This is a guest post from longtime supporter Mr Plod, whose previous contributions include a proposal that Hamilton become New Zealand’s capital city, and that we should switch which side of the road we drive on.
A recent Newsroom article, “Back to school for the Govt’s new speed limit policy“, outlines how despite “a mountain of evidence that higher speeds lead to more traffic crashes, injuries and deaths,” our current coalition Government is planning changes “which would force councils to raise many urban 30kph speed limits to 50kph, as well as removing permanent low-speed zones around schools”.
Speed limits in New Zealand have become the target of a culture war. But why? And is right-wing angst all there is to it?
I think not.
My thesis is that we are in the process of giving away our personal agency to machines to determine where we go and how we drive there. The ‘where we go’ bit is via the route-finding apps in our phones and cars. The ‘how we drive there’ bit is coming, via the automakers and tech companies collectively spending billions developing self-driving technologies. (A good read on this is this Jalopnik article: We’ve Wasted Nearly $50 Billion On Self Driving Cars. Here’s Where That Money Should Have Gone.)
If you think we’ve got a few issues now agreeing on how pandering to the motor vehicle lobby determines our environment, wait until full self-driving is upon us. The tech investors will want some way of recouping those billions. Driving more, further and faster will be their answer.
Most of us have yet to experience any of that self-driving tech, except in the form of Cruise Control which first appeared in the 1958 Chrysler Imperial and was called “Auto-Pilot” (you noticed, Mr Musk).
I believe Cruise Control has contributed to higher average driving speeds, which is one of the things the “Movement and Place” approach aims to tackle, by balancing the dual function of streets. Movement and Place reminds us that streets are not just for moving people and goods; they also shape the spaces we live in. So we should work to enhance those places, not just move things and people around at speed.
To elucidate, let’s compare two drives.
Say you travel the Twin Coast Discovery Highway from Westgate through Kumeu, Huapai, and Helensville, turning right at Kaukapakapa to head towards Dairy Flat and back down through Coatesville and Riverhead returning to Twin Coast Discovery Highway at the Brighams Creek intersection. It’s about 70km. (In reverse, it’s been a popular Sunday Bunch Ride for lycra types since forever.)
For the first trip, imagine you’re going to take that car you learnt to drive in. Say, Mum’s 1995 Toyota Corolla Hatchback. A gem of a motorcar, built at a time after Toyota had learnt to build in longevity, but before they realised that had to take it back out again because their cars were lasting far too long between upgrades.
One of the things Mum’s little toy-car lacks is cruise control. The driver is, AT ALL TIMES, in control of vehicle speed.
So as you flog the thing up the Brigham Creek overtaking lane, you’ll try hard to reach the 80km/h limit.Out along the straights south of Helensville, you’ll get up to 100km/h and probably not much more. As the wind shifts and you do little climbs and dips, around the big curve before Bradleys Road, at all times you’ll be adjusting your speed. Dropping off the limit when the road gets a bit tighter or your visibility is restricted, say, heading out of Helensville. You’ll have to adjust again as you encounter any traffic that is going slower, and you do that until you get to that overtaking lane.
You get the idea: maintaining a steady speed requires both concentration and constant adjustment. It also means often-times you’ll be travelling below, and sometimes well below, the posted speed limit.
For the second trip, you do the same drive in your Hyundai Kona EV. It’s not the fuel type that makes the difference here, it’s that the Hyundai has Cruise Control. Basic cruise control is available in most any new or used imported cars these days, and Adaptive Cruise Control is becoming more and more common.
Anyone who has driven with Cruise Control (adaptive or otherwise) knows the primary decision is this: to what speed do I set the thing? Just whatever I’m doing when I turn it on? Or at a speed applicable to the road conditions? Or at the speed limit for the road I’m on? Or, some increment above the limit, depending on the likelihood of a ticket?
Generally, when I’m driving I set cruise control at the locally applicable limit plus maybe one or two clicks (“at least five”, says my good wife reading over my shoulder). In conversation with others, it seems this is the dominant behaviour: setting cruise control to the speed limit of the road you are on, or thereabouts.
On the circuit described above, this works pretty well for most of the route. On some of the corners with speed advisories, you either sail round the bend a little too fast, or you brake and resume cruise straight after. But either way, it’s annoying. (Why don’t they just straighten out the bends?).
And here’s the rub; the driver is not at all times in control of vehicle speed. The machine is!
