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Iβve seen several cars trying to auto detect speed signs, and at times miserably failing, sometimes spectacularly (20km limit detected on the acceleration way for a major motorway with a limit of 80). If this were to be enforced, it would actually be dangerous
You go into a car park with a limit of 5, when you leave the idiot system will expect you to do 5 on the main road until it sees another sign.
I have all speed limit alerts turned off because a system that just remembers the last sign it saw but can't logically associate signs with roads or remember them is wrong about 50% of the time.
A year or so back I had the misfortune of driving a rental MU-X with this feature. It turned out to be really good at seeing the speed signs on highway offramps, basically every time I drove past a turnoff it'd start beeping at me telling me I should be going 80 or even 60 km/h instead of 110...
Fords works pretty well
Last time I drove a rental Ford it was an endless amount of random ding-dings and dangerous interference with steering. Maybe you get used to it after a while, but I found it extremely annoying.
Agree. Fordβs auto braking and lane keeping in insane and dangerous. It constantly feels like somebody neurotic is reaching over from the passenger seat to grab the wheel. And sometimes it will look at a pothole or puddle and decide to stomp on the brakes. Happened only twice in about 1500km/four days, but thatβs still twice too many. Car βautomationβ tech is still deep in its infancy.
This is dumb.
I have a 2021 SEAT Leon, my dad has a 2016 Volvo V90.
Both of our cars have cameras for lane keeping and reminding us of the speed limit.
Neither works 100%
My car recognize the "end of no overtaking" sign as being a speed limit sign for 90km/h
Then there is an area where it allways detects a change in the speed limit despite there being none, it is from 60 to 50, not a huge deal, but there is nothing stopping it from going from 120 to 30 instantly.
Then there are time when you might need to speed for safety.
I have been in that situation, example:
Me and my dad was driving on the back roads between Uppsala and Stockholm at night, dad was driving, there was an oncomming car when suddenly dad accellerated hard, swerved into the oncomming lane and back again.
There had been a moose that decided to cross the road just as two cars passed eachother, we would not have had time to stop, the only thing to do was to speed and swerve.
The moose incident may be an edge case, but the road sign detection issues are not and the EU should wait untill the system is reliable before forcing it out.
Same here my mum just got a new electric BMW and the speed limit the car thinks to itself is constantly not being 100% correct. It just makes up speed limits sometimes.
This will affect me in about 20 years
I like the idea but I'm skeptical. Not sure how it'll work, but any GPS app I use regularly messes up the speed limit, be it due to construction (or sudden lack of) or just 2 roads being too close and me being on the other one.
And when reading signs with cameras, there are some speed limit signs with additional information underneath specifying a time or anything really.
And then finally all the times when the signs are barely readable or even just wrong. I legit can't count how many times I've seen a speed limit sign 10 meters before a series of junctions with an end of speed limit at the end of this ordeal, like that's not how this works, what the hell?
Edit: Just remembered the extremely silly cases of speedlimits. Once saw a 10km/h limit in a parking house when going up hill to the seconds floor. Just for shits and giggles I tried it, I almost went backwards trying to fight gravity, so glad no-one was there at the time, also just took forever.
Good news. Now, if they mandated a sensor that senses whether car is parked illegally, blocking footpath or a cycle lane, and drive itself to an impound lot, it's be even better. But it's progress and a significant one.
As someone who has to drive vehicles for work that have a similar system thats GPS based, I dont hate this shit as much as you would think.
I dont come to work to lose money because I get fined for speeding. I think "Oh shut up you fucking nanny piece of shit..." but I still slow down.
A GPS based system probably doesn't pick up signs from parking lots you drive past and similar nonsense, though.
Camera based systems issue a lot of false alarms, because drivers are just supposed to know that they've left a lower speed area and are back on a main road now. You don't have speed limit signs on every intersection.
Gps systems then will have to keep a database of speed limits. As speed limits change, those have to be updated. I wonder for how long a manufacturer will provide updates
Or if manufacturers will simply be required to use the government database. Which has the handy side effect of recording all your travels for law enforcement.
Before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, it must be installed but can be disabled. The choice is left to the driver.
The choice is left to the driver.
This almost certainly means you'll get the choice to inconvenience yourself by performing a deliberately long procedure to disable the feature every single time you turn the ignition on, otherwise it'll turn itself back on again by default.
The article confirms that this is the case.
For now
Of course. I understand that point, but I just needed to make this point because it's often overlooked or deliberately not mentioned to work as rage bait.
It's not rage bait. These things are always incremental. The end result will be a mandatory installation that you can't disable.
If this would also mean I can drive at the max allowed speed and can't get fines I would actually like this. I don't really feel the need for speed anyway, the maximum allowed speed usually is fine for me. But some countries like France switch a lot between 130 and 110, so most of my speeding tickets are because I didn't see the 110 sign immediately and there is a speed camera.
If this solution let's you go a max speed with zero tickets I would use it.
France loves to put the camera at the bottom of a hill, just after a speed reduction... Honestly the way it currently works feels like it's adding more danger than anything. I drive at/below the speed limit always but you see everyone's behaviour changing before the cameras in ways that don't always seem safe.
I've seen Norway master this technique. Top of the hill: 90. Sloping downwards, getting steeper and steeper (like, super steep). Almost near the bottom: 70, 5 meters further a speed cam. And those slopes are no joke. You need to clear your ears, they are that high. By the way, those 70 signs aren't visible from far, due to the terrain and greenery. It's already hard staying at 90 with constant braking. So it's a new set of break pads after every step hill.
This wasn't just once, I've seen it many times during my holidays there, spread throughout the country.
No car that is sold to consumers need to go 120 mph... There's no reason for it. Yet sports cars that go 200 are sold to anyone with a check.
It's crazy
Autobahn is one. But that is only Germany.
Weird how the autobahn with its promise of unlimited speed manages to attract the motorized psychos of Europe, to the degree that almost every episode of Top Gear had a segment set in Germany.
It's really crazy. Many standard, not luxury cars are able to go 200km/h or even faster. There is exactly one place in the world where you are legally allowed to drive that speed: The German Autobahn. But even there you won't be able to do that due to traffic, speed limits etc. in many cases. It's totally crazy that car manufacturers are building cars for those 70% of Autobahns without speed limit.
The article says they expect a 30% reduction in collisions. I very much doubt that
My father in law has that feature in his car. I think he doesn't even register the beeping anymore. And it's so easy to disable. No idea why he "uses" and ignores it.