NSW trialling electronic speed limiter in cars
May 21, 2009 by George Skentzos
The New South Wales government will begin testing a new electronic speed limiter device on Wollongong roads next month which it says could one day become a standard feature on all cars.
Although its effectiveness is already being questioned as drivers will be able to override the system at the flick of a switch, which would render the device useless.
The device works by cutting power to the engine when the speed limit is exceeded, which is calculated by comparing the driver’s speed with road data collected from satellites.
“It actually talks to the computer which manages the engine, and it tells that computer to limit the available fuel to the engine so that it will not exceed a certain speed, whatever speed limit you’re in,” Dr Soames Jobe said, director of the RTA’s Centre for Road Safety.
According to Dr Jobe, this device will seemingly become the miracle solution for not only our road toll, but also the environment and even save the motorist money by avoiding speeding fines.
“We expect it’s going to be cheaper to run the vehicle if you’re not exceeding the speed limit, accelerating harder in urban traffic in order to get above the speed limit.
“So we expect there’ll be savings for the environment … as well as, most importantly for us, road safety improvements.”
In a noble statement, New South Wales Roads Minister Michael Daley has pointed out that if this device is successful the Government stands to lose more than $80 million in revenue collected from speeding fines, but says that is not a concern.
The fact that a program such as this has progressed so far at the expense of tax payer dollars is an insult, only serving to reinforce the notion that ‘every kay over is a killer’, which just simply isn’t the case.
So long as our decision makers continue to pursue this mentality in improving road safety, motorists continue to become victims as advanced driver training, road quality and modern speed limits are ignored.
Print it: 
Why is a rural road posted @ 50? Are their any other responsibilities the government can take away from us? Can we electronically limit the amount of fast food, alcohol ect we consume as well? How many freedoms are we going to have to sacrifice for the minority?
What happens when you want to overtake a car towing a caravan travelling at 70km/h on a 80km/h country road? Do you just pull-out and hope a car doesn’t come from the other direction within the next half an hour?
of course its hopeless, why would they want you to do the speed limit? According to skynews & “The Australian” the vic state government alone will make over 400mil of its revenue from traffic offences.
So now the right answer is “No officer I wasn’t speeding, i was stimulating the econonmy”
http://www.theaustralian.news......45,00.html
Supply & Demand – yeap if it is a road train then make sure you have an hour or maybe a large bumper.
Breaking news: in a new equal opportunity initiative, and to improve public perception, people are being given free lessons by politicians on how to stick their heads up their asses.
Reading the above comments i now think this could be more dangerous than speeding. How many times have you had to accelerate out of trouble?
What if you don’t have time to quickly flick a switch?
In a noble statement, New South Wales Roads Minister Michael Daley has pointed out that if this device is successful the Government stands to lose more than $80 million in revenue collected from speeding fines, but says that is not a concern.
Ever heard a porky of this magnitude? Nope, me either. NSW, the state with arguably the worst balance sheet in Australia, is happy to throw away $80mil. The only way this would be true, is if they charge motorists $100mil for using the device….
I thought I detected a negative tone by the reporter whilst reading this news item….. Itf this is the case then please allow me to extend my full support! To the reporter of course :-)
Again we see the absolute blind ignorance that is put forward in the name of road safety. I wonder how many accidents thorughout Brisbane yesterday were caused by vehicles exceeding the speed limit? Rough guess, NONE because the roads were such that half the speed limit was not attainable yet we had 50% more accidents!! Wonder how this technology would go then?
The Govt keeps missing the ever growing white elephant: educate drivers properly ffs. Why is it that while cars and safety equipment is making our cars safer, our limits keep dropping, and more strangleholds are being created…
Along the lines of the comments above, this’d be a great device when you go to over take those tools that travel at 10>15k under the limit and then speed up in overtaking lanes or when being passed.
Yep wont take long for people to have them disconnected…….why bother !!!!!!!!!
