Speed-limiters to be mandatory in Europe

Speed-limiters and black-box data recorders will be mandatory on every new vehicle sold in the European Union from 2022.

The European Commission yesterday approved the new rules, which were provisionally agreed on last month, after they were proposed late in 2018. The new rules need to be formally approved by the European Parliament and its 27 members states in September, though this is thought to be a formality.

Pitched as a bid to improve road safety and lower crash deaths across Europe, the rules should trickle down to every car-buying nation that shares the EU compliance regimes – including Australia.

All new models will be required to have the technology fitted by 2022, though models already on sale will have a grace period until 2024 to figure out how to retrofit all of the mandated devices.

The European Union insists the features are for saving lives, estimating it could save 25,000 lives in Europe alone within 25 years, or 1000 lives a year.

The headline act will be the intelligent speed-limiters, plus technology to detect distracted, drunk or sleepy drivers and the data-recording black boxes, or event data recorders.

The speed-limiters will use GPS data and traffic sign-recognition cameras and will deliver advice to drivers on speed-limit changes and limit the speed of the vehicle in each zone.

Critically, the limiters can be overridden by the simple means of pushing down the accelerator pedal.

This makes it similar to intelligent speed-limit recognition systems already on sale in some Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Porsche, Bentley, BMW, Volkswagen, Jaguar Land Rover and Skoda vehicles.

Its introduction also makes a slight mockery of Volvo’s public-relations coup of imposing its own 180km/h speed-limiters on its cars from next year and is likely to increase the cost of vehicles.

“There have only been a handful of moments in the last 50 years which could be described as big leaps forward for road safety in Europe,” the European Transport Safety Council’s executive director, Antonio Avenoso, said.

“The mandatory introduction of the seatbelt was one, and the first EU minimum crash safety standards, agreed in 1998, was another. If this agreement is given the formal green light, it will represent another of those moments.”

Other rules being introduced in Europe include mandatory compatibility for alcohol interlock systems, designed to stop drink-driving in its tracks on a continent with lax policing of drunken driving.

The new rules will also turn some safety technologies, currently sold as value-added safety features, into mandatory across-the-board technologies.

Many of the technologies on the list are already encouraged as compulsory fitment for any car-maker chasing a maximum five-star Euro NCAP safety rating, including autonomous emergency braking.

There are fears from some car-makers, including Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and the Volkswagen Group, that the cost of the technologies could effectively spell the end of the smallest A-segment cars, like the Fiat Panda and the Volkswagen Up.

The full list of the new mandatory technologies includes:

• Intelligent speed-limiters
• Data-recording black boxes
• Advanced autonomous emergency braking
• Lane departure warning systems
• Alcohol Interlock facilitation