Even more so when encountering traffic ahead with Adaptive Cruise Control. The Adaptive CC will reduce the car’s speed to match that of the traffic ahead, meaning even less input is required from the driver. Once clear of traffic ahead. the machine will forge on at its set speed.
It won’t back off slightly at moments when you would. Like when you see an agitated horse charging around a paddock, or spot a school on a straight, or an awkwardly parked car looking like a door might suddenly open. All these little things that prompt a human driver to lift off a little and prepare to stop, cruise control doesn’t do.
Sure, you as the driver will still see these things, and still be prepared to take control – and possibly evasive action – but the machine will maintain its speed unless you intervene.
My contention is that using cruise control makes for higher average speeds because it removes all those little ups and downs in speed decisions that humans make but machines don’t. It also drives an expectation that the road design should support travelling at the posted limit. (I’ll have more RoNS with that, please!)
This is my contention: the speed LIMIT becomes a TARGET. Sure, it’s still a limit in the legal sense, but in practical terms maybe we should call it a boundary. We as drivers want our speed of travel to be at this boundary point, because that’s what’s allowed.
This change in drivers viewing the limit as a boundary should be forcing a change in behaviour by those tasked with setting the limits.
It is no longer reasonable to take the blanket approach of “it’s either 50k or 100k, sprinkle in a few 60’s, 70s & 80s and some tight bend advisories and leave the driver to drive safely within the limit”. The professional limit-setters now need to set a limit that is safe when treated as a speed expectation boundary. A set point for my cruise control, rather than just a set point for policing.
Those advocating for lower limits are ahead of self-appointed road safety experts, racing car drivers, and especially ahead of our current crop of politicians. The advocates for slowing down see all the vehicles going past their local school at a constant 50, or 80, or 100km/h. In the past, they saw the speed limit as an upper boundary that few vehicles were achieving; now almost every vehicle achieves it always – constantly, and with a little more on top.
This is part of the reason why people motivated by the idea of “Movement and Place” want the limits reduced. (The other reason is of course the laws of physics, which dictate the safe and survivable speeds at which traffic should be moving on streets with people – in order to safe lives, reduce harm, and lower the risks involved in any collision. The faster you go, the bigger the mess.)
This is not just an idle thesis from an unoccupied mind. Evidence from the US Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) says that vehicle average speeds tend to be higher when drivers use cruise control, compared to when they don’t use it. As noted in this Streetsblog article on a recent study, “Drivers mostly use cruise control to speed”
“Cruise control” technology was invented to help drivers maintain a safe and steady speed — but more often, they use it to go faster than they would without it.”
It’s not a target, say all the public service campaigns. But oh yes, it is, and Cruise Control made it so.
What do you think? How do you use Cruise Control? Is it a safety solution, or part of the problem? As always, share your comments in the space below.
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Interesting take. I find the opposite to be the case, my car doesn’t have cruise control and I sometimes take my eye off the spedo and on the road which can climb a bit especially going downhill. Whereas when I occasionally jump in a family members one with cruise control I find in fantastic as it keeps me around the limit. Also less foot fatigue on longer trips.
I think the +5 +10km/h attitudes are applied to drivers irrespective of cruise control. I find myself doing it especially in western suburbs or I have a long line of angry people behind me as it seems to be the social norm. Whereas when there are known speed cameras almost everyone magically complies with the limit, great north Rd near Fruitvale comes to mind a lot. Also whenever you go through whangarei going north it’s generally known that police are heavy handed there so magically the speed limit becomes the limit there as well.
There needs to be a constant fear or being pinged for it, and I suppose a fine that is worth police pursuing and deterring more wealthy drivers who might not otherwise be concerned by the current minimum speeding fine.
Oh that Whangarei speed limit is so annoying 50 is a joke. Should be 60 there’s barely even any driveways on that road it’s certainly a lot safer than Warkworth which has a 60k speed limit. I notice the same thing Pete around Kelston everyone passes you in the right lane then suddenly you catch up or even pass them near the camera lol. To be fair to the motorists they are just doing the speed the road design tells them in Australia that road would be 60k.
Hmm where? The Whangarei 50 seems fine there is heaps of residential driveways albeit barely ever seen anyone walking but guess its super car dependant there? I think it depends on where though, some of it may be overkill such as on the semi rural approaches.
With road design – perhaps sometimes, but they magically comply with it when there is known enforcement so I think it’s more behavioral. But I’ve seen very high speeds on narrow roads as well. Plenty of rural roads that are barely vehicle width that people do 100 on with a ditch or cliff-fall on the side, nobody magically goes slower because of it? So unless it includes physical calming I’m not convinced that is always that big of a factor.
