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-   -   All Volvo cars now come with a 180 km/h speed limiter (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/road-safety/222653-all-volvo-cars-now-come-180-km-h-speed-limiter.html)

All new Volvo cars will now have their top speed electronically limited to 180 km/h.



Additionally, all cars will have a 'Care Key', which will allow drivers to set additional limitations on the car's top speed. It can be used to limit the car's top speed before lending it to other family members or inexperienced drivers.

According to Volvo, above certain speeds, in-car safety technology and infrastructure design are no longer enough to avoid severe injuries and fatalities in case of an accident. Therefore, speed remains the most common cause of traffic fatalities in most western countries.

It was found that people tend to drive too fast and cannot adapt their speed to the traffic situation. In addition to speeding, intoxication and distraction are said to be the other main causes of traffic related injuries and fatalities.

Link to Team-BHP News

Good move from the safety perspective, in a world of bragging rights. It's a step in the right direction. That said, 180 kmph is also a dangerously high speed. If the intent is to save lives, this will have to come down with time & other manufacturers will have to join the party (Volvo won't be the only one with a showroom disadvantage). Other than excited teenagers, I think only those who take their car on the race track will be inconvenienced. But then, race track guys will know how to remove the speed limiter in the after-market.

While this will affect Volvos, what is restricting the speed of all cars is strict speed limit enforcement. You see a lot less maniacs on the Mumbai-Pune expressway now due to cops, and almost zero overspeeding on the Mumbai Sealink or JJ Flyover.

Love the idea of the care key. If my 20-year old son / daughter were to take the car out, I'd give it to them and impose a speed limit of 80 kmph. Of course, this isn't a new idea and other brands have offered it before.

Brave of Volvo to do this first :thumbs up

It is indeed a welcome move by Volvo and all the brands should follow it. But enthusiasts will tend to disagree. There are hardly any places in the world where speeds higher than 180km/hr are legal.

In India with the government legal top speed as 120 kmph, Volvo buyers shouldn't complain. I think setting it to 180 kmph is a good trade-off by Volvo.

Definitely. Hats off to Volvo for the bold step, especially when we know that a lot of these cars actually sell because people want to 'keep their options open' about hitting high speeds.

But what about 160 kmph? 140? 130? Since the maximum limit in India is 120kmph, theoretically, Volvo (and all others) need to restrict the top speed to 120kmph. Otherwise, it is still a case where laws are broken. But will the public, and many BHPians accept this? I guess we will be in uncharted territory here :D

I'm not really sure if enforcement is strict everywhere. Yes, Mumbai might be, as well as many other places. But what about the other places?

I am also not sure what Volvo hopes to achieve with this step. Will they be admired more now? Or, will people now reject them more? Only time will tell.

Great points. Like you have said, many luxury cars are recreational / weekend use kind of cars, some niche ones are owner-driven and usually the 3rd or 4th car in a family's fleet. I don't agree that they warrant drastic speed limiters; I think 180 is a good middle ground here.

But cars in mainstream/mass market segments especially the smaller, made-for-India pocket rockets could definitely use even 80/100/120 kmph speed limiters, considering their handling characteristics, safety and their drivers' abilities. Mine may be an unpopular opinion but I believe that's a good place to start.

It's a bit like the German gentleman agreement to restrict their performance cars to 155mph.

Couldn't agree more.

But will people stop buying sports cars if government brings a similar speed limit to 180 kmph ? I doubt. There are people who buy Ferraris and lamborghinis and drive in India (In fact here they can reach a higher speed without getting caught than many other countries). So buyers will keep buying. But does it make sense to majority people here is the question ? And I think many would agree.

That is some sound thinking by Volvo. It appears that they have identified this limit by analyzing the structure and safety equipment on their cars. This seems to be a scientific approach and not based on a whim which is commendable.

The govenment should enforce other manufacturers to do the same irrespective of the speed limits in the country. Example - An EECO should get a cutoff at 60 (or 40?) whereas a Nexon deserves a higher cutoff.

Essentially the idea is that the car top speed should be proportional to the safety rating provided by crash agencies. Obviously this is not fool proof but it would at least make sure that faster cars are inherently built stronger and we don't see situations where a relatively unsafe car like Baleno (no offence to owners) goes faster than an Altroz.

