A survey conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety revealed that over 60% of drivers in the United States would approve of receiving audible and visual warnings from their vehicles if they exceeded the posted speed limit. The survey, which included 1,802 participants, aimed to gather insights on how drivers felt about intelligent speed assistance systems (ISA).
Over-speeding is a significant contributing factor to more than a quarter of traffic fatalities in the U.S. This has resulted in over 12,000 deaths in 2022 alone. Despite this alarming statistic, half of the drivers admitted to exceeding the speed limit by at least 15 mph in the past month, as reported by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.
In Europe, starting next month, all new vehicles will be required to have ISA systems. These systems utilize speed sign-recognition cameras and/or GPS-linked speed limit data to inform drivers about the current speed limit and provide warnings if the limit is being exceeded, according to the European Transport Safety Council.
The IIHS senior research scientist, Ian Reagan, pointed out that current technologies could potentially eliminate speeding and speeding tickets altogether, but the trend seems to be moving towards allowing drivers to maintain high speeds with adaptive cruise control and partial automation systems.
The survey results revealed that more than 80% of drivers expressed interest in having a feature that displays the current speed limit, while over 70% preferred an unobtrusive tone to alert them of speed limit changes. Additionally, around half of the participants indicated that they would be open to a vehicle technology that either makes pressing the accelerator pedal harder or automatically restricts speed.