Buses on two routes in London will be fitted with new technology later this month that prevents the vehicles from exceeding the speed limit.

 

A device known as Intelligent Speed Adaptation is to be installed on 47 buses that use route 19 from Battersea to Finsbury Park and the 486 from North Greenwich to Bexleyheath. The technology makes use of both GPS to track the location of the bus and a ‘digital speed limit map’ of the capital.

 

If the bus driver attempts to exceed the speed limit the system will automatically slow the vehicle.

 

Transport for London’s managing director of surface transport Leon Daniels said the bus technology could one day be rolled out for use on cars and heavy goods vehicles. “A device that stops you inadvertently breaking the speed limit would be hugely welcomed by me and I think almost all the motorists in London,” he told TP Weekly News.

 

So could inbuilt speed limiters spell the end of safety cameras beside the roadside? “If we roll forward a few years, everything you see on the outside of a vehicle could be on the inside of the vehicle,” he said. “So if universally adopted this starts to spell the end for interventions out on the highway.”

 

Mr Daniels admitted that the prospect of a bus going faster than the speed limit in London is “unusual” due to heavy traffic and frequent stopping. But he added that the technology could prove very useful early in the morning or late at night when traffic is lighter and it is more likely for a driver to inadvertently break the speed limit.

 

(Photo: Transport for London)