They recently changed the joke of a 50 limit on the aproach near the rail crossing and golf course to 60. The whole bit designated at SH1 can be very safely driven at 60 and so it should be the whole point of that road is to pass through Whangarei not crawl through. A significant amount of cars ignore the 50 anyway so just put it to a safe and appropriate 60. That road is no worse quality than some roads in Australia that are 70k in urban areas so 60 is a perfect speed limit.
It’s a great piece. Thank you.
The issue, I believe, is that we now have a government who espouses speed as some sort of moral strength and measure. And has created a culture war around speeding!
Most leaders lead by example and are careful and measured, knowing their speech can impact the public. And speed is undeniably linked to more serious accidents and road deaths.
Example – we have Simeon Brown repetitively saying things inferring nothing should inconvenience drivers. And that includes “safety and calming measures,” which his GPS specifically calls out should not be implemented. However, he directed, government money CAN be used to remove them.
We also have David Seymour saying there is nothing more unhappy making than driving slower than necessary.
As I wrote elsewhere, titled, Simeon’s Insanity:
“One shows a very concerning lack of empathy and human connectivity, when, after you are told that 80% of Auckland schools don’t want higher speed limits around their schools and some have multi-block structures that require road crossings, say,
‘It’s a bit of a surprise that they want to back one of Labour’s most unpopular policies, which was simply to slow people down, and make it harder to get around and more inconvenient.'”
So I agree with your perspective in that limits should not be a target – we should always drive to the conditions – I just doubt this government will listen.
Interestingly both of the above are Auckland MPs.
Very thought provoking.
I’d challenge the Corolla example. I think most people would hammer it, trying to stay slightly above the speef limit. And don’t forget, advisory signage is calculated for a laden truck not to exceed a certain g-force threshold so it doesn’t tip over: nothing to do with how far you can see around a bend etc. They are largely irrelevant for other vehicles, especially for a modern car with traction control.
I find cruise control keeps my speed down. I was recently faced with a choice for my motorcycle: cruise control or radar detector? About the same price. I opted for the former, knowing it will actually reduce my speed, which is the more important thing.
And then there’s the real test: do cars with higher levels of automation cause a lower rate of injury, including to those outside the car? Early evidence is that lane assist is marginal, but auto braking, adaptive cruise and traction control are significantly safer.
Bit of a weird take. Personally cruise control only comes on for roads like the Waikato expressway and gets set to 110. Don’t even use it for urban motorway driving. “In the past they saw the limit as an upper boundary few vehicles were achieving” is that really true? Hasn’t speeding always been a thing. By that logic the road toll used to be a lot higher so slower is less safe.
The govt is being driven by votes and nothing else, it’s great a few people want lower speeds but the majority however do not so just get ready for limits to be reversed.
100% – only ever use cruise control on said bit of SH1. Every other road in NZ is such a crap goat track, that cruise control is useless / dangerous.
Yes agree. Sounds like eventually cruise control will one day be useful for trips to Whangarei one day which will be awesome. It’s a horrible goat track right now an expressway although excessively expensive is needed. Especially as some people want to drop the limit down to 80 which would make the trip take too long.
As a kiwi who has both kind of vehicles and drives all over the UK and Europe with them, Cruise Control wins hands down.
It makes it easier to do 20/30 mph on those roads, stops me doing more then 70mph/120kph on motorways, prevents exhaustion from watching the tachometer constantly and allows me more time to focus on potential road dangers eg pot holes, buses, speeding trucks, children, deer, drunk drivers etc.
I have never driven a corolla, and stuck with Euro brands from the get go, even with small 2L engines back from 2000’s. The speed they can corner, and acellarate uphil vs a corolla, invalidates your argument. As you hardly slow down.
I am a fan of cruise control, as I don’t have to take eyes of the road, but also my foot is always hovering over the brake vs the acellerator. So if I see something the breaking is faster. But unless you do have ACC or better, you cannot really cruise control on urban roads like you could back in the 2000’s, you’ll simply be re-adjusting the speed all the time with your fingers vs foot.
However, your argument being there is that it increases average speeds. I think that’s a fair argument, whether it impacts safety I’m not sure, but also I wonder how many people do use cruise control when they drive. I find myself following behind cars that have cruise control, and blatantly don’t use it.
