What if our cars didn’t allow us to speed? Or, at least, strongly encouraged us not to speed?

We could help motorists avoid speeding — and therefore reduce emissions and fuel use, improve traffic flow, reduce crashes, lower insurance costs, make streets feel safer to walk and cycle – and totally avoid speeding fines.

Reducing speeding is crucial if we are to reduce the rising road toll. More than 1,200 people were killed on Australian roads in the past year.

It’s no wonder Australians want this technology – 81% believe “intelligent speed assist” technology is important for making roads safer.

Technology to stop speeding​

“Intelligent speed assist” is the name of the low-cost technology that could save lives every year by reducing speeding.

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The idea of helping drivers to avoid speeding is more than 100 years old. But early speed-limiting technologies proposed a top speed limit (similar to the way e-scooters are regulated in Australia), rather than allowing motorists the option to break the speed limit.

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If we don’t do intelligent speed assist, what’s the alternative? Currently, we must constantly monitor speed limits and adjust our speed accordingly to avoid speeding. That means looking often at our speedometers.

There is some research to suggest continually taking our eyes off the road to review our speedometer could be dangerous.

Given how often speed limits can change on a route, and that we all make mistakes, it’s no wonder speeding is so common.

Will it work?​

Installing intelligent speed assist in all cars could prevent at least 8% and up to 19% of all crashes Australia-wide. This represents up to 200 lives saved per year.

A NSW Centre for Road Safety trial found advisory intelligent speed systems reduced speeding in 89% of vehicles, across more than 1.9 million kilometres of testing.

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Intelligent speed assist is not yet a perfect system. Hurdles to overcome include:

• different speed sign coverage and designs from state to state
• maintaining an accurate map of speed limits across Australia for GPS
• potential over-reliance on the feature in varying driving conditions, such as wet weather, corners and so on.

But shouldn’t we be doing everything we can to overcome these hurdles, to make such a life-saving, child-saving technology work as well as it can?

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What’s already been done?​

Legislation in 2022 has made intelligent speed assist technology mandatory for all new cars sold in the European Union.

In Australia, if you drive a relatively new car, you may already have the option of intelligent speed assist. For example, if you drive a new Ford, you can activate its Intelligent Speed Limiter.

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Intelligent speed assist adds to a growing list of in-vehicle safety technologies, such as auto emergency braking, lane keep assist and blind spot monitoring. We know older vehicles that lack such technologies are involved in more crashes.

What about older vehicles?​

Cars have an average age of 10.4 years. So retrofitting older cars with intelligent speed assist technology has been trialled. Despite the European legislation, there’s no expectation of a wide-scale retro-fitting program.

It is common, though, to retrofit fleet cars such as government and company vehicles with intelligent speed assist. This improves fleet safety and distributes new technologies when these vehicles are sold on the second-hand market.

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‘But I only speed a little bit’​

Research shows most people think they’re better-than-average drivers. More than one in four Australians think it’s ok to speed if driving “safely”.

But you can’t speed and drive safely. For every 1km/h increase in speed, there is a 4% increase in fatal crashes. If everyone was to increase their speed by just 1km/h, we could expect an extra 48 deaths a year.

Road deaths remain the number one killer of children in Australia and speed is the most common factor in a crash.

Current measures to reduce speeding haven’t gone far enough. Despite two in three Australian drivers admitting to speeding every week, only one in ten got a speeding fine last year.

If you are worried about the government losing out on revenue, don’t. Road traffic crashes cost the Australian economy A$27 billion a year. Speed camera fines generate just $1.5 billion a year.

3 actions to get started​

Intelligent speed assist is not a silver bullet. But it is one of five crucial actions that can make zero road deaths possible. More than 200 cities around the world have already achieved this goal at least five times for a calendar year since 2009.

Here are three actions to get started:

1. install intelligent speed assist in all public buses and government fleet cars – the NSW government fleet, for example, has 25,000 cars
2. require intelligent speed assist for a 5-star ANCAP safety rating
3. adopt the EU legislation in Australia to require intelligent speed assist in all new cars.

We have an urgent problem, we have the technology, we have the evidence it works, so what’s stopping us using it to save lives on our roads?

This article was first published on The Conversation and was written by Matthew Mclaughlin, Adjunct Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia; Courtney Babb, Lecturer in Urban & Regional Planning, Curtin University; and Paul Roberts, Associate Professor and Deputy Director, Western Australian Centre for Road Safety Research, The University of Western Australia.

 

[Jennie]

My GPS tells me when I go over the speed limit. There are instances when you need to exceed the speed by 5ks on overtaking, you need to get past and back in the correct lane. I would rather pay the fine than the piper in those cases. I have never received a speeding ticket in 59 years of driving or had an accident that was my doing, in over approx 1.5 million ks

 

[Staffordshire Whippet]

Artificial Intelligence will never replace natural stupidity.
Keep your speed below the signposted limit; not only will you never cop a speeding fine, you'll save a fortune in fuel, too, not to mention a lot less wear and tear.

 

[Concerned Driver]

Having spent many years travelling, I am not sure that speed is the killer it made out to be. I travel regularly in Europe including on German autobahns where high speeds are part of the driving culture. I would be very surprised if the accident rate is higher than our own. I think the issue is more a case of further driver education (post granting of a drivers licence), poor quality and badly maintained roads and in some cases extremely poorly designed signage and safety aids. Having sat on Ministerial road safety advisory committees I have also watched a number dangerous implementations and enforcement directly against the advice of the committees. The above notion could well be one of them.

 

[Ezzy]

The old adage used to be, 'It isn't speed that kills, it is the sudden stop at the end'.

 

[marni]

Our EV can already read speed limit signs. This is just an add on.

 

[Ringdragon]

I was taught to listen to the sound of the engine and learn what speed you are doing by the note of the engine. The occasional quick glance at the speedo can't hurt either. I have had one speeding ticket in the last twelve years. I refuse to give the Government anymore of my hard earned money.
Let's put the responsibility back where it belongs, on the Driver.

 

[Jarred Santos]

Having spent many years travelling, I am not sure that speed is the killer it made out to be. I travel regularly in Europe including on German autobahns where high speeds are part of the driving culture. I would be very surprised if the accident rate is higher than our own. I think the issue is more a case of further driver education (post granting of a drivers licence), poor quality and badly maintained roads and in some cases extremely poorly designed signage and safety aids. Having sat on Ministerial road safety advisory committees I have also watched a number dangerous implementations and enforcement directly against the advice of the committees. The above notion could well be one of them.

Wow, very interesting @Concerned Driver! In your capacity as an advisor, what are other things that are contentious within road safety advisory committees? It's not always that we get the insights from people like you, so I'm really curious :O

 

[Ezzy]

I was taught to listen to the sound of the engine and learn what speed you are doing by the note of the engine. The occasional quick glance at the speedo can't hurt either. I have had one speeding ticket in the last twelve years. I refuse to give the Government anymore of my hard earned money.
Let's put the responsibility back where it belongs, on the Driver.

I don't think the younger & sometimes not so younger generation can listen to the engine. With the volume of their car radio cranked up so high they need to drive with windows down to prevent them from shattering with the din.