What happens when everyone drives along the same stretch of road at exactly the same speed? If you’ve driven in Australia – where limits are ruthlessly enforced – you’ll know already. It becomes disorienting because there is very little movement around you relative to your own. It makes changing lanes, entering and, in particular, exiting motorways more difficult because those gaps that are always opening when traffic flows at different speeds are no longer there.
What happens to driving standards if everyone drives at the same speed? They fall off a cliff because doing exactly the same as everyone else, with nothing to draw your attention or focus upon is profoundly boring. On a long journey it is far too easy to switch off because so little is happening around you. It shouldn’t happen, but it does because we are human. The worst driving standards I have ever seen in the developed world are in, you guessed it, Australia and the Australians I know agree.
What happens when the on-board tech disagrees with the posted speed limit? It happens all the time in even the most expensive cars that show what they think to be the prevailing limit. Do you want to be behind the bloke whose car autonomously brakes from 70mph to 30mph because of some software glitch?
What happens when cars using this technology and those that do not are forced to inhabit the same roads? Will some drivers who cannot exceed the speed limit not resent those who can, and is that a healthy attitude to play out over our entire road network?