Collision Repair sector Intelligent Speed Assistance: a journey to safer roads

In July 2024 every new vehicle sold in the European Union must have a built-in anti-speeding system, this is also known as Intelligent Speed Assistance or ISA. This technology is another safety feature that is controlled by Artificial Intelligence (AI) which is now ingrained in our modern vehicles across all price points and from all manufactures who sell cars in New Zealand. As countries look to reduce road fatalities, ISA may become mandatory across more regions. The potential positive impact on road safety is significant. The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) calculates that a 1km/h reduction in speed would save 2,100 lives per year across Europe and that effective ISA alone would reduce casualties by 20 percent. But, as with all safety measures, there are additional implications that all drivers and businesses need to be aware of to maximise the safety opportunity and avoid creating other potential hazards. (As posted by Drivetech 15/08/22.) So, what is ISA and will it become mandatory in New Zealand? ISA describes a range of safety features that can detect, read, and adjust the vehicles’ speed limits. This system works via front-mounted cameras, GPS or both. Depending on the ISA and how it’s set up, the technology can provide audio reminder feedback about the speed limit, automatically adjust cruise control, even automatically reduce power to the motor to slow speeding vehicles to match the road’s speed limit. ISA can be traced back to France in the early 1980s but at that time it was a system that

Larry.fallowfield@mta.org.nz

was manually set by the driver. You may remember this as the beeping or ‘bing bing’ sound that you heard when you exceeded the speed limit; it was introduced to vehicles in New Zealand as far back as the early 2000s. With the introduction of AI into vehicle safety systems and road signage, this technology has rapidly advanced into what we have today. Some front-facing cameras can read an AI road sign and automatically reduce your speed, when combined with GPS-tracked speed limits, this dramatically increases the accuracy of ISA.

We currently already have AI technology signs and as Government departments or policies are introduced, we could see a rapid increase in the roll-out of more signs to accommodate this fast-moving safety change.

The introduction of ISA could bring about significant benefits in road safety, but there is still more advancement work to be done, not only with ISA technology but also with signage, accurate GPS road speed limits and vehicle data updates. The real effectiveness of ISA heavily relies on accurate and up-to-date speed limit data, which may not always be available, especially in New Zealand's rural areas.

If we are to see mandatory ISA here, there will need to be significant changes in roading infrastructure, signage, vehicle age, driver ability and vehicle technology.

If you have driven New Zealand roads recently, you would have seen the challenges in keeping our infrastructure maintained. If you add in the future challenges that the modern vehicle creates through safety features like lane assist, where the width and/or size of lines, along with having clear white shoulder lines, could affect the performance of lane assist, having road signage at regular intervals or having up-to-date roading data, then there is a lot of work required to keep our roading up to international safety standards.

I was talking to a colleague recently about wet weather driving and how bad we are in Auckland; he said he struggled to see the white lines in the rain, something he never experienced back in Ireland. So maybe not all Auckland or Kiwi drivers are