CHRIS HARRIS

How fast is too fast? And how slow is too slow? Chris unravels the compulsory speed limiter debate

The speed limiter debate puts anyone who loves driving

in a difficult position. If you stick your head above the parapet and suggest you think the European authorities have made a terrible decision, you find yourself in a tricky place: justifying lawless activity. I find that problematic, as I am a law-abiding citizen.

So perhaps the speed limiter debate – whether cars should have them fitted or not – is actually the wrong conversation. If speed limits were more reasonable in appropriate locations, then people wouldn’t feel so aggrieved.

Is there any law more regularly flouted than the UK motorway speed limit? No. A good percentage of British citizens criminalise themselves daily, to the extent that you have to question the veracity of the law. If enough people ignore it – as they clearly do – then who does it serve? And to be absolutely clear, I wholly support 20mph limits in towns and variable limits during peak hours, but how anyone can argue that 90mph in a brand-new Audi A4 is unsafe at 9pm on the M4 is beyond me. These speed limits were set for the dynamic standards of the Ford Anglia.

The speed limit is just one of many political tools being used to try to kill the motorcar, so they will probably be reduced, not raised. Emissions are often cited as a reason for reducing limits, but that won’t be relevant come the electric revolution, so that argument will just quietly disappear. And this latest move, should it actually be introduced, could be the thing that kills the European car industry as we know it.

I’ll tell you why. Carmakers are already bleeding from a vast technology shift away from diesel, poor Chinese sales and the cost of moving to the electric future they’ve been told is inevitable. Germany is the powerhouse of car production on this continent, and its profits come from making desirable, fast cars. Someone with a 2019 320d which can be driven freely isn’t going to swap it for one that can only do 70mph in 2023. New car sales will collapse. Sales of high-margin sports car brands will effectively end in Europe, and Germany will be staring at a massive problem.

Which is just one of many reasons that make me wonder if this will happen. Germany bankrolls Europe, so why would it support legislation that will leave it financially weakened? Then there’s the potential for litigation. You don’t need to imagine a scenario where a car is overtaking and crosses into a lower speed limit zone, has its speed reduced (even if drivers will be able to override the system by flooring it) making it unable to complete the move and has a head-on, because it will happen. Hardware and software errors will happen too. And the US military may decide that the global GPS network, which it effectively controls, needs scrambling to unseat a nasty despot. That could be messy. So rather than reducing road deaths, as its conceivers claim, it may just produce new brands of accident.

But it is difficult to present any of this as a cogent argument, because in rubbishing mandatory speed limiters, you just stand accused of being some speed-renegadelunatic, bent on killing people with your motorcar. A modern day Toad of Toad Hall.

“THE SPEED LIMIT IS ONE OF MANY TOOLS BEING USED TO TRY TO KILL THE CAR”