Speed limiters may be annoying, but their benefits are clear

The modern driver’s journey begins with a cacophony of bongs. First, a bong from the central locking lets you know the car is open, then as you clamber in, a bong from the satnav reminds you to “stay focused on the road and obey traffic laws”. A further bong from the instruments informs you that your left rear tyre is 0.1psi less inflated than the others, while one more bong floats the idea that the rucksack you left on the passenger seat is in fact a passenger who has forgotten to fasten their seatbelt.

Once underway, the bonging doesn’t abate. Did you know that you’re getting close to the edge of the road? A quick bong should get you back on track. The speed limit here is 60mph – bong – or is it 50mph? Oh, and bong, it might be icy. By the way, have you spotted that parked van, or would you prefer the brakes to be applied rather hastily on your behalf? Bong, bong, bong.

Electronic driver aids have rather crept up on us, and despite our collective grumbling have been a very good thing. From the mandatory fitting of seatbelts in the driver’s seat in 1968 to the near-constant mollycoddling of the present day, safety technology has slowly turned motoring from a genuinely perilous activity into something that can increasingly be relied upon not to kill us.

Excluding the Second World War, we passed peak bloodshed on Britain’s roads in 1966, with 7,985 people dying from the motor car that year. Casualty numbers have been steadily falling ever since thanks to innovations such as seatbelts, drink-driving laws, speed limits, graduated motorcycling licences, vehicle and road construction standards, mandatory helmets, airbags and the theory test.

But there is still significantly further to go. While it’s worth celebrating the technological, cultural and regulatory changes that have dramatically decreased the amount of death and injury caused by cars in this country, it’s equally worth highlighting that 30,000 people – roughly the population of Chichester or Whitstable – are still killed or seriously injured on our roads each year. 

Children are inordinately represented in this statistic, as are young adults. Which means there is still work to be done to make cars, and driving, safer.

Speed limiters – now mandatory

One of the latest iterative changes to the way we drive is a new regulation forcing manufacturers to fit speed limiters to new cars. These gadgets aren’t new – you might already have one fitted in your own car – and it’s not a hard limit to how fast you can drive. But just like every other bong, it exists to annoy you enough for you to notice and, where applicable, change your behaviour.

Obviously, you’ll get bonged at if the car detects you speeding. There might also be visual cues like flashing lights, or the car might physically slow down for you. In some cases the accelerator pedal will gently push back against your foot, a polite but firm mechanical “no” like that of a strict aunt removing your hand from the biscuit tin. You can switch off all of these things but they’ll all come back on the next time you turn the key.

It wouldn’t be a technological development in the car industry without a corresponding three-letter acronym, so speed limiters are known as ISAs, or intelligent speed assistants. Having used many of these systems in the past I’d prefer to describe them as “reasonably bright” or indeed “showing some promise” rather than outright “intelligent”, given their propensity to misread signs. 

How they work

ISAs use a combination of GPS and cameras to establish any prevailing restrictions and, to its credit, this combination is surprisingly accurate, though it requires supervision in cities, in tunnels and on any road running adjacent to a motorway.

This is a European Union regulation, which means that the UK doesn’t have to enforce it but will inevitably end up with it because we’re too small for manufacturers to make an exception for us. In Northern Ireland it will be mandatory. As the UK’s trade body the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) is at pains to point out, there’s nothing to be gained from regulatory divergence. 

Besides, the European Transport Safety Council estimates that this gadget will reduce European road deaths by a fifth – something the UK would clearly benefit from.

What’s next in car safety technology?

At the moment, ISA can be overridden; a sharp jab of the accelerator pedal will shoo the nannies away, ostensibly enabling a driver in a pickle to escape danger quickly. In practice, many drivers will simply ignore the warnings, or switch them off at the start of every journey like people often do with “lane assist” systems that wrench the steering wheel if it’s sensed that your car is straying out of its lane.

In future, we will inevitably be deprived of these options. Always-on driver aids, such as traction control or anti-lock brakes, are relatively common, and given the relationship between speed and casualties – people driving too fast kills hundreds of people in the UK every year – it stands to reason that this technology will be made mandatory when it is reliable enough. A study in 2002 found that British people overwhelmingly supported non-overridable speed limiters in built-up areas if it meant that traffic calming bumps would be removed; two decades on, we’re closer to this being a technological reality.

Alcohol testing, too, has improved. Support for breathalysers hard-wired into a car’s ignition system is relatively high, and (thanks to more EU legislation) new cars are capable of having a breath tester and interlock fitted. The devices, with which drivers check their blood alcohol levels before they can operate the vehicle, are already fitted to the cars of convicted drink-drivers in several US states, and could become more of a feature in the UK if we get serious about reducing booze-related fatalities on our roads.

Aside from certain German roads, there are few good places for a car to be capable of travelling at more than 100mph. Swedish manufacturer Volvo has opted for a voluntary electronic limit of 112mph on its new cars, which it says will improve safety. At very high, three-figure speeds, existing crash technology becomes less effective, so the brand’s safety-conscious engineers (whose long-standing goal is for there to be no fatalities of any occupant of a new Volvo after 2020) simply won’t let you exceed 180kmh – a great deal higher than Sweden’s 120kmh limit, in place on some of its motorway network.

It’s possible to remove this limiter if you take your car to a tuning company, but electric cars don’t go much faster anyway – few EVs are capable of autobahn-friendly speeds of over 250kmh. As the world becomes more focused on safety and emissions, expect more cars to be fitted with hard limits that cannot be overridden.

The NCAP effect

While some technology is beneficial enough to be categorically mandated by regulators, other less compelling (or more expensive) road safety systems are soft-coded into car design by Euro NCAP.

Euro NCAP is an independent organisation that assesses car safety in Europe. Crash tests are only part of what it does – its in-depth reports on individual vehicles offer insights into how well it can predict, avoid and mitigate accidents, as well as how well it protects occupants in a crash. It goes without saying that safe cars are valued by consumers, and that a bad score from Euro NCAP makes a new model more difficult to sell.

Cars are given an overall star rating out of five, which reflects their performance in four categories – adult occupant protection, child occupant protection, vulnerable road user protection and safety assist, which evaluates crash-avoidance tech. All criteria for the assessment are updated every few years but it’s this last section, covering driver assistance systems, which is likely to change the most in the future.

For example, Euro NCAP has announced plans to penalise manufacturers for over-reliance on touchscreens. Yes, buttons are back, with a spokesperson for the organisation describing overuse of touch-operated controls as “an industry-wide problem”. From 2026, Euro NCAP tests will reward manufacturers for including separate, physical, intuitive buttons instead of complex screens with multiple menus; car companies won’t score the coveted five-star rating unless safety-critical functions are activated using physical dials, switches and knobs.

It’s a powerful move by Euro NCAP. Manufacturers have been obsessed with touchscreens for a decade or so, despite evidence showing that complex touch-based controls are distracting to drivers. Incentivised by a high safety rating, manufacturers will be forced to implement safer instrument designs from 2026 – in much the same way that both hard and soft regulation has forced them to build ever-safer products. 

It’s possible that physical buttons will one day join autonomous emergency braking, SOS calling, lane support and indeed speed limiters in being made mandatory by law. It’s easy to dismiss each new driver assistance system as just another irritating noise to be deactivated as soon as you sit in the car, but each iterative improvement to car safety has prevented needless deaths – and you never know when someone you love will owe their life to a bong.