Starting July 6th, all new vehicles sold in the European Union and Northern Ireland will come fit with intelligent speed assistance (ISA), a system created to improve road safety.
The technology is designed to work alongside the driver, making sure they remain in control at all times. It offers four feedback options for the driver, including acoustic and vibration warnings, haptic feedback through the accelerator pedal, and a speed control function.
The first two functions provide warning without intervention, while the latter two aim to gently prompt the driver to slow down.
While ISA won’t be a legal requirement to adhere to the European General Vehicle Safety Regulation (EU) 2019/2144, up to 90% of new vehicles in Britain could still incorporate it.
With over 1,700 deaths due to road incidents each year in Britain, the new technology is set to make significant road safety improvements. The European Transport Safety Council says that the new technology could reduce collisions by 30% and fatalities by 20%.
Despite the promising projections, Simon Morgan of Buchanan Computing and an IHE committee chair raised some concerns.
He said: “This technology can only work if the car has a reliable way of determining the speed limit. This is certainly not the case at the moment but might be in a few years’ time with DfT’s D-TRO [digital traffic regulation orders] project.
“Digital traffic orders (D-TRO) will be a game changer. I support the concept enthusiastically, and we have been advocating them at Buchanan Computing since the 1990s, and achieved them for speed limits for Transport for London covering the whole GLA area over 15 years ago.”
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