned to it.
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I'd like a citation on "don't give a flying turd about the safety of others" statement. I've looked for stats on accidents where speeding was the primary factor. All you see is where speed was a contributing factor. Well, that's just a BS term there. Of course speed was contributing, if no parties involved in the accident were moving, there wouldn't have been an accident. From piecing things together though, as far as I can tell from numbers from other causes vs the total number, speeding results in le
Re:How many minutes until this is mandatory? (Score:4, Interesting)
Causing an accident is far from the only negative outcome of speeding.
It also massively increases the severity of accidents (remember, a 40mph crash has 4 times more energy involved than a 30mph crash).
where did you learn physics? (Score:2)
Kinetic energy goes with the square of the speed, so a 40mph crash has not quite 2X as much energy as a 30mph crash. (16:9 ratio)
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I don't get it. Alcohol? One half mv squared divided by one half mv squared where v(top) is 40 and v (bottom) is 30 yields 1.78. That's not four times... Unless there's relativity somewhere
You are right, to get 4 times the energy you need to double the speed - i.e. 60 mph has 4 times the energy as 30 mph.
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Re:How many minutes until this is mandatory? (Score:5, Funny)
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I think Ford should invest in getting everyone a moving map GPS
That will happen soon. The big cost of GPS navigation is not the receiver, but the display. But displays will be in all new cars starting in 2018, because backup cameras will be mandatory. So sticking in a GPS is a minimal cost. For many current cars, the backup camera and GPS are part of the same package. You get both or you get neither.
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The companies that own the data still think they can gouge the automotive market, even though the mobile prices have been driven down to the floor by the likes of Waze and Google Maps.
Not really. We just licensed Google Maps for an application. Literally cost millions of dollars. Google doesn't give that stuff away for free.
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http://www.openstreetmap.org/ [openstreetmap.org]
Getting better every day. Used in several popular offline GPSes like Navmii already. Only a matter of time before it either takes over or at least drastically depresses prices.
Re: How many minutes until this is mandatory? (Score:2)
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Strange, because on my GMC Terrain I can download the map updates for free. That car is almost 4 years old now, strange that it *was* the companies that made the stand-alone GPS units that didn't have lifetime updates for a very long time, I've still got my garmin from 6-7 odd years ago, where they wanted to charge $190/year for map updates.
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My Ford has a speed limit database set up as part of the Nav data for the GPS. However, it is apparently set with a maximum permissible speed limit of 74 mph. That means that it is artificially low for most of the Interstate highways in the west. Most western states have a limit of 75 on the open road -- some have stretches of 80.
Cosmic speed limit (Score:2)
"Do you know what a goddamn LIMIT is, fool? You are not supposed to ever reach it, much fucking less go past it!"
The pnly speed limit that applies to is c
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lim f($speedOfCar).
x-> $speedLimit
is just a point on the graph
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pranksters plant signs that mess with their vehicles
Pranksters planting signs? Hmm... how many times have I actually seen this in my entire lifetime? Oh yeah... zero. Let's see... how easy would it be to simply put a logical limiter so it doesn't ever read 170mpg instead of 70mph? Trivial.
This technology is simply an incremental step to a completely autonomous car, in case you didn't figure that out. You're going to see more and more incremental steps like this as we move along the path first to partially autonomous and finally fully autonomous vehicles
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Re:How many minutes until this is mandatory? (Score:4, Informative)
Good points, bad points (Score:5, Interesting)
In Europe, speed limiters seem to be common in Mercedes and Smart cars, Renault, Citroen and Peugeot cars, plus some of the newer Vauxhall/Opel models and Fords. It is built into the cruise control system.
The bad points? Well, reading signs is a so-so thing when it comes to accuracy, and satellite navigation systems sometimes get the speed very badly wrong if they have incorrect data. And just because the speed limit *says* that you can drive at up to whatever-is-on-the-sign, it doesn't mean it is *safe* to do so in the road conditions you actually have.
Re:Good points, bad points (Score:5, Insightful)
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I agree with you in general, but I think it's fairly easy to leadfoot it *unintentionally* and go fast, especially on big open freeways.
