Re: Speed limiters

My 2018 VW Golf does have a limiter as a second mode of the cruise control system. If I press the cruise control button twice, it will engage the limiter mode. For both modes, I must set the speed / limit myself.

Mine does not nag. It simply refuses to accelerate beyond the set limit. If I need an emergency acceleration, I can override the limiter by applying full accelerator pedal (kick-down). A gonger will sound, and I get full power acceleration.

Mine is part of the cruise control system, so it must be manually enabled if I want to use it.

My car does not have a camera, nor a navigation system, so it does not know the speed limit. I have to choose the speed myself.

Is it useful? I have used it only once or twice, on a narrow country road that was a mix of long straights and tight corners. The speed limit was too fast for the tight corners, so the normal cruise control mode was too scary. I rarely drive on roads like that, so for me, the limiter system is of limited value.

They have been present as hard limits on HGVs for some time. Most HGVs are limited at 56mph in the UK. Some commercial delivery vehicles also have a true speed limiter and a little notice on the back to say what their maximum speed is.

My car signals when I exceed the posted speed limit based on GPS info and online data. It doesn't always get it right for example when there is a motorway with a 70mph limit and an old urban road (30mph) running parallel. It flashes the limit sign for a while if you are over it but then backs off.

In Japan a lot of cars have a little bell that rings incessantly when you go faster than 100kph. Introduced I think around the late 1980's. AFAIK that feature is physically present in UK made Japanese vehicles but is not enabled in the UK.

Probably (anything can with the right after market reprogramming). I have the haptic feedback on mine disabled from the config menu.

Potentially the airbag black box could reveal if you have been driving over the speed limit in the event of an airbag triggering collision - they store the last however many seconds just prior to impact to show that their decision to detonate was justified.

If you have been driving *very* quickly then the average speed log might also give the game away too. Record police speeding catch on the fast section of road near me was 144mph during Covid lockdown.

My next car will be a 1972 Chevelle.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

That's just where cruise control is useful! In cars with automatic gearboxes, it's not easy to maintain constant speed without keeping an eye on the speed dial all the time, while you should be watching the road instead!

With manual gear boxes, it's much easier.

Jeroen Belleman

How many gallons to the mile does that do?

I saw a very unusual US car at a local show - one of 92 ever made and still in pristine condition. Auburn 1935 Boattail 851 speedster (spent most of its life in some pop stars garage). Now doing the rounds on the UK circuit - unless there is something even more exotic it wins best in show. It looks like something that Dan Dare ought to drive!

Parking radar on the bumpers make trivial fender benders extortionately expensive now and insurance premiums are rising to take account of that.

The parking light failure sensor on my previous car failed (incorrect warning every time you start the car). Cost to repair required an entire light cluster assembly swap so no way was I going to do that! The parking light still worked fine but the sensor thought it didn't.

I didn't see that in the Guardian article, but it could be done that way. However, the article confuses EU and UK requirements. I can see the UK refusing to make it compulsory (although it makes sense to me, and I'm in the UK), and for it to be disabled in cars sold in the UK. But, and it's a big but, I can see that UK cars driving in the EU (which, or course, includes Ireland) would have to turn it on or perhaps face a fine.

Perhaps better info than the Guardian article I read is here<>

I don't see that as being real-time data, but downloaded from a cellphone when it's queried:

ISTR an article a year or two back about a "dongle" connected between the car's chip and its connector, whereby what it was recording was read by a third party. Perhaps someone here can confirm or clarify.

See above. Perhaps it was the OBD port!

Although as Martin Brown noted, the camera can be confused by speed signs on other roads. I think that it's apocryphal, but I have read of the speed limit sign on the back of trucks (a speed in a circle with the words "This vehicle is limited to Xmph" underneath) being confused with the real speed limit, and the car beeping an alarm, even though it can legally do 70mph.

It is standardised throughout the EU, and probably by default when the UK was a member its signage is the same. That is, other than distances/speeds being in miles, not kilometres (/hour)! Note also that I can change the camera detection system from mph to kph with my speed limiter.

