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Gateshead Speed Management Plan (SMP)

7. Emerging developments / technology

In this section

Vehicle speed detection/limiters 

Efforts to manage speed and speed related accidents in recent times has largely been through a mixture of highway engineering, education and enforcement along with improvements in vehicle safety. The ongoing issue of speeding amongst a wide cross section of society and the recent plateauing in national accident statistics indicates that in order to achieve further improvements a new approach may be needed. 

A key development, provisionally announced by the European Union in 2019, would see all new vehicles sold in the UK fitted with speed limiting technology from 2022 onwards. 

Vehicles with this technology would be fitted with cameras capable of recognising road signs allowing the vehicle to limit the speed at which it travels and in doing so conform to the speed limit. 

However, early indications suggest that either an override system could be installed to allow a driver to increase speed over the limit or that the vehicle may only warn drivers of an exceedance as opposed to an actual limiting of speed. This will be decided by UK government.

We will monitor the development of this EU ruling and the UK response to this, as there is likely to be a requirement on our part to ensure all speed limit signage is legible and compliant in order for vehicles with speed limit recognition technology to operate correctly on the borough's roads. 

Were a new law to come into force and automatic speed limiters become legally required on all vehicles in future the rate at which such cars replace those without the technology will need to be monitored. Should a point be reached where a significant proportion of vehicles were fitted with speed limiting technology consideration would need to be given as to whether engineering measures such as traffic calming, aimed at restricting the opportunity for drivers to choose to exceed the speed limit, continued to be necessary. 

The cost of removing this infrastructure is likely to be significant and take a number of years. However, this is likely to be beyond the timescale of this Plan and will require further review. 

Connected and autonomous vehicles 

The emergence of driverless vehicle technology in the UK is gathering pace and the government announced in February 2019 that the UK is on track to meet its commitment to have full self-driving vehicles on UK roads by 2021. 

One of the key advantages of autonomous vehicles is believed to be the improvements in road safety they will deliver. 94% of road deaths and injuries involve human error with driving at an inappropriate speed being a primary factor. The ability of autonomous vehicles to detect the correct speed at which to travel both in relation to the maximum signed speed limit and for the road conditions could see human error by autonomous vehicle drivers as a factor in road traffic collisions removed but only if technology can firstly be proven to be suitably reliable. 

We will continue to monitor such developments and review the need for changes SMP and highway infrastructure accordingly.