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Electric Cars - The Future?

"A hardcore smackdown to gasoline cars..."

The Tesla Semi Unveil Event (with the surprise Roadster 2.0 unveil)

 
When petrol is banned, will this finally mean an end to the infuriating vermin of mopeds, scooters and motorbikes using my road as their own personal race track? I don't think you can fit much in the way of batteries in a bike.
 
So this isn't quite news on electric cars, but it is linked.

The EU have approved new safety measures that mean all cars sold in Europe from 2022 onwards will need to be fitted with speed limiters. Cars will use GPS data as well as cameras that recognise speed limit signs to ensure that the engine is limited to the speed of the road that it is on. So in theory, speeding will be impossible. The new rules are set to be adopted by the UK regardless of what happens with Brexit so let's not get in to that debate.

I personally think this is stupid and I'm not saying that just because I sometimes go over 70mph on the motorway.
  • Sometimes it is safer to speed up on a road to avoid a hazard or potential dangerous situation. Say you need to overtake a slow moving tractor on a country road, but the only safe way to do so is by accelerating at a rate that could well mean you need to go over 60mph to successfuly perform the manoeuvre.
  • Drivers will apparnetly be able to override the limiter with a sharp push on the accelerator. Great. Will this deliver a sudden and sharp burst of acceleration? That could lead to even more problems!
  • Speeding ticket revnue will fall sharply, which will probably mean a new cost elsewhere for all drivers to cover this.
  • The more drivers rely on this smart technology in their vehicles, the less aware they become of situation they are in on the road. If you think the car can do everything for you then you may not be concentrating at much as you should be which is even more dangerous!
  • It's bound to go wrong on some roads meaning you're limited to 30mph when really you could be doing 60mph.
  • It could lead to drivers keeping their existing cars for longer than they otherwise would so to avoid having to get a car with a speed limiter. This could in turn mean that more polluting vehicles are kept on the roads for longer than they would have.
So as you can tell, I am not a fan.
 
I was reading a review if the Tesla 3, and it was interesting that one of the main things that they said was how they felt less tired and stressed after driving long distances in it, as the automation meant they were having to do less thinking about the little things and could instead focus more on what is going around them. They felt more alert to what was going on at the end of a journey than in their old car.

Have a look at the ETSC site (https://etsc.eu/intelligent-speed-assistance-isa/), and look at the youtube video they have hosted, and it shows a demo of how ISA works, and how easy it is to enable and disable (Stop watching after the demo unless you want the why it needs to be implemented). A simple press of a button to enable or disable it. From what I understand, there is only a requirement for ISA to be included in the car, not for it to be enabled 100% of the time, so if you wanted to, you could just not enable it but when driving on local roads, why would you not enable it? I would only disable it for those instances where you need an increase in power.

I do not see how they could make it enabled 100% of the time, as my car some times picks up the speed limit from the wrong sign, does not pick up the speed limit at all, or the speed limit it picks up, and the speed limit on the navigation software disagree with each other. I would also be quite funny seeing all the European cars stuck to 70 KPH on the UK motorways, although I am sure there will be an option to switch between Miles and Kilometres.

I know I manually set the speed limit in my car when driving in 30, 40 and 50 zones to avoid speeding, so having something that works automatically saves me having to set it.

I think the best use of technology to reduce crashes, would be a system to increase the gap between cars, so when a car in front slams the brakes on, the cars behind have time to react. It does not matter if your doing 10MPH above or below the speed limit, if you have not left a big enough gap, your going to have an accident. I am sure this is a bigger cause of accidents than speeding.

Adding all this technology to cars only increases the price of them though, if people can not afford to buy new cars with this technology in, it could be another 5-6 years after the law is introduced before the cars are appearing in the 2nd hand market.

I am all in favour of using technology to make cars safer, and anything that reduces collisions by 30% and deaths by 20% should be encouraged. As these new technologies get added to cars, I think its important for them to be a standard as possible across different makes, and included in the driving test\lessons so people learn how to use them.

Am I in favour of ISA being mandatory in all new cars? Yes. Am I in favour of it being turned on all the time? No.
 
It's all going to become irrelevant anyway when we switch over from a system of privately owned driver operated vehicles to a rental system entitling us to use a vehicle from a fleet of self-driving cars.
 
With regards to speed limiters, I personally think this is a good thing. Hopefully it will stop people tailgating me, will allow you to focus on the road as oppose to keeping a check on just in-case you unwittingly go a few miles over the speed limit.

As reported in the news, there will be a on/off switch to these speed limiters, so you don't have to use the feature, which really defeat the whole point of having them :rolleyes:

Just driving to and from Alton yesterday, quiet a few main roads including duel carriage ways and motorways had some road works with reduced speed restrictions in place with the average speed cameras supposedly in operation, but yet there were vehicles speeding way too fast by me. Either these drivers know that the speed cameras are not working, or know some sort of loop hole as not to get a speeding ticket/driving ban.
 
This is a slippery slope. Of course the use of limiters won't be mandatory, but wasn't the fitment of seat beats to new cars in law before the actual use of them became mandatory (I could be wrong on that)?

Ensuring manufacturers have to fit them to new cars means that, enevitably, one day it will be a legal requirement to use one, mark my words on that. This is also a giant leap towards self driving cars, something which we all know is coming anyway, but something which our economy is clearly nowhere near ready for yet.

You may wonder why anyone could be against something that could potentially (and I mean potentially as there is no evidence that is will be) safer? Well it makes me question just how much personal freedom we are willing to compromise to governments and tech companies.

I know one road death per year is too much, I know that speeding is against the law, but the fact is we have some of the safest roads in the world in the UK and this is getting better every year. Does the end justify the means?