Just like Hertz in the States that think they have disconnected the button that stops you turning off the traction control of your rented Shelby Stang……….that took us about 5 seconds to work out,wonder if they ever worked out its still disconnected after we forgot to put the clip back …;)
Why dont they just enforce us all to drive a Prius ,oh wait then we will all die of boredom hahaha
I cant wait for the brakes to be deployed as soon as i’m going down a hill – yes, that will be real efficient.
This would be absolutely useless on the open road in country areas (where i live). It would take forever to overtake a vehicle doing 10 to 20ks under the limit (as posted by many above) and the longer you spend on the wrong side of the road, the higher the chance of an accident.
Wouldnt be surprised if the road toll went up, not down, because of this moronic idea.
Just goes to show we have idiots in politics (even the opposition leader thinks its a good idea) Ithought governments were there to SERVE us, not CONTROL us!
If we could have computer controlled cars where the driver just gives it spoken commands. Then we could drive home completely pissed and not lose our license.
Speed has never killed anyone – it’s stopping too quick thats the problem.
Dr Jobe is a nob! This device will become the biggest multiplier of our road toll. There are many different scenarios which show that this device will cause more problems than it’s worth.
Crashes cause more deaths than exceeding the speed limit does.
Idiots with too much time on their hands and too much money being handed to them by stupid bloody governments!
a P.S to my previous comment… my GPS is useless in some country areas, what happens then? My GPS is also shithouse when it comes to being able to determine some spped limits, and exact point where the limit changes….
It’s essentially an automated version of SPEEDTRONIC used in Merc’s. Only the system in the Merc. can be overidden by putting the foot down or pushing on the cruise control/SPEEDTRONIC stalk.
This negates the issue of not having enough time to “flick the switch”.
The stupidity of politicians seems to have no limits.
I would rather this, which will stop you speeding “accidentally” but allow momentary overriding, than “Data Logging” where at each rego renewall they download your years data, then “that’ll be X dollars and Y demerit points thanks!”
it’s never gonna go mainstream. who would wanna put that in their car. the only time when i’d want it is if i was on good behaviour (which i am) but even then i still don’t want it.
it’ll be a cold day in hell before they stick something like this on my car.
I would refuse to purchase a car with it installed.
This is the second worst idea that the NSW governmnet has had. (the first was electing Nathan Rees). Im 16 and my parents are sending me to an advanced driver course because the governmnet doesnt offer any form of driving education and driving instructors only say ” go very slow and brake from 400m away” God, why not just offer education for young and old alike. itll probably be cheaper than all these things.
it’ll be good that a device like that tells you when your over the limit rather than cut the supply to your engine.
These days with all the different variable speed limits along one road is a joke (well in some cases could be nessacary)… would save you looking down at your speedometer all the time.
The only thing available these days is you set a speed on a device and it tells you if your over that speed. Well lets just say if they can incorporate the speed limits posted along the side of the roads to the device then you can get either an audible or visual warning, (but at what expense I hear you say, your right!). Anyway another thing would be for the police to be able to remotely cut power to your engine – enough for you to park your car without causing any danger to yourself and others and be stopped without a police chase, but then if something like that gets in the wrong hands it could spell disaster…
I will join the chorus above and mention this is a stupid, moronic, idiotic, pointless, over the top, dumb example of over governance in this country. When will it all end. I can’t believe they came out in the news and said they were going to trial it. As stated above, these clowns…oh errr politicians, are supposed to be our representatives not our gestapo communist tell us what to doers. So much for a free county….seems we are losing that. Bloody hell when are we as the voting people going to get our voices again and when are these idiots going to listen to US!
They really have to up the IQ qualification for government ministers. Something above 50 would be a start…
gosh,why bother buying cars like ferrari?let all switch to a barina
this is too much and over the top until it makes them sound like an absolute douche.
