In recent years, autonomous technology has steadily made its way to the forefront of policymakers’ and manufacturers’ agendas. It’s often promoted as a means to enhance road safety and cut down on greenhouse gas emissions. With these innovations becoming more mainstream, many drivers have grown accustomed to features like adaptive cruise control and lane-keep assist. These technologies are increasingly common as car makers strive to eliminate road accidents and reduce fatalities over time.
As a result, the European Commission has decided that from 7th July 2024, all new cars sold in the EU must be equipped with Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA). ISA is a clever bit of kit that uses cameras to create a digital map around your vehicle. It works with GPS data to determine the speed limit in your area. If you go over the speed limit, ISA alerts you with sounds or visual prompts, like a flashing light or beeping. You might even feel a vibration in the steering wheel or pedal.
If you don’t respond to these warnings and continue to speed, ISA will step in and reduce engine power to bring your speed down. It’s not the same as cruise control, which keeps your car at a constant speed without you having to accelerate. With ISA, you can still speed up and slow down as you like, and for now, you can override the system by pressing harder on the accelerator. You can also disable ISA before starting a journey, although it resets each time you start the car. Depending on how successful this technology is and future testing results, there might come a time when you can't switch it off, except in emergencies.
Currently, ISA systems aren’t perfect. If road signs are missing or damaged, the speed limits might not be accurately detected. This can be tricky on slip roads, where signs might not indicate that you’re free to speed up to merge onto the motorway smoothly. So, some aspects of ISA still need fine-tuning. Introducing mandatory ISA systems is part of the EU’s bigger goal to achieve zero road deaths by 2050. The European Transport Safety Council believes that ISA could reduce collisions by 30% and cut road deaths by 20%.
Along with speed limiters, the European Commission is making other technologies mandatory. These include black boxes to log data, driver fatigue detection, autonomous emergency braking, emergency stop signals, built-in breathalysers to prevent drink driving, and lane-keep assist. To get top marks in the Euro NCAP safety crash tests, cars must already feature autonomous emergency braking. Together, these measures could prevent 140,000 serious road accidents by 2038.
This legislation follows a previous law that required all new vehicles to have a speed limiter from 6th July 2022. Now, older vehicles in Europe will need ISA retrofitted to comply with new safety regulations. Although these rules currently apply only in the EU and Northern Ireland, they’re likely to make their way to the UK. There are two main reasons for this.
First, it wouldn’t be cost-effective for manufacturers to produce separate ISA-free vehicles for the UK market. Secondly, the newly elected Labour government is keen to strengthen ties with the EU and may want to align with the European Commission on this issue. So, UK drivers should be ready for these changes. Ford is already trialling a “geofencing” project in Cologne, which prevents speeding in certain areas.
While some drivers might grumble about these changes, they’re ultimately designed to make our roads safer. Reducing unnecessary accidents and saving lives are definitely worth slowing down for.