Surely the very basis of freedom and democracy is that you are afforded both from birth? I'd much prefer to live in a future where people are trusted to drive responsibly, and, make mistakes to which there is already a perfectly good and effective system in place to deal with such circumstances. A Minority Report style future in which satellites and trackers allow governments and tech companies to control our behaviours to prevent us from breaking the law worries me very much.
 
Speed limited cars will become irrelevant when they're replaced by autonomous cars. As much as I enjoy driving, it's inevitable because humans are basically useless and selfish when it comes to driving.
 
Automatic cars don't necessarily mean safer journeys, just take a look at our recent aviation (Boeing 737 max) when new so call safety technology makes decisions over a human
 
It's a fallacy to think an autonomous car won't have an accident. Of course it will, and people will die. The question is, will it be safer per 1000 miles than the average driver? If so then it's a success.
 
Considering that I've been driving since 1987 and I've never been held responsible for an accident, still have all my no claims bonus's from day one of driving, I trust my driving more than any automated car.


However, with regards to the other idiots on the road and you know who you are, well that is a different matter o_O
 
I personally think that speed limiters could be a very good thing, and I think this is a very smart decision by the EU! Here's why:
  • Admittedly, I have never driven before and can't yet legally drive, but I've heard about plenty of cases where people have driven on the motorway, sped up to 100mph or faster and gotten into a very serious accident. Speed limiters should hopefully reduce car accidents (I'd imagine the relationship between speed and likelihood of a car accident are directly proportional to some extent), which would reduce both strain on the NHS and traffic congestion due to roads being closed! So that's a win-win situation as far as I'm concerned!
  • Speed limiters would also mean less cases of speeding, which would also reduce the amount of things like speed awareness courses needing to be run, thus reducing government staffing costs and freeing up more money for other things!
While we're on the subject of cars, may I bring to your attention another interesting technological advancement in automotive technology that I recently heard about; Volvo have recently announced that they are to install sensors in all of their cars from the early 2020s that will allegedly be able to tell if the driver is intoxicated. Here's some info: https://www.theguardian.com/busines...all-cameras-in-new-cars-to-reduce-road-deaths

Basically, how it will work is if the driver's eyes are closed or averted from the road for long periods of time, the car will either limit its speed or park automatically. There will also be sensors that detect whether the driver is veering between lanes, has not steered for a while or is reacting slowly to other traffic. This is in a bid to completely eradicate fatalities in new Volvo cars.

I don't know about any of you, but this sounds very smart to me! The road is set to be a very safe place in the future if these technological advancements are anything to go by!
 
I found myself having to accelerate a few MPH over the limit this morning rather than braking to avoid being sideswiped by a typical BMW driver failing to acknowledge the use of indicators. Had my car been limited, the resulting damage from being able to easily accelerate out of the situation would have been costly.

I feel like this would be better off used as a punishment as opposed to a general rule of thumb. Those who have broken laws such as excessive speeding who eventually return to the road should be restricted to driving limited cars.
 
IMO yes we should speed limit all cars.

Are electric cars the future? They help with pollution but my vision for the future is the only time you use a car is to go to the country, every other time take public transport. Would make cities much safer and more pleasant for pedestrians.
 
There isn't a single public transport option in existence that could have got me to and from work on even 50% of occasions over the past 19 years. Car usage is currently absolutely essential for millions of people in this country.
 
Electric cars don't help with pollution, they just transfer it from the road side to the immediate area around the power station where the power is produced to charge said electric cars. That is just a short term fix to a long term problem.

If we want to help deal with pollution, maybe we should stop building huge great housing developments on green belt land and stop people paving over their gardens first.

Regarding this EU thing, I'm 90% against and 10% for, however.

@RoyJess having a speed limiter will not stop people tailgating you, and if anything it will make it worse because they'll just use areas where the speed limit is much higher than most people drive (like on roundabouts) to close up the gap while they're not being limited, and of course the added knowledge of a speed limited car will likely also have braking assist so this just makes people more lazy because "the computer will save them". It will also only stop them tailgating if you are already on the limiter, if you're driving 5mph slower, they'll be on your bumper in no time.

The highest number of deaths on the road caused by speeding fall into the 17-25 demographic, it's why their insurance is a £200 a month, and mine £25, yet this group is also the one group that is most unlikely to buy a brand new car, they'll plumb for a second hand car or a hand me down simply because the cost of buying a brand new car is unattainable unless they have rich parents. So the one group of people this new law is designed to benefit, is the one least likely to comply with it because their 2012 Toyota Camry doesn't have the aforementioned speed limiter on it.

This reminds me of the craziness about drone registration, the very people intent on causing carnage or flying stuff into a prison, simply won't bother to register in the first place, so another expert solution to a problem that didn't exist.

I think I would be more in favour of a system like someone else mentioned that maintained a safe distance between you and the car in front, but again, the demographic most likely to need "an electronic uncle" to hold them back, is the demographic most likely to not use it.
 
Matt N said:
  • Admittedly, I have never driven before and can't yet legally drive, but I've heard about plenty of cases where people have driven on the motorway, sped up to 100mph or faster and gotten into a very serious accident.
Click to expand...
Speed is irrelevant, in any case you're more likely to hit problems when doing the speed limits in a built up area than you are doing 120 mph down a dead motorway. Yes things go splat more the faster you're going but at 70 you'd be splat anyway.

Regarding these limiters, most vehicles I've driven with work have them fitted already? The van parked outside (Mercedes Citan) at this moment has if you push the stalk in you can set the limiter and if you move the stick any other way it is cruise control adjustments. Do I want to see this rolled out to other vehicles? I'm not too fussed but mandatory use of trackers and limits is a bad thing imo as I don't like the idea of being tracked every move and get a remote ticket issued is just not something that really appeals to me
 
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