Who ever wrote the article, apart from forgetting to sign their name (maybe their just embarrassed by such journalism), also forgot to mention that there are in fact five prototypes of this concept being trialled. Some of them increase resistance to the pedal which can be overcome by the driver, for example in an emergency, yet it still offers a reminder to the driver that they are about to break the speed limit. I think one version beeps as mentioned in a post above and one is not able to be switched off at all.
Bret is certainly on the money.
Dont worry, we will all be on the user pays system before we know it, and that goes for those posing with their arms crossed.
They will either scare us onto it, or tax us onto it.
And as someone said earlier, the mercs use a similar system to this, I remember reading about it a while ago.
The beter idea would be to make the speed alert in the cars communicate with the sattelites and constantly adjust the warning speed.
Everyone always sets them at like 120kmh or turns them off all together, but if they automaticly varied depending on the zones and let off an annoying beep, people would be aware and still be able to overtake safely
I hope this device is only connected to my 1st gear!!
Yes, yes, too controlling of us drivers etc etc. But… I’m afraid this system will come in time like it or not. The positive side is that all the people who take off slowly from the lights and do stupid things will have to move uniformly. Picture this: everybody’s speed limiter/accelerator kicks in at a green light or higher speed limit area and a body of cars increases speed together, instead of the chaos of some people dribbling along half awake not realizing they are holding people up (or too bloody selfish). And, it may stop the stupidity of running a red light because “I didn’t see it” and almost killing someone, which was the case with me last year.
Here we go again. The government misses the point and just starts throwing out random ideas. The problem is that most people don’t think this sort of thing through: they see the story about how young drivers are mass murderers waiting to happen on ACA and then they hear about this. Suddenly the world is saved, let’s just ignore situations where you have to accelerate out of danger and overtaking.
This really isn’t that hard to work out. You take all the money that gets pumped into ridiculous ideas like this and the speed kills campaigns and put it into subsidising driver training. And I don’t mean the ones where they teach you how to reverse park or when to use your blinkers, I mean proper training. Put people on a skidpan and teach them how to handle the car properly.
And to support that how about taking some time out of the oh-so relevant junk being taught in schools and put it into something like this. I personally would like to see things like the weight transfer of the car taught (as in the theoretical side of driving, I mean it’s certainly more relevant than, say, Shakespeare), but even just showing those shock videos (the ones where they show you a real accident) would be better than nothing.
The good thing, it will be real efficient for brake, but I would refuse to purchase a car with it installed.
Speed limiting has NOT pulled too many trucks/ B-Doubles into line. I guess while motorists are electronically speed limited they can be pushed into a better pace by the tailing truck. The RTA circus tent is on fire again.
Yeah and what about speed limiting on trucks?
Is this enforced?
This should be a priority to stop companies from forcing Truck drivers to break the law to achieve unrealistic time tables and placing the rest of us in danger in doing so.
While we are on the subject of stupid politicians and their dim witted beauracrats, this is worth a listen.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scien.....578568.htm
Maybe the government should start teaching people how to drive properly, first. Nearly every single car crash is caused by human error.
News just in. electronic speed limiter is in, NSW REGO gone up 1000% to cover for the speeding fine financial blackhole
Yet another reason to vote out the moronic NSW Government.
When will the various authorities realise, that there are in fact very few “accidents” on the road. Almost every “accident” is preventable in some way or another, and very few accidents can actually be blamed on speed alone – after all, the driver is in control of the car’s speed. And if the Australian Design Rules had been updated to be in line with current technology as it’s evolved over the years, I’d be willing to bet that by now the road toll would have at least halved. Furthermore, in Germany, where there are no speed limits on the national Autobahns, they have half as many fatal “accidents” BY NUMBER (not percentage) than we do here in Australia – and they have FOUR TIMES our population. Clearly, speed isn’t the issue here. If the government(s) spent more money on proper driver education training, and less on scaremongering advertisements, we would have a country of much safer, and much more skilled drivers.