I think what we might be forgetting is that in a car-to-car head on crash, even if the faster car (i.e. safer by this logic) crashes into a slower (less safe) car at the speeds allowed for the faster car, the accident speed will only be more than their individual speeds. This renders this "different speed limits for different safety ratings" useless in many scenarios. Rather the government should call for stricter crash worthiness of cars together with higher degree of effectiveness while enforcing speed curbing laws.

Good step by Volvo. Will certainly save a few lives. Besides the stated reasons, I'd say insurance costs, local limits, and limits of tires also played a role. Also agree with the idea of a secondary key to limit speed. :)
I'm a firm believer of the fact that nobody can save people from their own stupidity.

Will I guess 180 km/h is the limit as:
1. For the German autobahns and countries (few parts of the UAE) which have a 160 km/h limit
2. A little bit of track fun

We may (I hope not) see cars sold in a country to be limited to speeds a little more than the highest national limits.

Sorry, I must be the only one here that does not get it. In fact I have no idea on what the good folks at Volvo have been smoking.

Limiting a car speed to 180 km/h is going to reduce the number of fatalities? Are you kidding me? Could somebody please look up how many people lost their life last years in accidents at speeds at over 180 km/h compared to fatalities at speeds below 180 km/h!?

I don’t know what the first number is. But it is absolutely totally minute, both in absolute terms as well as in relative terms to the second number.

It has been a long and well established fact that high speeds, in absolute terms, does not kill. In most if not all western countries the number of fatalities per distance travelled by motor vehicles on motorways and trunk roads was around four times lower than it was on roads with a speed limit of 80 km/h or thereabouts. The fatalities are not on the motorways, they tend to be at different roads at much much lower speeds. In almost all countries.

Sure there must the odd idiot crashing his Porsche doing 250 km/ h. I am sure there are some spectacular Youtube videos about. But they really are the exception. If you want to reduce fatalities why concentrate on the exceptions?

It is not absolute speed that kills. It is driving at an inappropriate speed for a given situation. You dont solve this by limiting the top speed. You solve this by limiting the speed based on things like infrastructure, weather, road conditions, traffic density etc. all those things you expect a normal driver to adapt too. But which we often don’t. What we need is dynamic speed limiting. To ensure in any given situation people cant speed or drive too fast. That takes a bit more then an electronic max speed limiter.

Jeroen

180 km/h is an absurd figure that solves nothing in real world scenario.

The assumption obviously is that it will curb the speed of the driver on highways and motorways. No one is touching 180 on busy city streets. And if they are , then even 120 or 140 is enough to turn their car into a mangled remain on that point A to B inter city sprint.

As such 180 is far to fast for the highways in a country where the maximum allowed speed limit for most motorways is 110 km/h. Extensive highway speed ticketing is a must to stop maniacs on roads. Also, make fines and penalty speed dependent. 10 km over gets you a fine but 60 km over gets you jail time. Exorbitant fine/impound and prison time are the only things that prevent people from pressing on that accelerator. Fine someone 25,000 and take his license for 6 months and he will think twice before going over 80.

Also, unless the system ensures that any one getting a licence is made aware of the dangers of speed and not have your unlicensed neighborhood driving school person or a friend teach your kid how to drive limiters will not help.

Your post reminded me of how all cars in Japan have a 180 kmph speed limiter - link.

Maybe this is a start? To slowly bring it down to 150? Or perhaps, an experiment to see how the market reacts, before pushing it down further?

Car owners shouldn't complain. Reason = it's more fun taking curves at 80 - 120 kmph than straight-line high speed which really has only 1 purpose (i.e. on paper specs).

Well, this is India. Going by the kind of ego most of our drivers (Even the ones driving the likes of say Creta or XUV) carry, I am unsure that how many Volvo car owners would like to be overtaken by a Creta or Seltos or XUV on the expressway; while they are at the top whack of their machine.

180 kph is also high IMO, even 160 is reasonable for India, but here the psychological factor may go against the sales of Volvo here - at least in India!

I recall something similar with Motorcycles.

They agreed at 299 kmph. It all started with Honda with their CBR 1100 XX Blackbird, Suzuki brought out their Hayabusa and Kawasaki followed it up with their ZZR-1400.

Details

You can still watch You-Tube videos where the speedo is stuck at 299kmph and you can watch the tacho move forward :D. Most SuperBikes, HyperBikes redline in 5th at ~285 kmph, so we all know where 6th gear would go.