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-   -   Onboard Speed Limiter - Why don't cars in India have these? (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-scene/214234-onboard-speed-limiter-why-dont-cars-india-have-these.html)

Hello folks,

I drive a 2017 Ford Fiesta B&O Play Titanium, here in London. 15k-mile review coming up shortly!





From when I started driving cars in the UK, the one feature that I have always ensured the car has is the "Speed Limiter" - a lifesaver, especially when there are (almost) as many speed cameras as street lights! Here in the UK, Cruise Control and Speed Limiter are both offered on higher end variants. Lower end variants come with only Speed Limiters. Here's a quick overview of how these work.

Cruise Control: This is something quite popular in India. Set a particular speed and the car maintains this speed till either the brake/clutch pedals are pressed.

Here's how the display looks like on the Fiesta.



Note: The speed sign recognition is a forward facing camera on the car which reads speed signs that the car passes by. Surprisingly good, I must say! More on this in my full review of the Fiesta.

Speed Limiter: Set a particular speed and the car will NOT exceed this speed. Acceleration is up to the driver, but when the car hits the set (limited) speed, the car will refuse to exceed this speed. There are two options to over-ride.
1. Hit the CANCEL button on the steering wheel
2. Floor the accelerator when the car is at the speed limit. This disengages the speed limiter (useful at times).

Some cars some with an audible beep when the Speed Limiter is ON and the car is going beyond the set speed.

Here's how the display looks on the Fiesta.




How do I use Cruise Control and Speed Limiter?

Cruise Control: Especially when on the Motorway and with light traffic, I engage Cruise Control. However, when the traffic is even moderate, I switch this off (and switch to Speed Limiter). More expensive cars (e.g. the Ford Focus, VW Golf, etc) have Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), which automatically maintains a fixed distance from the car in front. If the car in front brakes, so does your car. If the car in front accelerates, so does your car - but only upto the Cruise Control limit set. Since the Fiesta does NOT have ACC, I tend to switch to Speed Limiter when the traffic on the Motorway is moderate/heavy.

Speed Limiter: I use this VERY EXTENSIVELY whenever I drive. In the city, my mind is now automatically trained to look out for speed signs and set the speed limit. Since the indicated speed is always a mile or two HIGHER than the actual speed, I normally set the speed limiter/cruise control to a mile or two higher than the speed limit on the road.

On the motorway, if the traffic is moderate/heavy, I simply switch to Speed Limiter. Once I set the desired speed limit, I do not have to worry about exceeding the speed limit (which is very easy in most cars today!). And since I never exceed the speed limit, I do not have to even bother to look out for speed cameras. Most importantly, I am a strong believer that speed limits are set for a reason. So, it is always safe to adhere to the limits.


Having used the Speed Limiter so extensively, I started wondering why this feature is not very popular in India. I have owned many cars in India (most recently a VW Polo, years ago) and have been following recent launches in the Indian market. However, I have not come across any of the cars offering a Speed Limiter (unless I have missed this).

From my perspective, in a country such as India where on most highways Cruise Control is something that cannot be used for long stretches, Speed Limiters are super useful.

Thought I'd bounce this off the fine folks on this forum! What do you think?

Cheers,
Praveen

One quick thought - if cars start picking up speed limit from the sign boards in our roads, we would end up going really slow in some roads. For instance, the 4 lane bypass road in Trivandrum has speed limit set as 50kmph in some places but this is not a practical limit in those stretches. Almost all cars go well above this speed there. Then there are speed limit signs that read 30kmph - it would create a traffic jam in some roads if cars auto-limit their speeds to this!

Our roads need to have revised speed limits which are practical enough, and then I wouldn't mind using this feature. BTW, I am an avid user of cruise control.

Thanks for this post Morris! I came to know about speed limiter only because of this post. Its true that speed limiter is not mentioned in recent Indian car launches, hence can say that its not being offered currently in Indian cars - unless there is a miss.

Speed limiter is a very good option for conscious Indian drivers but given that most of the drivers do not follow the basic etiquette of driving, we can expect it not being used by normal people unless there are strict rules enforced (like in USA or UK) to follow speed limits on highway or city.

Note: When I was in USA, my Subaru Forester, 2016 model had adaptive cruise control. I see this as a standard feature for some 2019/2020 model cars in USA (ex: Toyota Corolla). These were not that expensive but very mass market cars - especially Toyota Corolla.

Signages are rare and those too are sometimes without logic.

