Moore's Law, the more transistors, the more Gates
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Ford will integrate speed limiting My Key technology in 2012 Ford Fiesta
US CAR GIANT Ford is set to bring its My Key technology to the UK, much to the chagrin of would-be boy and girl racers.
My Key is designed to make Ford vehicles safer to drive and aims to help reduce the number of fatal accidents involving under 25 year old drivers.
The technology aims to offer parents peace of mind, as it allow parents to control settings via a master key, explained Pim Van der Jagt, managing director of the Ford research centre at Aachen.
He told attendees at IFA that excessive speed causes 30 per cent of all accidents involving young male drivers and 21 per cent of those involving young female drivers.
"MyKey has a number of features to help The top speed can be limited, depending on the settings, warnings will sound at 70, 90 or 100 kph. Driving aids such as park assist, lane departure warning, emergency assistance cannot be deactivated," he said.
"My Key also encourages sealtbelt use by activating a reminder chime and muting the audio until front passengers comply."
Parents will be relieved to hear that they will no longer have to experience a late-night call from stranded teenagers, as the feature also provide early low-fuel warnings. Drivers are warned when they have 120Km of fuel left.
However, teenagers who love their music loud might be disappointed to learn that parents will also be able to limit the volume of the audio system to minimise distractions.
Ford plans make My Key available to European drivers when it releases the Ford Fiesta in 2012, and it aims to make the feature standard. However, all is not lost, as 53 per cent of parents surveyed by Ford said that they would give their teenagers more access to the family vehicle if these settings were present.
No doubt, not many budding Michael (and Michaelline) Schumachers will be asking their parents to buy a 2012 Ford Fiesta. µ
Tags: Hardware
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Instead of putting cars with more than 100hp and software-limited restrictions in the hands of inexperienced and hormonally-challenged youngsters, how about we just legally limit the cars a person under a certain age (18, 20, 25, don't care) to 60hp and be done with it ?
If the car itself can't get above 80kph, then there will be no need to use stupid limiters that can be easily overturned.
Of course, said cars can still be hardware-modified, but then the police can confiscate the car when the youngster gets caught doing 90 in a car that can't go over 80.
All i can say is that auto drive hover cars are the way forward!
You're not quite right.
Google are making a stupidity proof car. Well stupidity of the 'driver' is removed from a human to a bunch of human programmers.
Maybe this will be the next generation of My Key? The parents will lend you their new car, but only in self drive mode.
Its just a marketing ploy. limits it to 80 - wow so they can still speed on every road in the UK. Its more of a government issue than a manufacturer one.
A more effective method would be to remove the things that make them crash ie speed, loud music, modified cars (including exhausts)and passengers. Although stupidity sadly cant be removed the sensible people of this age group still need to get around.
Potential rules could easily be made like limiting them to an unmodified 1.2 car for at least 2 years. Not being able to drive at night, not being able to carry passengers at night. Not being allowed on Motorways for a year. Loads of things you could do which would end up benefiting everyone (including the younger people) with lower premiums and fewer accidents.
Am I being too harsh?
This would probably only be effective if the kids are borrowing the parents car, or if said parents are loaded and can buy their kids a brand new car (or in some cases where the kids are old enough to get credit and buy a car themselves, in which case they may opt for an alternative anyway).
Most 17/18 year olds I know (and have known) buying their first car (either paying for it themselves or with the help of parents/grandparents etc) couldn't afford a brand new car so it'll probably take a few years until this sort of thing is in cars cheap enough for first time car owners.
In my case my first car was about 16 years old, my second car was about 10 years old, neither had air bags or anything like that and were fast enough to break speed limits (eventually anyway) on most roads.
The only way I can see this working is if the technology was cheap enough as an after market device, and even then I don't like the idea of the speed limiting kicking in as Keith mentioned, and even if the car was limited to 70mph on UK roads, it would still be possible to have a fatal accident (as proven locally to where I live a few years ago, a girl was speeding, lost control of her car on a residential road and wedged her car between a tree and wall, sadly she didn't make it out in time and was killed by the fireball the car was engulfed in).
If anything I think maybe they should incorporate more safety features from track day cars (fire extingishers, fuel cut off etc, heck maybe even a roll cage!).
Rob
Obviously the ford executives have never driven on a uk rural road or even a dual carriageway for that matter or else they would of realised how dangerous a speed limiting system can be.
I hope for any owners sake that the system will have a temporary override.
Example - New driver.
You are traveling on a back road at a safe and legal pace when you catch up to a slower vehicle.
You wait patiently for a safe point to pass as per driving instruction.
You make your move to overtake but just as you get along side you hit the speed limiter which limits your relative speed to the vehicle you are passing.
You then panic as what should of been an easy pass has left you slowly creeping past and in the opposing lane with either oncoming traffic or a corner approaching.
We see this everyday on dual carriageways when a lorry overtakes another lorry, they are both limited to the same speed so can spend minutes / miles attempting the overtake.
Overtaking safely requires a large relative speed, the bigger the speed difference the quicker/shorter the overtake and the less time spent in oncoming traffic.
While they and every other car manufacturer are at it can they make it so car doesn't work at all if they add stupid loud after market exhausts!
Would be great,Save me slashing their tyres and save them having to take car down for sound test every month costing them money, win win for all. :)
One cannot help but wonder that if a driver of a vehicle cannot be trusted to drive sensibly, then perhaps they should not be behind the wheel in the first place. A 16 year old is not a fully mature adult, and never will be, no matter how much technology you use to try and make them into one. Teenagers should not be driving cars in the first place, as is proven by the accident rate.
There are far better cars then Ford, so who cares.
Any kid interested in cars will be up for "chipping" their parents cars to defeat this mechanism. And the nerds at college will no doubt oblige with replacement keys and computer programs to modify the ECU.