Low Range Speeding and the Potential Benefits of Intelligent Speed Assistance

More than half of fatalities to seat-belt-wearing drivers in frontal crashes occur at impact speeds below 55km/h.

Pedestrians and other vulnerable road users are at risk at much lower speeds. The impact speed depends on the timing and degree of braking, if any, that occurs before the crash. The resulting impact speed is highly dependent on the initial travel speed.

Small increases in travel speed can disproportionately increase impact speeds and small increases in impact speed can greatly increase the risk of serious injury or fatality. This double whammy effect is not appreciated by many motorists, who routinely travel several km/h over the speed limit.

It is shown that low-range speeding, up to 10km/h over the speed limit, makes up a large proportion of preventable road trauma. It is difficult for enforcement methods alone to have an effect on this minor speeding. An added problem is that even motorists who want to obey the speed limits (to keep their life, licence or livelihood) have difficulty doing so in modern cars on modern roads.

This is where Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) can help. The system has a simple function, backed up by clever technology. It knows the location and speed of the vehicle and, from an on-board database of speed limits, it can alert the driver to speeding.