For example a 20 kmph signage in the middle of a 6-lane highway. Its probably intended for the service lane, but stands visible to the main highway. So using image processing in cases like this is recipe for disaster, there are few more 30 and 40 kph speed limit boards elsewhere on NH4, which beat logic.

Collective wisdom from a forum thread for Madras-Hyderabad suggests speed check for 80 after Tanguturu toll plaza and few places on NAM expressway. However you'll hardly find a signage that warns you of this.

Waze had a feature that informs of speed limit for years. Its probably still there, but Waze is so buggy with Android Auto it keeps crashing all the time. Besides Waze routing is awful. Google had acquired them a while back and yet to integrate them into GMaps.

This might be the quickest way we might get speed limit indication in India (i.e through crowd sourcing). This may in turn used in car hardware of the future. For now implementing this in India might only be a gimmick.

Folks, thanks for your replies!

I MUST CLARIFY something, which was probably not clear in my original post.

The Speed Sign Recognition is NOT connected to the Speed Limiter in any way. Majority of cars do not have the Speed Sign Recognition camera on them. In cars that do have this gadget, it is only an indication to the driver of the current speed limit. It is completely up to the driver to maintain speeds.

The Speed Limiter is something that is set/adjusted/reset manually by the driver of the vehicle. So, for example, while the speed sign recognition camera might indicate 30mph, there is nothing stopping the driver from setting the Speed Limiter to 50!

I used to drive a Nissan Micra sometime ago here in London. That certainly did NOT have the speed sign recognition camera on it. The driver was the speed sign recognition device :) However, the car did come with both Cruise Control and Speed Limiter, which I used extensively (particularly the Speed Limiter).

This thing can be a huge USP in places like Delhi where speed cams are in plenty and fines are steep. Off late, I have been driving a lot with cruise control, set at 50 or 60 or whatever the speed limit is. It is a fact that many limits posted are absurdly low, but one has to comply or pay up. Cruise helps ensure compliance, else you’ll never consciously drive at a lowly 50kmph on a 6 lane road. A basic speed limiter should be available on all new cars for use when needed.

My Duster AWD has both the Cruise Control and Speed Limiter option. While I know Bhpian jkds religiously uses the function in his Duster AWD, I kindoff am not comfortable with it because sometimes I am overtaking and it cutoffs the acceleration midway. Specially in situations where speed limits vary within short distances.

All Honda cars based on the Brio platform - Brio, Amaze, Mobilio, BR-V have a speed limiter at 140 kmph. Engine cuts off automatically at this point. But not manually adjustable I think.

Ford EcoSport has both Cruise Control and Speed Limiter in the top variants.

I use cruise control extensively in my AT, but speed limiter is rarely used. If there was a way to use both together, that would have been ideal.

This is my pet peeve too. There is this bypass flyover that I take everyday that has a speed limit of 50kmph. The old road over which this has been built also had the same limit. My guess is the traffic department got lazy and didn't really conduct a survey to set a new limit and used the old one. No one drives at 50 on that road and actual speed is closer to 80.

Delhi has numerous such roads where the limits are ridiculous.

The drivers in the first world- especially where speed limits are strictly enforced by cameras have to be vigilant and it is difficult to contain speed in a 200 BHP hatchback. So, speed limiters are useful.

I think they won't be useful in India as:
1. Most people (not BHPians, but the avg layman) doesn't drive under the limit as they are following the limit. They drive under the limit to get good FE and avoid fines. (Similar to seat-belt and helmet use)
2. Those who want to fly low will do so at whatever risk to themselves and others. They have no regards for the law whatsoever.
3. There are very few who'll occasionally let loose on open stretches, but drive in a controlled manner for the most part.
4. Indian mass-market cars aren't very powerful

Our government has solution instead of a limiter. Read more here: https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/road-...er-speeds.html

(could not resist after spending 2 hours on the road for a 10km drive yesterday). I live in Bangalore. We don't get to follow speed limits - we are limited way earlier by the bumper of the car in front.

The Ford Figo Aspire also has/had a speed limiter option in the Titanium Plus variant. They advertised it as feature to limit the speed when giving the car to a driver/kids. Think it was called Ford MyKey. The EcoSport and the Endeavour should also be having it.

That's a factory-set high speed limit/engine rev limiter. Most cars have that. The Vista is set at 165 kmph.

What's being discussed is driver adjustable speed limiter which helps you stay within the designated speed to avoid getting stopped and fined by cops.

I think even SS Traveller's Ciaz has the speed limiter option. Speed limiter is more common than we think especially in newer vehicles. So this tech already exists in India.