Hi AA, you’re a lucky person who can afford Euro cars. Most of the rest of the fleet is Japanese, especially the used imports so we are stuck with their weird ideas about how a car should handle. Toyotas in general became worse handling cars once vehicle assembly stopped in NZ and with it Chris Amon’s input to tuning handling to NZ conditions.
I own aEuro and Korean car.
Korean better then my posh euro hands down for everything except the leather interior.
That Chris Amon thing is a “red herring” thing all about marketing, nothing more.
Do you really think our roads are significantly different to other countries?
Having driven in 50+ they are no better and no worse then any other. The EU and US have roads far better and far worse then anything I’ve seen in NZ. Kiwi roads are the same as rural roads in Wales and Scotland.
Don’t forget too the the UK has hundreds of thousands of miles of roads that are gravel shingle track roads that 99% of Kiwis fear to drive down.
Haha, compare apples with apples. If you think a 1995 Corolla handles any worse than a 1995 Fiat Uno, you have no clue what you are talking about. If you are comparing a 1995 M3 to a 1995 Corolla, well, duh!
If you had driven a ’90s Corolla, you would know that the Amon-tuned suspension and 16-valve engine made it as good as most Euros (I’d have a ’90s Corolla GT over a ’90s Golf GTi any day), so the comparison is perfectly valid.
That being said, I only use CC on expressways or very straight roads with little traffic as I find disengaging and re-engaging it annoying and distracting.
It would be interesting to see the results of some real world tests on the route discussed, especially whether adaptive cruise makes the driver more or less responsive to hazards.
The point is that the adaptive cruise and automatic emergency braking are responsive to hazards and maintain safe following distances no matter how tired and distracted the driver is. I trust driver assistance systems to be vigilant on a long drive more than I trust drivers to be. You can’t even sell a new car in Europe as of this month without it being equipped an automatic speed limiting system tied to road speed limits (manually overridable by the driver). Technology has made vehicles much safer than relying on distracted and fallible drivers. That trend is only going to continue as driver assistance systems mature into autonomous driving systems and human error is increasingly removed from the equation. A 1995 Corolla is closer to a horse drawn buggy than a modern vehicle in terms of its active safety features. (Although arguably horses have more sense than the average boy racer and provide some level of autonomous operation so perhaps are superior to the 1995 Corolla in that area).
One of the best ways to improve road safety will be to over time require greater and greater levels of driver assistance both in NZ new and imported vehicles.
The weird thing for me about speed limits is we require towing vehicles and trucks to go slower than the main traffic stream. Drivers don’t actually obey of course, and just as well. The law requires trucks to go 10km/h slower or 20 km/h slower on the best roads. All it achieves is to require more passing and lane changes.
trailers and trucks are limited to 90kph, there are trailers that are safe above those speeds, brakes, with some sort of traction systems. The ones we use in NZ are not.
I am kind of tempted to join the police, to ping every person speedin with the trailer.
Well here’s another weird idea for, Miffy. Imagine when there is a passing lane on a road with a designated 100km limit that the limit in the overtaking lane is increased to 110k to allow overtaking within the limit. The limit in the slow lane remains at 100k. Overhead gantries with lane specific speed cameras could enforce via auto infringement notices.
Oh so you have a feeling they are not safe. That must be the basis for the rule then. Perhaps you should tell the majority of truck drivers and majority of light vehicles towing trailers on the 110km/h expressway they are all wrong.
Trucks are limited to 70-90kms right across europe. Even on Germanys fabled autobahns with unlimited speed, trucks still only do 80 by law.
https://dhl-freight-connections.com/en/business/truck-speed-limits-europe/
Good discussion. The problem may be with trucks – and especially trailers that might be nearly as old as Air Force planes – being flogged to death for productivity. Are they *all* safe at more than 90 km/h? I favour trucks and cars having the same speed limit, to do away with differential speed and overtaking as much as practicable, but that would make top limits only as much as is safe for trucks.
The speed limit is the top speed you are allowed to travel. The driver has to go slower if required to stop in the distance ahead or to go around bends etc. So the limit is the speed you want on straight roads with good visibility. I don’t know any evidence to suggest trucks or cars towing trailers are unsafe at 100km/h or 110km/h.
I have a cruise control in my car but I never used it. I believe the driver should be in a control at all the time and drive to the condition but at the same time keeping to the speed limit. I do not like the idea of leaving my foot on the floor or hover near the brake or accelerator pedal. I think there is a delayed reaction time when the foot is on the floor when doing an emergency braking. I mean it is lot quicker to move the foot from the accelerator pedal to the brake pedal as opposed to from the floor.
