d motorofficial f motor_mag^127“IF YOU REALLY CAN’T HANDLE DOINGAT
LEAST 70KM/H IN AN 80KM/H ZONE, I HAV
BAD NEWS FOR YOU: YOU CAN’T DRIVE”
Tim Keen
VE
THERE’S A LOT OF HAND-WRINGING over the possibility of
introducing speed-limiters in cars. I’m not worried for two reasons.
One is that if people just couldn’t speed, then police couldn’t hand
out speeding tickets, and a major source of state government revenue
would collapse – something in the ballpark of a billion dollars a year
in Australia. That damp rustling sound, like sweaty hands nervously
shuff ling paper? It’s the sound of government and police bean-counters
“opening reviews” to “look into” speed limiters in Australia – studies
which will be ready to change the current way of doing business at
roughly the same time the sun finally supernovas and swallows the
planet whole.
But the other reason is that I’m all for it. Yes, I for one welcome our
speed-limiter overlords.
Just not for limiting top speeds.
I’m against speed-limiting cars, in the same way I’m against
temperature-limiting my kettle to save me from burning myself. I’ll
assume the responsibility of burn-prevention myself, rather than drink
lukewarm tea in safety. The price of hot tea is eternal vigilance.
It’s not because I don’t care about road safety. I wonder, has anyone
done a study of what percentage of speeders don’t crash? Apparently 40
per cent of drivers who crash were speeding, the statisticians tell us.
But that can’t be the whole story, because a whole lot more than 40 per
cent of drivers speed – that’s where the billion dollars comes from. It’s a
bit like saying 90 per cent of men who get cancer wear pants. It doesn’t
mean pants cause cancer. If it turns out pants do cause cancer, I’ll be
glad I’ve invested all my superannuation in kilt futures.
No, there’s better uses for speed-limiting technology.
I’m all for limiting people who can only find their accelerator whenthey reach the overtaking lane. You know the ones – they can only
manage 70km/h in an 80km/h zone as long as there’s only one lane
each way, but as soon as there’s an overtaking lane, they suddenly f loor
it. You can’t catch them as long as there’s an overtaking lane, but as
soon as it’s back down to one lane, they lose all their moxie and it’s back
down to 70km/h. I’m all for limiting that lot to whatever speed they
were doing before, and let the rest of us finally get past when we can.
And I’m all for limiting minimum speeds. As well as maximum
limits, some roads in the US have minimum speed limits: now there’s a
speed limit I can get behind. (Actually I can get in front of it – you have
to.) I would love to see drivers limited to no slower than 10 kays under
the limit. If you really can’t handle doing at least 70km/h in an 80km/h
zone, I have bad news for you: you can’t drive.
Similarly, I would love to see speed-limiters force people to maintain
their speed when they reach an uphill stretch. I call it Flintstoning –
when people doing 80km/h on the f lat, suddenly start doing 75km/h,
then 65km/h uphill, as though they have to push their cars along with
their feet like Fred Flintstone. It’s not that hard to push the pedal down
another half a centimetre. Maybe speed-limiting tech can help.
If the powers that be really want to introduce limits to stop us from
speeding, they should take a leaf from Volvo’s book. Volvo is famously
safety-minded, so it must be okay with the hand-wringers: all future
Volvos will be speed-limited to... 180km/h. 180! That’s way faster than
any Volvo driver has ever driven, including in Supercars, where Scott
McLaughlin drove at 55km/h the entire time because he was trying to
stop two toddlers fighting in the back seat over who got the Frozen sippy
cup. If being ‘limited’ to 180km/h is safe, then I say raise all the speed
limits to that and let us all stay under the limit on our own. Job done.