Satellite puts the brake on speeding drivers
By Jon Hibbs, Political Correspondent
COMPULSORY electronic speed limiters that would prevent drivers from exceeding the legal limits could be fitted in all cars within 10 years if ministers accept the findings of government-funded research to be presented to John Prescott next month.
The Deputy Prime Minister will be told that recent advances in vehicle technology now enable road speed to be controlled automatically. He will be advised that extensive trials have been so successful that a phased programme introducing a new generation of vehicle speed governors in Britain would dramatically reduce traffic congestion, cut road accidents and save lives.
The results of a three-year investigation into the feasibility of installing what is known as "intelligent speed adaptation" will present the Government with its biggest hot potato in transport policy since the arguments over the introduction of seat belts.
The revolutionary system works using the combination of a satellite navigation system to pinpoint the location of each vehicle, an in-car computer loaded with a digital road map encoded with the speed limits for each street in Britain and a device to choke off the fuel supply if the speed restrictions are breached.
Safety campaigners maintain that fitting this as a standard feature on private cars would save two thirds of the 3,500 deaths caused on the roads every year and reduce by a third the annual total of 320,000 accident injuries.
Although the equipment itself would only cost a couple of hundred pounds, and is likely to get cheaper in future, it is certain to be fiercely resisted by motor manufacturers, who rely heavily on the subliminal image of fast cars to sell new products.
It also raises acute civil liberty issues for motorists, with the prospect of a wave of public antipathy to the idea of an electronic "Big Brother" over-riding the person in the driving seat. However, the researchers believe the project presents policy-makers with the 21st-century equivalent of the dilemma over seat belts, which the motor trade fought against for years but is now, as a result of legislation, widely accepted as a life-saver.
The trials commissioned by the Department for Environment, Transport and the Regions were undertaken by a team at Leeds University in conjunction with the Motor Industry Research Association (Mira).
Their final report is expected to recommend that the system should be phased in over a decade, with the system remaining voluntary for existing cars but required on all new cars by, say, 2005 and becoming mandatory once sufficient adapted vehicles are on the road - perhaps by as early as 2010.
Ministers were given a presentation on the latest findings by the Highways Agency last month and were informed that the technological advances promised to make a variety of vehicle control, identification and location measures both feasible and cost-effective.
However, the Department of Transport warned yesterday that the technical possibilities of "intelligent speed adaptation" had to be balanced by the regulatory implications. "We are investigating this but not necessarily adopting it," said a spokesman.
"There are considerable benefits that could be had in accident reduction and fuel savings, but it might also mean that people find other ways of speeding up their journeys or excuses for driving."
The report will claim that positive benefits would start to flow from the system once 60 per cent of vehicles were fitted with it, since that would have the effect of slowing down the overall speed of traffic. The researchers say that as well as slowing down traffic speed, the technology also offers dynamic implications for traffic management - rendering traffic-calming schemes redundant, making speed cameras unnecessary and virtually eliminating prosecutions for speeding.
In addition, the restrictions could be timed in order to slow down traffic outside schools when children were going in and out, when roads were congested in the rush-hour or after accidents or when bad weather made driving conditions dangerous.
Dr Oliver Carsten, head of the Leeds University team, defended the external imposition of speed restrictions as a method of enforcing the law. He pointed out that other countries such as Sweden and Holland were also looking at similar developments.
He said: "The roads are risky enough as they are, and the idea that people should have the freedom to flout the law is an odd concept when it is a legal requirement that you comply with the speed limit. People thought we were crazy for suggesting this, but when you drive the car you hardly notice the speed limiter unless you are deliberately trying to push things too fast, and it works extremely well."=20
Dr Carsten said: "It is the most effective safety system anyone could think of, far more effective than road humps, and much more effective than even we first thought. It is now up to the politicians to make decisions about whether to move ahead with implementation."
John Fowkes, of Mira, insisted the technology did not require much modification to vehicles, but admitted that both the motor industry and motorists would be wary of being forced into a mandatory system. But he said: "Five or 10 years hence we may have sufficiently severe traffic problems that it might become more acceptable to the public."
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