Motoring corner : “Speed Governors”

The “Speed Governor” is a device that has been devised to regulate the speeding or rather “over speeding” of motor vehicles. One may wonder, isn’t the best way to eliminate speeding, just stop making vehicles that can move over 80kph in the first place? If you want to eliminate traffic fatalities, or at least reduce them, one good way would be to pass laws that state that no company shall be able to build a vehicle in the first place that goes over 80kph and the long and tedious debate would be concluded just like that! As the English saying goes, “if wishes were horses, beggars would ride”, since that is not the case, then beggars cannot ride and so, the motor vehicles are being “churned” out of their factories with all sorts of speed rates. More probably it is the speed that makes the vehicles sell. That said and done, the above would not stop a Taxi driver speeding past a Zebra crossing at 80kph rather than a safe 30kph. This calls for the need for traffic cops for that. In fact, you’d have to make exceptions to the rule, for emergency vehicles of all kinds. But for ordinary vehicles, you’re out of luck. On the other hand, going by the amount of money the Traffic Police generate in form of speed tickets (most probably the biggest fineable offense) all the money that various jurisdictions would lose, not being able to write traffic tickets for speeding, I doubt if the vehicles would be mandatorily manufactured with such low maximum speeds. I don’t know where you’re from, but the speed limit on the highways, the speed limit is 80kph (maximum), though you could even get booked for driving above 40kph. Of recent, many speed limit zones have been created with a speed limit of 40kph. In spite of the speed limits, one could drive in excess of 5-10kph (above normal) without easily getting caught. Now that we mention it, it IS pretty strange to have cars, Buses or even Lorries, with spedometers marked up to 180 kph. Is it because people are less likely to buy a vehicle with a lower maximum speed? If we default everything to stay below 75kph, that would solve a lot of problems. The only objection I can think of is needing to speed in an emergency or to get away from danger, but really is an extra 40 km per hour going to do anything for a person but strain their reaction time? Perhaps the road deaths that would be eliminated are those of careless drivers that drive too slowly in the fast lane causing traffic behind them to slow at an uncontrollable rate. With them off the road, traffic could flow more smoothly. The speed governor is part of the vehicle’s electronic system embedded program. When it senses that the vehicle speed is close to the rating of the stock tires, it shuts down the injector pulses and ignition then will return it when the vehicle is at a safe speed again. You can buy a certain vehicle at its base model with the base tires on it and it would cut off at say 80kph. But by that same vehicle with an upgraded package that includes tires with a higher speed rating and they will move it up to say 120kph. Most aftermarket programs for ECMs eliminate it all together. But car manufacturers do it so you don’t exceed the speed ratings of the tires that they put on from the factory. Likewise, you can have a speed governor fitted on your vehicle, it controls the seed of the vehicle in that, once the vehicle reaches the maximum speed allowed, it kills the accelerator such that, you cannot push the vehicle’s speed any higher. Many trucks and passenger vehicles are mandated to have speed governors installed or risk being deregistered. motoringcorner@live.co.uk

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Motoring corner : “Speed Governors”