Come on, PT, get with the program! It’s the auto makers who decide how you’re supposed to use your car, not you!
I learnt to drive in a ford prefect 1938 so manual gear change and if it was synchronised it didn’t work that well so I can do a mean double de clutch. So you needed to be aware of what was going on and your speed. Listening to your engine was an important part of driving. So I would say not just cruise control but also multi speed automatics can lead a driver being unaware of their speed and the road situation. But then I can also remember an elderly woman who use to drive a horse and gig from Yauldhurst to Church Corner to do her shopping so things move on some times for the better and some times not. No doubt she was an eccentric but it must have being in the late 1950’s. As for GPS well one day soon the whole interwebby thing is going to crash in a spectacular way. So get ready. I recently learnt how to down load offline maps. I am now going to learn how to use them for my upcoming holiday in Italy. However I am well aware if the Internet is gone then the trains won’t be running but I will still be able to see where I am walking. And I will be carrying cash. Be prepared stay safe.
Well remembered, Royce. The number of people who know how to double de-clutch is probably just a bit more than who can drive a two-in hand. Although I wouldn’t get to dark on our dependance on the interweb, learning how to use map and compass, like top drawing a little cash has prudent forever.
When I head out of Auckland these days I prefer to use the limit setting instead of cruise control. I don’t particularly enjoy cruise control taking the bends faster than I might have liked (although when I am super lazy and on a road like the Waikato Expressway and you just want to follow someone, adaptive cruise control is quite nice). I just set the limit function like I would for cruise control at the posted limit or 1-2kmh above and then drive normally knowing that it will help me avoid slipping over the limit which is so easy to do. Great for the big trips as it can be quite mentally taxing trying to pay too much attention to your exact speed when you should be thinking about all aspects of driving.
Much the best option (though not setting “above the limit”, perhaps). The driver’s brain may be able to adapt to fog, ice, potholes etc. much easier than the machine brain.
Tech that helps to avoid human mistakes is better than the prevailing tech to take over – and make its own mistakes.
with modern vehicles it is too easy for speed to creep up unnoticed .. I love using my adaptive cruise control .. to keep my top speed DOWN (often below the posted speed limit) .. being easy to use, I will often disengage it when I see a corner or blind crest ahead
You make good points Mr Plod and I think they could be generally applied to the advances in car construction as well.
When I think of the style of driving I used to do in my 1990s Toyota Surf, which was slow up hills and had to be coddled around corners vs our late model cars of the last 10 years where you can drive at the posted speed limit without even thinking about it, I would definitely be travelling the same stretch of road faster.
Speeding imo has become easier than it used to be which is probably part of the problem.
Yes indeed. All the more reason for better ‘science’ around setting limits and improved policing to enforce them.
The fastest way to move over land remains a train on a track, or floating rather close to a track.
Here in Tamaki Makaurau, AT shares its building with the AA.
The AA is a charitable organisation that defends our right to drive…but should we consider it a basic right?
In both the city, and the regional zones, trains continue to make more sense than roads and highways.
I have travelled continents without a private motor vehicle, so why is it so difficult on this leaky boat we proudly call Aotearoa?
Pot holes (caused by the trucking industry that takes advantage of a low functioning rail network) and speed limits (for “suicide machines” – Bruce Springsteen Thunder Road) are not the important numbers; our horrific road toll is what should not be tolerated in a modern society.
Fifty dollars per week in Auckland on your ATHOP card gives an enormous area to explore, and should start to make private motor vehicle use for commuting purposes look really really stupid.
“Where would be without wishful thinking? – Wilco
bah humbug
The AA is an insurance company. Less than a third of it’s 2023 revenues came from Membership Fees. It paid out just over 2% of it’s operating surplus to it’s own research foundation. Most of the research foundation’s work is focused on promulgating the myth that all accidents are based on lapses in driver behaviour. I see nothing on road design, vehicle design, the road laws, or police enforcement in their activity. Make no mistake the AA is deeply embedded in the automotive industrial complex.
AA wound me up back when we were doing the consultations on safe systems / Vision Zero. Their submissions were all very much in the “we need to drive better” magical thinking, and magical teaching wish. Greg Murphy sums it up nicely.
Now that the watered down, funded but not implemented road to zero is in our rear view mirror, i guess we’re looking to Elon to teach our cars to driver better.
