Less is more [intelligent speed adaptation for road vehicles

Abstract

The use of sophisticated in-car technology to enforce urban speed limits and improve road safety is an idea whose time could well have come. To the great majority of motorists, speed bumps are, at best, a `necessary evil'. However, if the results of recent trials in Sweden involving intelligent speed adaptation (ISA) technology are anything to go by then the days of this contentious feature of our urban roads could well be numbered. Between 1999 and 2002 government funding of SEK75m (£5.64m) was provided to install ISA systems in 5000 test vehicles distributed amongst four Swedish municipalities (Borlange, Lidkoping, Lund and Umea), and the results of these trials have apparently greatly exceeded the expectations of even ISA technology's keenest proponents within the Swedish National Road Administration (SNRA). ISA systems are, a combination of several existing technologies being put together in a new way. Many cars at the expensive end of the market are now being provided with satellite navigation systems as standard, where each vehicle is fitted with a Global Positioning System (GPS) transmitter/receiver, so that the precise position of the vehicle can be determined, and a GSM mobile phone link, so that this position can be integrated with a detailed and accurate digital roadmap maintained by the satellite navigation service provider. ISA technology, simply put, merely adds data on speed limits to the digital road map, so that each vehicle `knows' what the maximum legal speed is on any road that it happens to be travelling along.