There is discussion in Europe about installing “intelligent speed assistance” on cars, which is a fancier name for a speed governing device that controls how fast a car can go. It is not a new idea. We have covered it before.
In 1923, the city of Cincinnati proposed a law that would require speed governors on cars that would shut their engines off if they exceeded 25 mph. Peter Norton wrote in Fighting Traffic about the reaction from the industry:
Motordom complained that governors would be unreliable, easy to tamper with, and problematic on hills. But mostly, it hated how “it kept the burden of responsibility for accidents on motorists” and killed the biggest advantage cars had—speed. It won the war in 1923 and learned from it.
And it changed the discussion about safety. No longer would there be any thought about limiting speed. Indeed, one industry executive explained that “the motor car was invented so that man could go faster” and that “the major inherent quality of the automobile is speed.”
Instead, the approach to safety would be to control the pedestrians and get them out of the way—to separate them with jaywalking laws and strict controls. Over time, safety would be redefined to make roads safer for cars, not people.
Now, almost a century later, the same battle is being fought over intelligent speed assistance. It’s much more sophisticated than the governors of a hundred years ago, having GPS and being able to read road signs, keeping the car at the maximum legal speed. And guess what? The industry says it won’t work. Arthur Neslen wrote in The Guardian:
The European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) claims:
Instead, the industry wants speed limit information (SLI). It is basically an indicator that tells the driver they are going faster than the speed limit, which the driver is then free to ignore. The consultants, quoted in The Guardian, disagree with the industry:
It is easy to see why the industry is so threatened by ISA. Imagine being forced to go 25 mph on an empty road engineered for people going twice as fast, in vehicles engineered to go four times as fast. People wouldn’t buy big muscle cars because they would never get to open them up. People would get incredibly frustrated.
It will also be one of the problems with self-driving cars; when they are going the speed limit everyone else around them will be going nuts. It’s why ISA will never happen. The voters would put on their yellow vests and would throw out any politician who brought them in.
