New vehicle type approval regulations are coming that will mandate the fitment of additional safety devices on most new vehicles sold in the EU and the UK from 2024. This includes intelligent speed assistance, otherwise known popularly as a speed limiter.
Drivetech’s latest in its series of Whitepapers, “Intelligent Speed Assistance – a logical move for safety, but driver tech education is still a critical need”, helps to summarise the Europe-wide move to mandate the fitment of additional safety devices including these speed limiters. However, it points specifically to the essential need to ensure drivers are not forgotten in this process and are made fully aware of the devices that will feature on new vehicles, their benefits and practical use.
With a guest contribution from Dr Helen Wells, Lecturer in Criminology at Keele University and Director of the Roads Policing Academic Network, the Drivetech paper covers speed limiters and other additional safety devices to be included, but concludes there are still risks associated with this development, most notably with the driver, and urges consideration to be made for lifelong learning for all drivers for the sake of road safety and more effective driving behaviours.
As part of the conclusion it cites: “As our vehicles become ever more complex and their safety features more intrusive, and as the pace of change of those features increases inexorably, it is time to open the debate about licensing arrangements for drivers. Many have felt for a long time that it is simply not sufficient to allow a driver to rely throughout their adult lives on a test they took, quite possibly, in their teens.”
It continues to emphasise the point that with these compulsory safety measures comes the opportunity to raise the issue of lifelong driver training with clear intentions of ensuring road safety improves significantly as a result.
The full whitepaper can be accessed and downloaded free from here, with Drivetech hoping it will stimulate further debate and discussion.
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