[A-List] Think inside the box

[Bill Totten <shimogamo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

With only a little tweaking, Labour's congestion plans could also solve
the speeding problem

by George Monbiot

Published in the Guardian <July 27 2004>

Every year the figures inch downwards, and every year they are greeted
as a triumph. Britain now has the best record for road safety in Europe.
Only 3,508 people were killed on our roads last year, and only 171 of
them were children. <1>  Only 33,707 were gravely injured. <2> 
Rejoice, just bloody well rejoice.

Among the dead this year was a friend of mine. He was cycling home from
a meeting about making the roads safer for cyclists. He was run down by
a young man who had just passed his test. Those of us who refuse to
drive are among the most likely to be killed by a car.

The comparisons have been made before, but I'll test your patience by
repeating them. The people who die on our roads every year would fill
thirty commercial airliners. <3> The deaths caused by cars in Britain
since 1945 outnumber the deaths of British soldiers during the second
world war. <4> Since March 2003, 61 British servicemen have died in
Iraq: as many people die in just one week of carnage (was there ever an
apter word?) on the roads. One in seventeen of us will be killed or
seriously injured in a road crash. <5>

So why do we put up with it? Partly, of course, because we think there's
not much more that can be done. More speed cameras, more humps, stiffer
penalties for bad drivers will all save lives, but we appear to accept
that some people will always drive like lunatics. I did for a couple of
years after I was deemed fit to sit behind a steering wheel. It is after
all what driving, for many people - especially young men - is all about:
the freedom to behave like an idiot.

But there is something that can be done. There is a technological
solution to what is essentially a technological problem. It could start
to be deployed immediately. Indeed, with the minimum of political
pressure, it could become an almost cost-free product of quite another
scheme.

Last week, the government published its plan for dealing with congestion.
Within ten years, it proposes, every car should be fitted with a
communications box. With the help of a global positioning satellite, the
box will send a signal to the toll collectors showing where it is and
how far it travels. Cars can then be charged according to where they are.
The Department for Transport hopes that, by costing roads according to
their use, it can discourage people from crowding the choke points.

It may well be a necessary means of preventing gridlock. But there is
another, more powerful argument in favour of the scheme, which almost
everyone seems to have missed. With just a little modification, it could
also be used to cut fatal accidents by nearly sixty per cent.

The communications box will contain a digital map of the road network.
To turn it into a road safety device, you need only add the local speed
limits and connect it to the engine management system. When the box
detects that the speed limit has dropped, it warns the driver, blocks
the accelarator and applies the brakes. Local sensors can tell the
digital map when weather conditions are bad, and bring the car's speed
down to match them.

The system - called Intelligent Speed Adaptation - has been tested by
Leeds University's Institute for Transport Studies. When the system is
mandatory (in other words when the driver can't override it) and can
take account of the weather, it could reduce serious accidents by 48%
and deaths by 59%. <6> This isn't just because you are more likely to
hit someone if you are speeding; you are also more likely to kill them
once you have made contact. The energy dissipated in a collision rises
with the square of its speed. <7> A person hit by a car at 35 miles per
hour is twice as likely to die as a person hit by a car moving at 30.
<8>

Needless to say, this proposal, like almost every attempt to save lives,
is anathema to those who claim to speak on motorists' behalf. The Daily
Mail (they must have thought long and hard about this one) calls the
idea "Big Brother in the boot".<9> The Society of Motor Manufacturers
and Traders claims it will prevent motorists from "accelarating out of
danger". <10>  Their spokesman is plainly in need of a driving lesson:
he seems to have confused the pedal on the right with the one in the
middle. The Automobile Association warns that the system will "restrict
freedom", <11> which is, of course, precisely the point. The website
Pistonheads.com is already urging motorists to find ways of sabotaging
it. <12>

So what do these people want? They say they want to get rid of speed
humps and speed cameras. They say they want the government to stop
snooping on them and fining them. They say they want the police to
concentrate on catching muggers. Well this system permits all these
things to happen. It prevents speeding without policing or punishment.
So why aren't they demanding that it is adopted immediately? Because
what they really want, of course, is to allow people to continue driving
without social restraint.

There's nothing new in this. In A Tale of Two Cities, the aristocrats in
pre-revolutionary Paris exhibit their disdain for the rest of humanity
by driving their carriages as fast as they can. "The complaint had
sometimes made itself audible", Dickens wrote, "that, in the narrow
streets without footways, the fierce patrician custom of hard driving
endangered and maimed the mere vulgar in a barbarous manner. But ... in
this matter, as in all others, the common wretches were left to get out
of their difficulties as they could." <12> The kings of the road still
insist on their right to dispose of the lives of their subject peoples.

Happily, these morons belong to a minority. A MORI poll in 2002
suggested that 51% of drivers would welcome compulsory speed limiters in
all new cars. <13>  And so they should. As soon as it becomes impossible
to break the speed limit, the entire culture of driving changes. The
other fool might remain a fool, but there isn't much he can do about it.
He can't tailgate you, he can't overtake you on a blind bend (the
satellite system could produce a different speed limit for every metre
of road), he can't play Jenson Button after closing time. The fact that
the high-performance car becomes redundant in these circumstances may
help to explain why the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders isn't
too keen on the idea.

Unlike the road charging scheme, there are no implications for civil
liberties: the car receives signals from the satellite, but does not
transmit. The only freedom the system restricts is the freedom to
endanger other people's lives. If cars are going to be fitted with
communications boxes anyway, the cost of incorporating speed controls
will be minimal. The savings, the Leeds study suggests, run into tens of
billions of pounds.

So we don't have to call for very much. Just the tweaking of a scheme
the government plans to introduce anyway. And the prevention of only a
couple of thousand deaths a year.

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/07/27/think-inside-the-box/

References:

1. Department for Transport, 2004. Road Casualties in Great Britain,
2003
http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_transstats/documents/downloadable/dft_transstats_029324.pdf

2. ibid.

3. The pressure group Transport 2000 has published a very useful list of
facts and figures on its website, http://www.transport2000.org.uk. This
is one them, sourced to the Department of Environment, Transport and the
Regions.

4. Slower Speeds Initiative, cited on the T2000 website.

5. Sustrans, cited on the T2000 website.

6. Oliver Carsten and Fergus Tate, 20th July 2000. External Vehicle
Speed Control: Final Report. The University of Leeds and the Motor
Industry Research Association. http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft
_roads/documents/page/dft_roads_506880.pdf

7. The probability of death rises with mean speed to the fourth power.
See G Andersson and G Nilsson, 1997. Speed management in Sweden. Swedish
National Road and Transport Research Institute, Linkoping. Cited in
Oliver Carsten and Fergus Tate, ibid.

8. The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, cited on the
T2000 website.

9. Ray Massey, 8th April 2003. ‘Big Brother' in the boot that will stop
drivers speeding. Daily Mail.

10. Nigel Wonnacott, SMMT, 26th July 2004. Pers. comm.

11. Ben Webster, 1st July 2004. Car computer to stop you speeding. The
Times.

12. Ian Eveleigh, 25th February 2003. Rein of Terror.
http://www.pistonheads.com/doc.asp?c=98&i=6325

13. MORI, 30th January 2002. Drivers' Undecided over Speed Limiters in
Cars
http://www.mori.com/polls/2001/dl-010720c.shtml


Bill Totten     http://www.ashisuto.co.jp/english/