It’s been a wild few weeks for the Big Brother news beat – so wild that one particularly dangerous item managed to slip down just about everyoneRadar of. according to daily MailThe European Commission wants the power to force cars to obey speed limits with the help of GPS.
European cars leave the factory already with speed monitoring systems installed, and no, I don’t just mean the speedometer. Starting in 2024, the European Union mandated that all new cars be equipped with a GPS-based system that tracks the current speed limit and audibly alerts the driver if it is exceeded. These “Intelligent Speed Assist” systems are also often installed on cars sold outside the EU, although the warning component is often optional or disabled.
This is clearly a “weakened” version of what the Commission initially wanted, which was a full-fledged, satellite-based speed control system. European automakers, possibly fearing a strong customer backlash, lobbied hard to get the proposal passed. Now, commission officials are once again pushing for complete control, the newspaper says.
“It was always going to be an interim phase,” a source reportedly said. Match. “But eventually we’ll limit the speed of the car so you can’t go over the speed limit.”
Could this be a slippery-slope fear mongering? As always, consider the source. But also consider this: We’re already seeing some traces of ISA technology in US-bound cars. If remote speed governors become mandatory in Europe, the technology itself will arrive here, even if it is disabled by regional software packaging.
Apart from general public sentiment, there is another problem with relying on ISAs as speed governors: they are not at all accurate. According to a study in June, these GPS-based indicators miss important events (such as a sudden change of speed limit). up to 25% time.
“The worst-performing vehicle in real-world testing achieved 91.3% accuracy in distance driven,” the report said. “When evaluated on an incident-based metric, the system was 74.3% accurate. This means that for approximately 1 in 4 incidents, the ISA is displaying the wrong speed limit.”
“This is simply below the level of performance for most drivers to accept and trust ISA,” the report said.
“The best-performing vehicle in real-world testing achieved 98.39% accuracy across driven distances, indicating a near-perfect system,” the report added. “The incident-based accuracy of the corresponding vehicle was 90.3%. This shows that with approximately 1 in 10 incidents being wrong, even systems that perform comparatively well on UK roads are still not good enough for widespread acceptance.”
But don’t worry, they have found a solution. These proposed Super-ISAs will incorporate 5G data from nearby connected devices to improve your location. This sounds very familiar. But it’s not such a big deal that we are constantly being monitored, right? After all, if you are not a criminal, you have nothing to worry about.
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