Ponder #2. When i learnt t ride motorbikes, a Learner was restricted to 90kph, and 250cc motorcycles. This was problematic in that L plated drivers got to learn how to deal with angry Uterists held up and tailgating on 100kph roads. Ironically, RZ250’s RG250’s 2-stroke bikes we’re massively fast when on-pipe or very slow off pipe, so holding up vehicles was an option quickly dispelled, given lack of road policing, speed was definately the safer option.
The fastest way to move over land is a train. However Its often not the fastest way to travel between two end points of a journey, even in countries that actually have fast and efficient rail systems.
Trains make more sense in dense urban areas and for travelling between said areas.
Cars, or some derivative thereof, make more sense for moving between rural areas, or between cities and arbitrary non-urban destinations which do not have the fortune of being big enough to warrant a high-speed train station.
Its gonna take a hell of a lot of infrastructure to ever change that, and I dont think thats what most of NZ wants either.
The autobahn speed record is 432kph set by Mercedes back in the 1930’s Contrast this with the world record of 245kph for a train on narrow gauge tracks, and the 431kph max speed of Shanghai’s maglev train (which currently runs at 300kph max speed). In experimental conditions trains have gone faster than 432kph but also the land speed record sits at 1223.657kph more than double what any train (maglev or not) has achieved.
Now while I wouldn’t recommend 400kph+ as ‘Safe’, people routinely exceed 245kph on the autobahn in appropriate vehicles without dying.
On a good road almost any vehicle in New Zealand can safely exceed the point to point speed trains can currently achieve on New Zealand’s narrow gauge tracks.
Possibly, the article would have been more useful if the same trip, in the same direction had been done in the two different cars and the times compared.
It is interesting down south around Tekapo,there is a posted speed limit,but with some provisions to drive to the conditions,fog and black ice ,the current ones. It would seem from the news headlines,that some drivers are unable to interpret what that means. I am wondering how productive the current speed limit is, balanced up with the accident rate. The “blanket ” speed reduction whilst ,poor driving conditions prevail would require local input and some road cones.
It is interesting that those who routinely use cruise control set it slightly above the posted speed limit.
I do the opposite. If I am making a long cross country trip I have found that setting CC to approx 85 kmh will safely take most bends and hills on the open road without me having to repeatedly hit the brakes or accelerate. I think it contributes in some degree to fuel saving and, for me, it makes negligible difference to overall journey times. It also keeps me amused (and alert) on long journeys.
And before you ask; yes, I always take care to let faster vehicles overtake me.
Vehicles that make it too easy to drive badly are a major source of concern. The crash test ratings are based on crashes at speeds far below many real road experiences. SUVs and utes are now much bigger and more comfortable than older cars that most people have learned to drive in. Driver behaviour has not developed safer responses to using these vehicles. Speed is one dimension of this – driver is sitting higher and having a smoother ride, with big in-car ‘information’ screens providing an entertainment alternative to looking at the road. All you need to look at for driving is a speedometer and a petrol/battery charge gauge.
Assistance tech rather than autonomous tech is most useful, eg. speed limit and lane keep warnings with perhaps reactive braking.
Cruise control was developed for boring US highways where nothing changes except the truck barrelling towards you in the middle of the road or the dead mule half on the shoulder.
Streetguy, you have a good point that assistance tech is most useful. The problem with a lot of it is that it relies on other bits of the world being perfectly uniform or at least within set parameters. Take lane keep warnings which rely on universal, good and well maintained lane markings. Our lane markings just aint like that with the nett effect that lane keep turns on and off so often as to render it unreliable at best and down right dangerous at worse.
Artificial intelligence can ‘teach’ a vehicle system to recognise the characteristics of a road, more than just ‘a white line’. However, that fuzzy logic can make mistakes, which could be worse than returning ‘
I don’t recognise this’.
When AI can recognize a cat choosing to sit in the middle of the road and negotiate with it, then we will have arrived in the future.
The hand dryer in the mens room can’t even tell when I’m waving both my hands directly under it, so what hope do we have for an affordable and effective driverless car as a consumer product?!
This site is a good example of neo Marxism in action. You provide a one dimensional narrative that is always anti car/anti personal freedom and then publish this for your leftist group for confirmation – like an echo chamber; leftists who just as mushrooms, like being kept in the dark and fed BS.
This is all confirmation of the observation that leftists can not tolerate debate; they have been taught what to think, but not how to think.