Actually, it seems easier in my electric car (smart electric, one of the wimpiest ones), because I'd at least notice the higher revving of the engine in a gas car, even in a high gear.
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Less time checking your speed equals more time looking where you are going.
How long does it take you people to check your speedo, for me it's a fraction of a second. This is for every car I've ever been in.
Also, if you spend all your time with your eyes glued to the road in front of you, you're driving horribly wrong. You should be focusing on multiple things, mirrors, instruments, blindspots. If you're not checking your mirrors every 10-15 seconds you're danger
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I've driven a car with a manual speed limiter for 10+ years now. I don't understand why all cars don't have one. Entering a 30mph/50kmh zone? Set that as the maximum speed on the limiter and you can drive around normally without having to keep checking your speed. Less time checking your speed equals more time looking where you are going. This is only a good thing.
I completely disagree. If there is roadway traffic, you don't need to check your speedometer as the safest and smoothest thing to do is to simply travel with the traffic. If you drive much faster than the bulk traffic flow, you risk causing an accident. If you drive much slower than the traffic, you risk getting rear-ended or clipped as irritated drivers people pass you. You also substantially disrupt traffic flow and actually slow down everyone's commute.
If there is no roadway traffic, it really should
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Otherwise, If the tech becomes popular, I can foresee miscreants making fake "5km/h" signs and the police making mobile "0km/h" signs to abuse the system. Seems like this dovetails really well with a government-controlled killswitch too.
Killswitch. Right, right.
There are too many municipalities suffering from the fallout of a fatal traffic incident caused by the ambiguous pursuit of a suspected criminal for that not to be of interest.
Let your vehicle be controlled just a little, and the next thing you know, someone in gov't is testing boundaries.
But the signs.. (Score:2)
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Makes sure you don't drive faster than 85. It doesn't add more fuel to the engine to make you go faster.
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What good is making sure that the car doesn't go faster than 85 when it is already 20 over the real speed limit?
GP's point is that this system sets a maximum speed, not a minimum, not an average. So it is not going to go 85, or even 55, unless you push the accelerator and make it happen.
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what I need (Score:2)
Cruise control? (Score:3, Informative)
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People who can't maintain safe following distances shouldn't be driving--but we have tech that can react very quickly to the guy ahead of you braking, in case you don't. People who don't check for children children behind their rear tires before they back out of the driveway shouldn't be driving--but we have rear-view cameras. People who can't stay in their lane shouldn't be driving, but we have lane assist...etc...etc.
Re:Cruise control? (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty soon folks will get used to tuning out while driving (more than they already dangerously do), and when there is a crash it will be reasonable to argue that the automation was to blame.
We are rapidly turning drivers into only being partially in command. Some of the recent plane crashes caused by pilots with atrophied skills being faced with bad conditions and an autopilot that throws its hands up should be cautionary tales against this semi-automation.
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We've already tuned out. Try riding a bicycle or motorcycle - as a non-typical vehicle on the road, more drivers won't notice you and you'll have more close calls.
We just aren't wired to be diligent over the many hours we drive in our lifetime. We get used to things. We run on our own autopilot already. And that can end up being deadly.
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Somebody who can't pay attention to the street signs shouldn't be driving.
No, they shouldn't, but some of them are going to anyway. Since your loved ones will therefore be just as injured/dead if they are the unlucky ones who get hit by a bad driver who was going too fast, dismissing technology that might help those bad drivers to be better, safer drivers seems uncalled for.
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I have cruise control, thanks. Somebody who can't pay attention to the street signs shouldn't be driving.
Anyone who thinks cruise control is the solution to prevent speeding in non-highway situations (where the speed limit is 35-45mph, and there are traffic lights every half mile) shouldn't be driving.
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whereas cruise couldn't be used below 50mph.
What? I've owned or driven dozens and dozens of cars and I've never encountered a higher low end limit than 25mph for cruise control, many work at 15 or 20 mph.
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It will probably work too well (Score:2)
Average, every day drivers will realize that speed limits in some areas are generally set slower than they are used to driving, and they'll grow tired of the warnings and turn it off.
