Re: Finding an address for a truck firm

Utter crap.

I spent this week driving around with an ISA unit in the car. It was wrong more often than it was right. It attempted to impose a 30 limit on the motorway in places where a motorway ran parallel to a road with a 30 restriction. It assigned a 70 mph restriction to a car park and a 20mpoh restriction to a village that didn't have a 20mph restriction anywhere.

Only a festering f****it would claim that these devices are going to enhance safety. Or even that sticking rigidly to a speed limit has anything to do with safety.

The device did however permit a 60mph limit on a 270 degree bend in heavy rain. The road was unsafe for any speed over 20mph. That particular bend has seen several deaths of teenage drivers in recent years. So how would ISA have helped them?

v dangerous.

While the previous poster is somewhat deluded, your statement above is not helpful, or insightful.

You may not have an accident when you're going over 70, as this is dependent upon conditions, traffic level, and n-teen other random factores.

And the word 'accident' is wrong - crash is the right word. 'Accident' fools people into thinking that crashes on the roads aren't the fault of individual drivers. In 95% of all crashes, they are. (I've seen 2003 figures from Thames Valley plod - at a Speed Awareness Scheme, if you must know :-)

However, there is a very good correlation between IMPACT speed and the severity of the acc^H crash.

IMPACT SPEED KILLS is far more accurate - but doesn't fit snappily on the back of buses/on posters and so on.

A GPS-based device for controlling speed? Give me a break! Given that a

30MPH road runs paralell to the M40 nearby, and is within the margin of error for Consumer GPS units (mine regularly thinks I'm on that when I'm crusing down the motorway) so would set (or worse, /switch between/) an inappropriate speed limit.

And I'm not paying for that to be retrofitted to my car - it doesn't have the necessary speed sensors (or even an electronic speedo) or ignition system to be able to cope with it.

Very good though - the lack of thinking gave me a giggle.

This is something I don't understand. Are you queuing in lane 3 if you're only doing 50 mph? Is undertaking at 60 mph permitted in lane 2 when lane 3 is only doing 50? I didn't think it was.

And that's precisely why I drive up lane 2 slightly faster than the traffic in lane 3, given you're allowed to undertake if traffic is queueing and the outer lane is moving more slowly than the inner lane (s).

Only the stupid fly out to the outside lane.

It wasn't intended to be helpful. Ghod forbid I should be helpful to speed fascists. It is, nontheless, I believe, true.

Sorry? Again in English? (Do you mean that speed alone does not cause accidents? That's what I'm saying, too...)

I agree with you completely. In fact I call them "incompetents". (Not the people, although they are, but the incidents themselves.) The standard of driving in this country is downright appalling. And the solution to this is to increase the skill level of the drivers, not to de-skill the task to the point where these idiots can do it.

That's basic physics. Simple solution; Don't crash.

Quite.

Mine neither. I imagine there would be a brisk trade in classic cars if it was proposed that this system be legislated.

Me too.

Sigh. How do you stop signal leakage between the parallel roads? Bearing in mind that this system has to be cheap and installable by navvies?

In message , David B writes

Thus curtailing speeding in the situation it does least harm (motorways) and having no effect whatsoever in the urbanised areas where it does most.

The message from "JULIAN HALES" contains these words:

How so?

I can see it being frustrating on occasion, and no doubt someone will trot out some balony about not being able to accelerate out of trouble and so on. I drive a Montego TD, which doesn't really accelerate at 70 (though it does gather speed quite nicely) and I wouldn't say it was "v dangerous", or even mildly bothering.

The message from "David B" contains these words:

More's the pity.

Passing on the left is acceptable in many countries, and even in this country on some roads - so why not on motorways? It'd make lanehogs obsolete overnight.

The other way this could work apart from beacons (which could have a weak beam so as not to go onto a parallel road) is for the GPS software to be aware of what road the vehicle was on say 30 seconds ago. So if you're on the A4 30 seconds ago, and there is no motorway exit nearby you can't suddenly be on the motorway or vice versa. In any case GPS nav systems are accurate e down to a the width of a road so the only way this could happen is if a road was on top of another. The elevated section of A4 springs to mind. An interesting dilemma to code for.

From

Do not overtake on the left or move to a lane on your left to overtake. In congested conditions, where adjacent lanes of traffic are moving at similar speeds, traffic in left-hand lanes may sometimes be moving faster than traffic to the right. In these conditions you may keep up with the traffic in your lane even if this means passing traffic in the lane to your right. Do not weave in and out of lanes to overtake.

So therefore you can do 60 in lane 2 if lane 3 is only doing 50 right?

But what is congested?

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Then why did they fit top speed limiters to large vehicles and limit them to below their legal top speed? And why is this being extended to vehicles >

3.5 tons?

I see you know as much about radio as you do about GPS.

I'm sorry, but this is simply unworkable.

^ potentially.

Actually, they aren't. Did you see Ray Mears last night? Notice what the 2D error was on his handheld Garmin? 41 meters. Completely unusable for the purpose you intend.

Such as whenever a minor road crosses a motorway.

The ISA project on the Skoda's done at Birmingham seems to have worked very well. The problem with it seems to have been that other vehicles were obviously not limited in the same way.

No I don't know much about radio techonology.

My Tomtom 3 is more accurate than that. All depends on what sort of GPS unit you're using.

No because if you were driving on the M4 the system would know the speed limit couldn't alter unless you took an exit off. It wouldn't simply alter the speed limit because of a minor road.

Obviously the system needs to be improved in some of the ways I've described. The first sat nav units were extremely primitive but overtime have developed such that in my opinion TomTom 3 is now the best (subject to the accuracy of mapping data).

Have you ever noticed how the Tom Tom software uses a little degree of = 'guesswork' to determine where you are? (ie: leaving/joining a motorway = or parallel road)

TT3 often indicates that I'm in a field when the route I should be = following appears to be close by - it then recalculates from the nearest = road (a recipe for disaster if it were used for speed limiting).

David B ( snipped-for-privacy@daveb07890.fsnet.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Your TomTom is lying.

In *perfect* conditions, consumer GPS receivers are accurate to about 5-10 metres, in any direction.

It doesn't take much interference - buildings, trees, heavy cloud cover, metal of a car body - to lower that accuracy further.

For SatNav purposes, it's safe to "guess". For speed restriction, it isn't.

Here, as just one example, you have three parallel roads within that margin of error :-

One is a 30 limit, one is 60, one is 70.

You're doing 70 on the M4, with somebody else right behind you. They have their mind in neutral, and their foot planted, with the limiter holding them at 70.

Your limiter decides you're in the 30 limit.