That's far too common! What you really want is a Jonckheere Rolls-Royce Phantom I. See

Now *that's* a really special car.

My current vehicle is a 2012 Mustang convertible, 6-cylinder, stick shift, pretty nearly base trim. I bought it in late 2016, brand new from the dealer, for a song. (It had got caught up in the Takata air bag recall fiasco--since it was just sitting on the lot, it was a low priority for the limited supply of replacements.)

Since then, I've put 22k miles on it.

Gas mileage isn't a big issue for yours truly--I've used right around

The Chevelle, probably with an LS and a smallish turbo, would be a relatively inexpensive source of entertainment in my declining years. ;)

It also wouldn't have all that surveillance and assorted Big Brother crap on it.

A 1908 Silver Ghost for me, thanks. I heard somewhere that my Bugatti Type 41 is no longer exclusive enough, and anyway, Bugatti is now owned by Volkswagen, pshaw.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

More like you will pay stupid money for a "restomod" where they've ripped out and replaced everything but the Chevelle body, hopefully vaguely competently.

Mid-trim stock '72 Chevelles are relatively inexpensive if one's OK with most minivans on the road from the past decade putting up better 0-60 times.

You have no way to verify they didn't put the gay agenda microcode in ECU when modding it, either. If you want a modern LS why not just get a C5 Corvette vs. some chimera that only the person who built it understands? There will be parts available forever.

Parts availability will be a problem long before firmware gives you any trouble. There are a zillion more models than there were in the good ol' days, part interchangeability seems lower than ever, and manufacturers desire to support the operation of discontinued models more than 1 second past their discontinuation is nil.

See e.g.

and

You really are a very strange person.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

After signing off your post with your real name and address for decades I'm pretty sure Big Brother isn't going to learn much more of interest about your activities from interrogating your ECU.

It's OK to be paranoid but at least be consistent.

Cars that run on public roadways are appliances used for transport.

There are places where cars can exist to express the spirit of freedom and f*ck-you attitude and go fast as hell and race, and do whatever with like-minded people, known as drag strips and private tracks.

And there are people known as "sociopaths" who will never be happy unless their freedom to go fast puts some non-consenting person in danger.

The question seems a bit premature, it hardly enforces any, at least on its own. We still employee legions of human police to "enforce" laws i.e. spend half the day harassing brown people and the other half paid overtime for standing around at construction details on their phones.

I'll be more worried about a technological take over if the number of human cops ever substantially declines, fat chance of that.

Naturally many Americans seem to feel that having some roving gang of armed paramilitaries patrol their streets and haphazardly accost them for crimes real and imagined is more "free" than a computer mailing a citation, and/or a car that offers mild disagreement to doing 85 in a 40.

We don't get much chance to use cruise control in the UK, as the roads aren't long enough and are too busy. I did use it when driving in Canada from Edmonton to Jasper a few years ago. Now that's a boring drive - endless miles of high trees either side of the road. It was very tempting to tip the driver's seat back, put my feet up on the dash, and have a sleep for a couple of hours! I found using the cruise control the opposite of what you suggest; I didn't even need have to make minor adjustments with the pressure of my foot on the gas pedal.

That has been very common here in the UK for several years, particularly when there is a lot of construction and repair work for several miles on motorways. There are "averaging" speed cameras at the start and end of the roadworks, and at intervals too along the way (and always at sliproads for those entering and leaving the motorway within the roadworks). The first notice you get if you've been speeding is a letter of intending prosecution which suddenly arrives several days after you've driven along that stretch of road!

All speed signage here is just a number. There are no "MPH" letters. I guess a GPS system could indicate correctly as it knows what country you'd be driving in. So although it might be using mph in the UK, as soon as I moved across the channel to France it could change to kph.

By the way, my speed detection system is smart enough to tell the difference between recommended speeds on motorway signs (an illuminated white number in an illuminated white circle) and an absolute limit (illuminated white number in an illuminated red circle). It will not beep if I'm exceeding the recommended speed, but will do so with the absolute limit.

I was mistaken. There is a separate button to switch between ordinary cruise control and speed limiter.