TfL wants to limit your speed electronically

By Rory Reid on 28 May 2009, 12:39pm

Smashing news, public transport fans -- Transport for London will be slowing its buses down this summer, and it wants to slow your cars, too. Don't worry though, it's all in the name of Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA) -- a technology designed to prevent vehicles from exceeding the speed limit.

The system comes in two flavours. Advisory ISA displays the current speed limit and warns drivers whenever this is exceeded via a dashboard-mounted display. Voluntary ISA physically prevents the driver from going beyond the speed limit by decreasing throttle application. Both systems use GPS and a digital speed-limit map (created by TfL) to know what sort of road you're driving on and what the speed limit is in that location.

TfL is trialling both systems in London buses, licensed taxis and some of its engineering vehicles, but it also wants the general public to get involved. If you have a TomTom or Garmin sat-nav and l33t enough coding skills, you can try a beta version of the Advisory ISA system for yourself. Download the source code, the point of interest (POI) files and Robert's your Sunday-driving relative.

Whether you'd actually want to prevent your car going any faster than the speed limit is another issue entirely. TfL, however, believes ISA has several benefits, including a lower chance of speeding tickets, an associated reduction in CO2 and fuel costs and -- we kid you not -- 'improved driver style'. Perhaps there's a hidden Gok Wan mode.

Those of you who want to see a similar speed-limiting gadget in action should watch our test drive of the Peugeot 308. Those of you who don't are free to leave.