The end for racers? New cars in the EU are now equipped with a mandatory speed limiter. And there are even more electronics designed to make driving safer. The downside: Monitoring is increasing massively.
New cars already have a consumption monitoring system on board with which the EU collects data. However, the EU wants to regulate even more into the car – for example with the mandatory speed brake. A completely new model produced for the first time is already equipped with it (the deadline is July 6), all other new cars of model series that have already been presented by 2024 at the latest.
Other systems will also become mandatory, such as emergency brake assistants and drowsiness warning systems. Advantage: One expects fewer traffic accidents. However, the technical effort is likely to make the cars more expensive, especially in the low-price segment and for small cars. In the compact segment and upwards, on the other hand, many of the electronic helpers and controllers are not so new, and in the premium segment they are even standard.
The following driver assistance systems will be mandatory for all new vehicles from 2022. It should be noted that some of these systems have long been standard in many vehicle classes, especially with German car manufacturers.
Hydrogen is at the beginning of a profitable success story for investors: These 4 top stocks in the free report validate this trend!
The Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) is basically nothing more than a system that combines assistance systems such as adaptive cruise control and traffic sign recognition with the navigation system; a technology that many modern cars already have on board. These are often cameras that “work together” with the GPS data of the navigation maps. With the help of this sensor fusion, the car should recognize speed limits, inform the driver and reduce the speed if necessary.
Basically, the ISA acts like an adaptive cruise control already does today. If the system recognizes a speed limit from a sign or other traffic sign, the driver is informed acoustically (e.g. by a flashing symbol in the instrument cluster) or haptically (the counter-pressure of the accelerator pedal increases). However, the EU Commission also allows a reduction in engine power or gentle braking interventions. But these are also functions that every driver who is on the road with modern assistance systems is familiar with.
The ISA is an assistant, nothing more and nothing less. This means that the driver is always in full control of his vehicle and can therefore override the system with a press of the accelerator pedal. Just as is the case today. Anything else would also be dangerous. In addition, the driver can easily switch off the ISA. However, the system must be automatically reactivated when the vehicle is started.
A black box is also on board for new cars. There won’t be any fines for speeding. Rather, only the seconds before and after an accident should be saved and that anonymously in a closed system. For example, the data is passed on to accident research and not to insurance companies. Basically, there is the problem that a lot of data is generated, the (possible future) use of which the driver cannot really influence.
The speed brake can be overridden when overtaking and even switched off completely, but sooner or later insurance companies could be keen to get data from the car after accidents. The data from the “black box” should only be evaluated anonymously in order to improve accident research. But there is no guarantee that this will always be the case.
Insider reports, tests, guides, videos, background information: FOCUS Online provides you with the most important news from the auto department every week. Here you can subscribe to the newsletter easily and free of charge.
