Opinion : Should all cars have ‘speed limiters’?

Did you see the recent news report in the national press about the forthcoming requirement for new cars to be fitted with speed limiters?

Apparently from 2022 all new vehicles sold in Europe will have a mandatory requirement for speed limited technology to be fitted.

The new technology will use satellites to determine where the vehicle is travelling and what the speed limit should be, as well as technology to read speed signs beside the road. The car will supposedly use the speed limit information to make sure the driver does not go too fast, however for a short time the driver can override the automatic limiting technology.

In my opinion this is a very good idea. But my good self thinks the technology needs to go further.

If yours truly had my way then, before a car can be moved, the driver would need to put their licence, fitted with chip and pin technology, into a slot in the dashboard so the car knows who is driving.

If the driver exceeds the limit then, in my world, the driver would automatically be fined if they broke the speed limit, indeed if they went over the limit too many times then the car would stop and the licence be rendered invalid. A sort of automatic fine and banning.

Speeding drivers are a menace on the roads and they need to be banned so us careful drivers can motor in safety.

Of course the proposed new system will only be fitted from new cars in 2022. What about all the cars currently on the roads? If a driver is convicted of a motoring offence then surely they should be forced to have the technology retro-fitted into their older cars?

Sadly very few people drive brand new cars and the only people the new technology is likely to affect are the drug dealers who speed through Castlefield in their new sports cars bought from the profits of their crime. Will we see the crime kings driving older cars to avoid the technology? Most likely.

My own trusty motor has speed limiting technology fitted, sadly all it does is limit the vehicle to a maximum top speed. In the case of my vehicle the top limited speed is, I believe according to the handbook, around 180mph which the massively powerful V8 race engine is more that capable of reaching in just a few, very frightening, seconds.

In my opinion driver monitoring technology is the way forward, the sooner it is installed in all vehicles the better.

What do you think?

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