What is Intelligent Speed Assistance and is it coming to the UK?

As a car owner, you're probably familiar with the speeding tickets that can rack up. Now, the UK is getting a new technology to help prevent that from happening. Intelligent Speed Assistant (ISA) is a new feature that will warn drivers when they're going too fast and suggest a speed limit that would be more appropriate. Could this be the solution to keeping roads safer? Read on to find out more about ISA and what it could mean for UK's drivers.

For decades, speed has been recognised as one of the three main contributing factors to deaths on our road resulting in the European Parliament making a decison on the 27th November 2019 that going to impact the safety of all cars sold in Europe with effect from 1 July 2022.

This means that with from that date all new cars sold in Europe will find that Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) will be mandatory option. To allow manufacturers to time to implement ISA it means that the rules on apply to new models and not existing models until July 2024.

The UK Government has said that we are not considering implementing Intelligent Speed Assistance at this time.

What is intelligent speed assistance?

An Intelligent Speed Assistance system uses a forward-facing camera mounted on the car and the vehicle’s satellite navigation system to identify the speed limit and, if the car is exceeding it, to restrict the fuel flowing to the engine until the vehicle is at the limit speed.

ISA uses various different inputs from outside a vehicle to determine the current speed limit for the road you are driving on at the time.

According to the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) systems that restrict speed like this could reduce road deaths by 20%.

What do drivers feel about intelligent speed assistance?

Eleven EU member states have trialled ISA and whilst drivers take a short time to adjust to the technology most appear to like it. From a motorist viewpont the obvious benefit is that it helps drivers avoid speeding tickets