By Nick Heath, 15 May 2008 14:52
NEWS
Sat-navs that warn drivers not to speed or can even slow the car automatically could be as little as a year away.
Drivers in London would be first in line for the technology that pairs sat-nav GPS with a digital map of the capital and its speed limits to tell drivers how fast they should be driving.
Latest photo stories from silicon.com
1. Photos: Australian broadband goes for a deep-sea dive
2. Photos: Talons, Eagles and Enforcers - the tech behind war
3. Photos: Introducing - the world's lightest mobile phone
4. Photos: Smart posters and the 'seeing eye phone'
5. Photos: ÂŁ1,000 reward for PM's fingerprints
6. Photos: Eavesdropping on the net
7. Photos: Satellites free the roads from snow and ice
8. Photos: The Colossus WWII codebreaking machine
9. Photos: US military puts 'bat' spies in the skyÂ…
10. Photos: Conquering the arctic wilderness
Transport for London (TfL) have been building the map for a year and it could be ready for use within one year if new mayor Boris Johnson backs the initiative.
TfL is preparing to trial a more advanced system that slows speeding vehicles by reducing the throttle, the Intelligent Speed Adaption (ISA) system will be tested on 10 TfL cars and vans.
Tom-Tom sat-nav users would be the first able to use the speed notification system but TfL says it is in talks with other sat-nav providers about using the map.
It will be the most comprehensive digital map in Britain and when finished will cover all roads within the Greater London Authority area.
A spokesman for TfL said: "This is the biggest scheme of its type in the country, we are working on a comprehensive map of every single road in the capital."
He said that if the ISA system goes ahead and is trialled successfully it could be rolled out to other TfL vehicles.
Chris Line, TfL's road safety chief, recently told the transport select committee that such systems could reduce motoring deaths.
He said: "Casualties are very much linked to speed, both numbers and severity of casualtiesÂ… and going back to technology there is a definite role there to be played by having vehicles which actually keep to the speed limit.
"Perhaps longer term we can use vehicle technology to actually manage the speed situation."
Comments
There are 3 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
NO!
Again, some nameless civil servants have come up with a half-assed idea they want to force on the rest of us. Never mind the liberty implications, it isn't actually possible to speed in London!
We need more traffic cops to stop idiots who swerve across all lanes of the road like they own it
2. Simon
Lovely, so people will be able to just plant their foot on the floor and the car will take care of obeying some arbitrary number. Driver no longer has to look at speedo or consider what is an appropriate speed.
Yeah, that's going to be as good for road safety as the current speed scameras are - ie they won't help, just make things even worse.
3. Karen Challinor
how precisely do Tfl plan to get people to purchase and subsequently fit to their vehicles, devices that will limit their freedom
there are times, albeit extremely rare times, when not being able to put your foot down on the accellerator will get you killed, for example if you are halfway across the head of a T junction and out of the corner of your eye you catch a vehicle, say a 10 ton lorry, with the driver slumped across the wheel heading straight for you slowing down or stopping then will kill you stone dead (you get this a lot with motorcycles crossing T junctions when the driver of the vehicle waiting to pull out forgets you exist because they are looking somewhere else and they just pull out taking your back wheel with them as they go)
I'm sorry but I suspect the vast majority will take the attitude of "I'm going to be in control of the vehicle not some little box of electronics that can't react to what I'm seeing"