If Ford pushes out an update to create an optional 10 over buffer zone (if selected), at which point they'll get sued by an "activist" lawyer for getting a ticket while using Ford's system. At that point, the feature will quietly disappear in the next model upgrade.
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You know what's been proven to be more dangerous, in terms of causing more accidents, than exceeding the speed limit? Relative Velocity - Too big of a difference in speed compared to the other cars on the road. Someone doing 40mph when everyone else is doing 50mph is actually a bigger danger, even if they're the ones
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
I can see this working! (Score:5, Funny)
Because most people who speed do it "accidentally".
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I don't know about most, but I'm sure many do. I know I do. My normal vehicle is my work E250. Occasionally I drive my wife's Subaru and frequently notice that I'm driving 10 or 15mph over the limit. While the Subaru can certainly handle corners and stop a heck of a lot quicker than the van, it doesn't make up for the one constant, human reaction time. We live in a rural area with narrow roads and a lot of twists and blind driveway entrances. Being able to easily keep one's speed reasonable would be a handy
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Tell me what the real speed limit is and I will follow it. Our highway speeds are set too low for the roads and the current car quality, so most folks drive 10 over in light traffic. Most of the times cops won't ticket there (unless they feel like it, equal protection under the law my ass), and many cops will angrily blow past traffic only going 10 over.
Try driving at the speed limit on I5 and you will be more likely to cause an accident than just going with the flow. Heck even Google wants to set their
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In my current car it can be difficult to tell what your speed is unless you look at the speedometer frequently. There is no engine noise to go by. Newer models of my car read the speed limit signs and give a warning if it is exceeded by a certain amount and the adaptive cruise control already takes into account the speed limit (though it allows you to exceed it as well). The new model already reads speed limit signs. If a car is very smooth and quiet it can be quite easy to speed without realizing it.
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I don't know about most people, but my exwife is a horrible driver and her highway speed varies by +-10 miles per hour. Yes, a 20 MPH range.
She sounds like a good driver. Your speed should vary depending on the road, traffic, visibility and other factors. It's the idiots who drive the same exact speed based on what the speed limit is that are dangerous fools.
One other thought (Score:2)
This is coming from a company where the CEO bragged about knowing who was speeding in their cars or not [businessinsider.com]. Having a company with a CEO like that is probably not a good idea.
Fun with your Injket (Score:5, Funny)
1. Print out some 25mph speed signs
2. Post on a freeway
3. ???
4. LOL!
Your Honor, may i present evidence to the contrary (Score:2)
Why not link this to cruise control (Score:3)
Cruise control already controls the speed of the car. Adaptive cruise control will drive at whatever speed it needs to drive at based on the distance to the cars in front and behind. Why not extend the adaptive cruise control system so that it will drive no faster than the speed limit (as determined by whatever this system uses) unless it has to drive faster due to the speed of the car behind (i.e. the car behind is going faster than the speed limit and therefore this car has to in order to not get rear-ended).
It could then, like existing cruise control systems, be overridden by the driver if need be (via pressing on the accelerator pedal) but by default it would keep the driver at the speed limit unless it needed to go slower due to the car in front or faster due to the car behind.
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>> Adaptive cruise control will drive at whatever speed it needs to drive at based on the distance to the cars in front and behind.
Not quite at least on my car (2008 Jag). Adaptive cruise has a max speed setting and a min distance setting. If the car in front suddenly speeds up my car will only speed up to the cruise speed you have already set. It helps to think of adaptive cruise more like an automatic slow up/brake than an automatic speed up/keep-up.
The definition of irony: (Score:2)
I'm fine with (Score:5, Insightful)
preventing accidental speeding, just as long as it leaves me alone when I'm speeding deliberately.
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Well, it does just that since you can override it in the most obvious way possible - give it more gas. So if you need to overtake and speed to do it, you'd probably floor the accelerator which disables the system to quickly pass.
Speed traps are always interesting - I've seen a case where we spotted a speed trap, slowed down, and the guy behind us got annoyed, changed lanes and floored it right in front of the c
great idea! NOT (Score:2)
yea, this is a great idea until you realize that driving the speed limit is as stupid as driving double the speed limit. This would be especially bad if you cant switch it off quickly when you need to make that quick lane change.
