You might be forgiven for thinking that post Brexit the UK would not be adopting EU legislation – well that is not necessarily the case! Come 2022 the UK will be adopting ISA (Intelligent Speed Assistance) speed limiters. The way they work is that road speed limit recognition cameras and GPS systems will speak to onboard receptors in your vehicle and will be able to control the speed limit of your vehicle. In the EU, this system actually slow you down to match the road’s speed limit. Currently, the word on the street is that the UK version will just give you flashing and audible warnings that you are breaking the speed limit rather than actually control your vehicle and for the time being at least, ours will leave it up to us mere mortals to comply.

So from 2022, take off your go faster stripes, your vehicle will be fitted with this tech and the engine power will be noted. Once you reach the speed limit on the road, the monitoring systems will be activated if the driver doesn’t slow down automatically. It will be built-in to all new cars, vans, lorries and buses, but will not be retro fitted to older vehicles made before 2022.

If the system activates while you are driving and starts to slow you down then you will – for the time being at least – be able to override it by pressing down hard on the accelerator to restore full power. The idea of this is that sometimes acceleration is necessary for safety to get out of difficult driving situations. If this does happen, obviously it will be checked and logged to make sure that the override was legitimate. Before long if you are overriding the system, you will see and hear warnings that you have gone over the limit, these will stop once you have complied and returned to the designated speed.

At the moment there will be a built in on/off switch for the limiter in the vehicle. This is perhaps only to ease its passage into common use and it looks as though this may be phased out eventually once we have all got used to it.   At the moment motorcycles do not seem to be included in the introduction of the speed limiter. This may just be because the technology is not ready for motorcycles yet, rather than that the government making a conscious decision to exempt them. It does look inevitable that this tech will come in for bikes once it is fully developed.

There’s more, the ETSC or European Transport Safety Commission are also going to be bringing in other mandatory features in your vehicle to keep an eye on you – data loggers to record your journey and driving, lane assistance to keep you in lane, autonomous emergency braking and ‘driver fatigue detection’!

So the bottom line is that you will, eventually, be monitored at all times while you are driving or riding. If there is an accident and you were seen to be driving dangerously or ignoring the warnings your car was giving you, then you won’t have much of a leg to stand on in your defence.

The ‘spy in the cab’ which long distance lorry drivers have had for some years now is spreading and getting magic powers as well as it sidles into all our vehicles.
The reason for all this is that it will increase road safety exponentially, reducing crashes by 30% according to the ETSC and will start saving lives as soon as it is introduced.  

So do you welcome this as a great stride forward in motoring, making our roads safer for everyone? Or do you like things as they are out there on the roads? The only thing we are wondering is - what happens when it goes wrong? Long term will there still be manual override built-in and if so, will we remember how to drive all by ourselves?

Do let us know what you think about this - it feels important as it is the shape of things to come. Let us know at [email protected] or drop us a message on Facebook

02/09/21 - Personally I think this is a step too far, technology in bikes, cars and lorries have come a long way in recent years and are the safest they have ever been. Ford have used driver monitoring for years in some models, monitoring driving style and will give a warning if driving style changes recommending a break. But actually limiting the speed of a bike or car is really taking it too far, while I agree there are some drivers out there that are just plain stupid in the speeds they do on public roads most are sensible, on a recent family trip to Scotland (about 1300 miles) we did encounter several drivers that came past us so fast it made me feel like I was parked up on the M5/M6/A74(M)/A90/A9. Those are the sort of drivers that need their licenses revoked, most of them seemed to be in high powered cars like Merc, Audi, BMW and Porsche. There are legitimate times when excessive speed is necessary and having a limiter on could be more dangerous than not having a speed limiter. I know HGVs use limiters but that’s for good reason, you can’t have a 44 ton lorry travelling at 80 or 90 mph, they cause enough damage travelling at 56 mph, although saying that on a few occasions last week we had lorries catching up to us when I had the cruise control set to 70mph..... how? When they are supposed to be limited to 56mph?? And using a tachograph.

Also, why are we still using EU legislation for our cars when we left the EU last year? Brexit means Brexit.... out of EU! Not, out but still in and using their stupid laws and regulations. We’re our own country now, make our own laws, not borrowing someone else’s laws.

31/08/21 - I wrote a magazine article about this and everyone laughed, but it will happen. Also any children born now won't learn to drive, they won't need to. Everything will be controlled by gps and computers

30/08/21 - And on it goes, the continued push to make people give up private vehicle ownership, this being the latest tool. Pile it on top of completely inadequate road infrastructure in most parts of the UK, the high cost of fuel, and the mad-max like attitude of most road users these days (understandably due to previously mentioned factors). Never thought I'd see it in my life time, but, here it is. In my humble opinion at least  

30/08/21 - Makes sense to me, I see so many drivers / riders that are incapable of even basics like keeping to the speed limit.

30/08/21 - Got to be a way round it

30/08/21 - There's always a workaround

30/08/21 - So speed cameras will go, right? Right?

30/08/21 - Just won’t buy any new vehicles (not that I can afford brand new anyhow