Perhaps you should remember that YOUR MIND IS LIKE A PARACHUTE – IT ONLY WORKS WHEN IT IS OPEN, though that may be difficult for a true leftist to understand.
If it was not so pathetic and sad, your attitudes would be laughable.
Seriously? “leftists cannot tolerate debate”
And yet, here we all are – debating.
No, note that the comments published do not raise any questions of the original thread. Although this article is well written there are still questions about the obsession with speed limits; I questioned what happens when drivers have to drive without speed limits and when the police focus on everything apart from speed limits. My questions were disallowed.
Hi ChrisB, I wrote this article as a way of asking your question. What is this obsession with speed limits all about? Why is our Transport Minister so obsessed about raising them contrary to both all the safety evidence and his own party’s desire to ‘devolve’ decision making? Why are the movement and place people become so determined to slice and dice speed limits? My thesis remains that we all need to stop and think about the how the changing technology within motor vehicles is also influencing this.
This whole question is anything but one dimensional and it is also very important because if we get this wrong people die.
In reply to Mr Plod, how does your “safety evidence” reconcile the situation with the German Autobahns being some of the safest roads on earth – with no speed limits?
The German police are rigorous in their detection of poor and dangerous driving and in particular things like lane discipline and tailgating; things that NZ police seem to disregard.
You are correct in saying that the speed limit should not be the actual speed travelled in all conditions – you only have to drive by the Waikato river on a foggy morning to see the folly of this. However, what is more important is the training of drivers to understand how to perform a continual hazard analysis with respect to conditions and their car/driver competencies.
The Germans have comprehensive driver training programs which are non existent in NZ. This is why they can drive quickly, efficiently and safely and should be the focus for road safety in NZ instead of bleating about speed limits. After all the “speed kills” mantra has been chanted for the last half century and more with no change in driving behaviour in this country.
Changing technology has made cars much safer and in some countries the road tolls have reduced markedly. The buyer is the absolute determinant on what features the manufacturers add to their cars. In the latest overseas car magazines there is significant kickback reporting on driverless – automated cars. Car buyers need to be more critical in their choices and think about the long term value of what they are offered; car manufacturers hate to carry hectares of unwanted cars in stock.
Chrisb I agree we should have more rigourous driver training and licensing, as well as more effective enforcement and appropriate fines for breaches of law. But we ought to have better public transport for all the people who can’t meet the more strict requirements, secret neo-marxist agenda or not.
Chris B, you’re wrong on two counts.
Autobahns aren’t the safest roads on earth, they aren’t even the safest roads in europe. The accident rate per kilometre is 20% higher than the EU average for motorways.
They’re also not without speed limits, only some sections, some of the time are. They have both fixed speed limits in and around cities and anywhere there is a poor alignment or high crash risk, and they have additional variable speed limits applied due to weather or traffic. And all trucks, all RVs and vehicles towing trailers are limited to 80km/h at all times on all parts of the autobahn.
https://etsc.eu/autobahn-speed-limit-would-save-140-lives/#:~:text=The%20risk%20of%20death%20on,a%20British%20or%20Danish%20one.
The Law of Physics will quickly eliminate people who set their cruise control and just let it drive on our rural roads.
Switching off a cruise control and resuming a bit later is marginally more annoying than lifting your foot off the gas pedal, but it is not hard to learn. Normally it will also switch off if you touch the brake pedal. So it isn’t complicated to react to a horse, or a school, or a sharp bend. Surely an average driver is able to figure that out. Those who can’t will need lots of Nanny State to look after them (and probably they will also be the ones to complain about it).
Lowering the default limit is an interesting question with quite a few angles.
The UK has a 60mph default limit on roads, about the same as our 100km/h, and somehow their road network is still much safer than ours. (This is also true for Scotland if you’re wondering about more thinly populated areas).
In New Zealand I think we can lower the default limit to 80 or so, and if desired, explicitly signpost 100 on those roads where we think it is a good idea.
Setting speed limits “to the conditions” is a fool’s errand. There are all sorts of corners, requiring you to slow down. Maybe to 80. Or sometimes 50. Or 30? Or 60? Then there’s variable things like rain, fog or ice. We can do things like setting lower limits on roads that have lots of sharp corners but ultimately it will still be very imprecise.
