More than 60 per cent of drivers would find it acceptable if their vehicle provided an audible and visual warning when they exceeded the speed limit, a new survey from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has shown.
Also, half of drivers surveyed said they wouldn’t mind vehicle technology that made the accelerator pedal harder to press or automatically restricted speed.
“These findings are exciting because they suggest American drivers are willing to change how they drive to make our roads safer,” said IIHS President David Harkey. “The conventional wisdom has always been that speed-restricting technology would never fly in our car-centric culture.”
Speeding is a factor in more than a quarter of US traffic fatalities. In 2022, the latest year for which numbers are available, that amounted to more than 12,000 deaths. However, half of drivers admit to driving at least 15 mph over the limit in the past month, according to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.
To gain more insight into how American drivers would feel about intelligent speed assistance (ISA), the IIHS conducted a survey of 1,802 drivers.
More than 80 per cent of all drivers agreed or strongly agreed that they would want a feature that displayed the current speed limit. More than 70 per cent also agreed or strongly agreed that they would want an unobtrusive tone to sound when the speed limit changes.
The IIHS said there was a clear preference for advisory systems over those that intervene to control the vehicle’s speed.
“This technology enables nuanced interventions that were never possible in the past,” added Harkey. “The next challenge is to encourage automakers and drivers to embrace it so we can begin saving lives.”
