The European Commission has arrived at a provisional political agreement on the revised General Safety Regulation, which will see new European-market vehicles get mandatory safety equipment from 2022.
For cars, vans, trucks and buses, these include (but are not limited to) driver drowsiness and distraction warnings, intelligent speed assistance (ISA), reversing safety with camera or sensors and black boxes (data recorders in the event of an accident).
The European Commission expects the proposed measures to help save 25,000 lives and avoid at least 140,000 serious injuries by 2038, adding that the move is aimed at moving towards its goal of zero fatalities and serious injuries by 2050.
The technologies have been controversial with drivers, to say the least. “Investment and upkeep of our roads are needed for many of these technologies to function at their best. In addition, drivers need to be properly trained to use these new technologies,” said director-general of the drivers’ association FIA Region I, Laurianne Krid, as quoted by Forbes.
This pushback has led to legislators from the European Parliament and the 28 national EU governments reaching a compromise, which will allow drivers to disable the devices if they choose to do so, Forbes reports. The FIA say this is necessary in areas where speed limit data is incorrect, or where there are problems with the data sent to the vehicle, it said.
“The discussions in committee have been difficult, there’s even division within political groups, it’s emotional. Here we’re dealing with human lives, in the most direct sense of the word. Drivers always worry about freedoms being taken away, they did also with seat belts,” said Róza Gräfin von Thun und Hohenstein, the lawmaker for legislation in the European Parliament’s internal market and consumer protection committee.
The agreed legislation is expected to receive final approval from the European Parliament and national governments next month. On top of requiring ISA to be installed in all new European vehicles from 2022, the legislation will also force ‘pre-existing models’ to comply by 2024, though the extent of the backdating to cover older vehicles was not specified.
Volvo is already leading the charge, promising to limit the top speed of all its cars to 180 km/h by 2020. It also plans to install cameras in its cars from the early 2020s to combat drunk and distracted driving.
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I remembered when I owned a reconditioned Corolla KE20 in the 70s, an alarm would go off when your speed exceeded 120km/h
EU is so far ahead of us when safety is concerned. All their cars had VSC as standard 12 years ago. We are still struggling with VSC issues in cars.
Even Euro 2 fuel was banned in Europe in 1994. We are still using it 25 years later.
We must learn how to work efficiently like the European Commission.
Same goes for my dad’s reconditioned Mitsubishi Galant but I think it chimes at 100-110kmh
my father’s too. i was so mad at him for buying that car. body is Galant Super Touring, but it was the basic Galant LG Sigma in Japan. no 5 speed, no power window, no tachometer, no rear headrest/armrest but priced at same price with a used Super Touring. it will chime at 105kmh, something that really angers me. cant never hit 110… dad always remind me to slow down.
While we on the other hand still finding it hard to enforce mandatory rear seat-belt..
Distraction warning won’t work locally will slow down busybody looking at accident scene.
it will, the noise will irritate those drivers, just like seatbelt reminders.
Fine, when speed limits are based on actual road limitation and not just arbitrary or historical, pre-improvement limit. A lot of cases, limits are imposed on narrow winding roads but when the road is widened and straighten out, the old limit stays. There should be a minimum speed as well on the freeways.
Is there any problem to limit max speed of the car to 110km/hour? Since this is the max speed limit allowed in Malaysia, theoretically no car should travel faster than this (perhaps with the exception of ambulance, fire engines and police patrol cars).
Are you wishing to have mosquito motorcycles zipping passing you left right more than 110kmph? Since no speed limiter compliant for motorcycles…
Soon, they’ll ban driving entirely. Who needs drivers when the car can do it by itself. So enjoy it while we can.