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News and Comment April 2022

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18 April - The slippery slope?

I spent the holiday weekend in Hampshire and despite the dire forecast of various transport pundits I found the roads near empty in both directions. Yesterday morning on the radio I heard another complaining about an EU plan to force cars into adhering to speed limits using camera and radar technology.

It was said that the UK would not opt out because manufacturers could not be expected to make cars destined for Britain different to those delivered to the EU. Utter balderdash churned out by a lying government led by a liar. Maybe we should expect steering wheels to move to the left in the immediate future.

But opting out of big brother EU rules on speed limiters is far easier than that, it is just a case of ticking a software box.

For example all Teslas come with the same equipment on board whether you buy the cheapest model of its type or buy into the extras. The differences are software controlled and you can pay to have them after purchase and the car upgrades over your wi-fi.

My humble Hyundai has a speed limiter and it projects the limit on to the Head Up Display (HUD). When I bought it the EU importers specified a fully specified speed limiter but the UK importer was a cheapskate and refused to pay the Koreans for the HUD projection. In Ireland the specification differences were greater, they didn’t get adaptive cruise control.

Despite Hyundai UK being cheapskates my car came with a comprehensive speed limiting system; apparently it was a mistake on the first batch of 50 imported. Some of those cars became review samples and when the second batch came into the country some of buyers kicked up a stink over the speed limiter numbers not displaying on the HUD as they had been led to believe they would.

Hyundai caved in and allowed the dealers to flick the software switch and Hey Presto it all worked the same as the European ones (and the first 50 UK models) did.

In practice the speed limiter can be a damned nuisance. I once set mine to 20 in one of those horrible socialist boroughs in North London. On a dual carriageway with speed cameras and a central reservation a bus on the inside lane decided to pull out as if I wasn’t there. It was a nasty moment because at 20 the accelerator pedal did nothing.

When you drive along the A2016 half a mile to the East of Belmarsh and reach the enormous 50 m.p.h. limited roundabout cars briefly face the 30 m.p.h. limited road into Thamesmead and mine reads the sign.

It doesn’t brake hard because my car does not make the link proposed by the EU but if it was so equipped nothing would happen.

As you may remember, my son was chairman of the European Union vehicle safety committee - not any more obviously - but these rules spend a long time in their gestation period. He told me when they were proposed that speed limiting would be a driver choice, just like it is to switch off traction control or the beeps my car makes when reversing. Switching off the limiter will become part of a driver’s start up routine.

London buses already have such a system - maybe not all of them yet, it has proved difficult to retro-fit - but they do not slam on the brakes when passing from a 40 m.p.h. zone to a 20 as they do at the northern end of Harrow Manor Way. It is recognised that rapid slow downs are dangerous. Even after our idiot government follows EU rules - and it will - the system could conceivably stop acceleration beyond the limit but it will never provoke emergency stops. Almost all politicians are irredeembly nuts but engineers outside academia are not.

I think I might ask all my election candidates for their view on 20 m.p.h. limits, Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, cycle lanes and bus lanes and vote accordingly.

The danger associated with the EU’s big brother rules is mission creep. First the speed limiter issues speeding tickets, then it is no longer an option and finally you are deemed to be uninsured if it is not working properly. Maybe a revolution is the only way forward in our burgeoning police state.

 

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