New vehicles equipped with intelligent speed assistance systems (ISA) were spotted in the parking lot at the Port of Richmond, located on the bay of San Francisco, California on June 8, 2023. A survey conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) revealed that more than 60% of drivers in the United States would support having their vehicles provide audible and visual warnings if they exceeded the posted speed limit.
The IIHS surveyed over 1,800 drivers to gather insights on their opinions regarding ISA technologies. Over-speeding has been a contributing factor in over a quarter of U.S. traffic fatalities, resulting in more than 12,000 deaths in 2022. Despite this, around half of surveyed drivers admitted to driving at least 15 mph over the speed limit in the past month as reported by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. In fact, starting next month, all new vehicles will be required to be equipped with ISA systems in the European Union.
ISA technologies use speed sign-recognition video cameras and GPS-linked speed limit data to inform drivers of the current speed limit and alert them if they are exceeding it. The survey results indicated that over 80% of drivers would like a feature displaying the current speed limit while more than 70% preferred an unobtrusive tone to sound when the speed limit changes.
Additionally, about half of surveyed drivers expressed willingness to have a vehicle technology that makes it harder to press the accelerator pedal or automatically restricts speed. IIHS senior research scientist Ian Reagan noted that current technologies could effectively prevent speeding and eliminate speeding tickets but expressed concern about recent trends in vehicle automation that allow drivers to exceed speed limits without proper supervision or oversight from human operators