I love ACC and use it a lot – as someone with a disability it makes driving easier for me. I know my speedo runs 10% too fast, so as long as the conditions are safe I set my speed at 10% higher, meaning I’m going the speed limit. It is very easy to adjust up and down using the controls. I can break if I need to and easily restart – for example to let other traffic merge in, to slow for bends. I find my driving is a lot safer, as instead of looking down at my speed, I can keep my eyes on the road and vehicles around me. I haven’t had a speeding ticket since getting it.
The fundamental issue with the war on speed is that, due to the laws of physics combined with the variable environmental and physical inputs of controlling the speed of a vehicle, we all exceed the speed limit at some point. Personally I would say I do this every single journey, yet despite being in my 50s I haven’t had an accident since I was a teenager. How many journeys has that been? I don’t think I can count that high.
The laws of physics also apply, in that if we lower our speed we lower our chances of injury or death if we do have an accident. But that is the same for anything that carries risk. Reduce the risk and the risk is reduced. The lowering the risk of people injuring themselves when falling off ladders by making ladders shorter principle.
But how big is this risk in reality? How many journeys happened just today, up and down the country, where the speed limits were exceeded at some point and the driver completed their journey with not one single issue? I need to learn how to count higher…
Villianising speed is misdirected and lazy, as driving at 57 in a 50kph zone during part of a journey just does not immediately put society at some great risk.
As much as I don’t want to agree with the current government, I see the blanket speed limit reductions on roads around me that were well designed and had little in the way of accidents or issues and just think, why?
I would highly doubt that average vehicle speeds have increased since your Corolla first hit the road in 1995.
Back in the late 90s/early 2000s, when driving in NZ it was a surprise to see a cop, and even more of a surprise to get pulled over by one. As a child I remember riding in the family car in a whole line of vehicles doing 110-120 all the way to Whangarei – we drove up there a lot and it was completely normal for the majority of drivers (including my dad) to be over the limit for most of the journey.
Imagine doing that now – you would get two tickets from stationary cameras (or is that 3?) and you would come across at least two traffic cops during any weekend or holiday period.
So I am very sure average driving speeds have decreased over the last 30 years due to enforcement.
In terms of cruise control – valid point about not naturally slowing down due to roadside obstacles etc. Overall at least for me I think cruise control (would) decrease instances of me speeding – my current car doesnt have it and its far too easy to creep 10+ over the limit if im not paying good attention, my old car did have it and I would set it to somewhere between 99 and 103 kmh and leave it until I came up behind a slow driver or an intersection.
I feel personally attacked! 😉
I use cruise all the time, having even retrofitted it to my Prius. There are lot of long straight urban roads in Auckland. In busy areas I can have it set between 40 and 55, and hover my foot over the brake in case a cat / child / horse pops out in my path. That certainly feels safer.
Not attacked, just invited to share how it works for you and how you overcome the risks described in the post.
Setting it at the actual speed limit (despite “knowing” your speedo registers a bit low) won’t hurt. Being ready to switch it off when the road environment gets busy, changeable or complicated, rather than expecting only rare hazards should work.
Switching cruise off is literally as simple as hitting the brake, exactly what a human would do in the situation to slow down for a corner or unexpected hazard. But modern adaptive cruise is typically paired with automatic emergency braking, so the car would be one step ahead of you, likely braking before your foot even moved. Also modern high end cruise control combined with navigation systems understands upcoming curve radiuses and safe speeds for them and can and will preemptively slow a vehicle below the set speed if given it’s knowledge of the vehicle dynamics it considers the selected speed to be unsafe for the corner.
And AEB has been standard on corollas worldwide since 2017. Toyota is actually a leader in deploying driver assistance features across their entire range at all price points. This is no longer some fancy high end European car feature, it is mainstream now on new vehicles.
Cruise control definitely nice when on a motorway, only had chance to use a basic one way back and foudn it helpful, must save of fuel.
Your memory of that Corolla may not be quite what you think. The 1.3 litre 1995 corolla (when new not clapped out in 2024) would go from 0 to 100kph in about 12 seconds with a top speed of 175kph. Not a speed demon but handily more than your predicted 80-100kph performance. Even back then speed limits and road quality rather than vehicle capability would determine how fast you got anywhere.
I use cruise control a lot. My vehicle is monitored by GPS and any sustained driving over the speed limit for is reported. Cruise control allows me to relax and stay observant without having to constantly check the speedometer. It also helps me maintain a constant speed, which more fuel efficient.
The down side is that I frequently cause frustration (but little inconvenience) to speeders, who are want to express themselves. No worries though. Cruise control is good technology when used properly.