A question: (Score:2)
Does it come pre-hacked, or does each individual police force in your area have to rape it separately?
Speed of traffic? (Score:2)
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going so far as to point out that you could be ticketed for unsafe driving (or impeding traffic) if you were driving the speed limit (e.g. 60mph on the freeway) but the rest of traffic was going 90.
Yeah I don't think so. Otherwise, there would be no way to drive on that road at all without breaking the law. I think that would violate due process. Also common sense.
Your driving instructor isn't wrong about safety, though.
How about technology to block texting while moving (Score:2)
It seems like texting is a far bigger problem with driving than simply going a few miles over the speed limit.
And sometimes to extract oneself from a dangerous situation one needs to be able to speed the car up a bit before getting back down to the speed limit.
I'll pass. (Score:2)
No pun intended.
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I'll pass.
If the system let you
Old is new again (Score:2)
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I had a 1972 Buick with an adjustable indicator needle on the speedometer. I always wondered why this feature wasn't standard in all cars
Maybe because nowadays most cars have a speed-limiter (cannot go fast than the given speed limit) and a auto-speed (keep going at the same speed unless the breaks (...) are used).
Don't Make Me Break Out the Spray Paint (Score:2)
It ain't that hard to turn 30 into 80.
Subtitles (Score:2)
I've got something like this; it's not perfect. (Score:2)
I've got a system in my current car (BMW M5) that uses a camera to read speed limit signs and puts the current speed limit on my heads-up display. It's a cool system, but it's not perfect. It frequently has problems in school zones where it sees the 25 MPH sign and displays that whether the "school zone" rules are currently in effect or not. I'd agree with most of the posters here that allege that speed limits are set by ass-covering bureaucrats with absolutely zero consideration to actual public safety. Sl
Safety Speed (Score:2, Insightful)
Well the sentiment here definitely seems to lean toward "let me speed, limits are for dummies" camp. I, for one, would be in favor of a system that enforced posted speed limit signs. Each day that I take to the road I'm putting my life and those of my family members at risk because some other driver HAS to get to the next red light faster than me. I've also found that in many areas around me, speed limits are entirely unenforced, creating a situation where there is a posted limit of 55 mph but an average sp
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Stop lights are needed for pedestrians. Unless you want to build lot's of over and underpasses for them?
keep this shit off the il tollways as no one does (Score:2)
keep this shit off the il tollways as no one does the 55 on them. Unless you want trucks on your ass.
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Will make a bunch of people push the off button, or push their foot down on the accelerator to override the system?
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How much havok will a 10 mph sign cause on the highway?
None at all. Drivers aren't that stupid, and still maintain enough control over their car to react appropriately.
You, however, might be so stupid that you'd slam on your own brakes to 10 MPH just to make another idiotic point, at which point you get rear-ended by an 18-wheeler who is unlucky enough to be following you. Fortunately, there is only one you, so the gene pool will be thinned out to the point where this situation won't repeat.
Re:Cruise Control 2.0? (Score:4, Informative)
You can already get radar cruise control to keep a set following distance behind the car in front of you. It's been around for at least a decade. It's an option on my 10 year old Honda, along with "lane keep assist" to warn if you deviate out of your lane.
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The system would be really awesome if could also maintain the proper distance from the car ahead of you.
Ford has had that for years now. It's called 'Adaptive Cruise Control', and uses radar to maintain a preset minimum following distance.
I have it on my 2011 Ford, and while it's nice, it can only be set to following distance, not time. I want to set it for a two second gap, but my choices are 22, 44, or 66 yards. It's too close for high speeds, but too long for low speeds.
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The USA had "unlimited roads" up until a few decades ago when then morons ruined it.
Now we have to cater to the fucking idiots who don't know how to drive yet are clogging up the roads.
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This would be catastrophic in many cases. I think the lawsuits would pile up quickly when the number of head on collisions rises due to the car speed being capped and not able to gain enough speed to get around someone.
All it would take is a few vanloads of soccer moms getting nailed for the the public outcry to be substantial.
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