Lude Generation

http://news.sky.com/story/1135815/eu-ma ... to-uk-cars

F1 and British Touring Car Championship should be fun

Shocking. Why won't they leave motorists alone?

First it's regulating the bends in bananas, and 20 years later the EU is interfering with the very way we drive cars...

Whatever next?

I don't like bringing politics into car forums but this is a step too far, and yet another reason why we need to leave the European Union. Nearly three quarters of all laws in this country are simply EU law which our parliament rubber-stamps.

Before 1997, if a party made a law you didn't like, you could vote them out. Now you can't because it is the unelected European Commission coming up with it - and it basically tells Westminster to make it happen, with the threat of massive fines if we don't.

We must leave, to get our freedom back!

I agree, this is a sh!t idea.

..bright side tho, our 'Ludes won't be retro fitted with these limiters so we will be faster than every new supercar sold in the UK

Absolute bollox, someone in the EU has been smoking crack. It wont happen as it is near impossible to do. The cost of it would be stupid.

Sadly - if you read the proposals, they WILL be retro fitted with them...

It would become an MOT requirement, no doubt, to have a working speed limiter fitted...

And the speed limiter will doubtless be rebranded "active safety management system", or suchlike...

Big Brother is here.

Notice how the British minister says something like "we will resist that", rather than "we won't do it" - this sums up how powerless we are now...

The only hope is the car manufacturing lobby in Germany. It's very powerful and if they tell Merkel to stop it, then Merkel will have to tell the EU to "eff off". The EU doesn't listen to Britain, but has to listen to Germany, as they're bankrolling it...

come on guys read between the lines will ya?

this is an obvious smoke screen for the real law they are passing right now, this week. Something you would get all steamed up about if this ridiculous story wasn't dangled infront of us to get annoyed about instead. I dont know what it is but it will be far reaching and under the radar.

There is no way this can or will be implemented this side of 20/40 years but its doing a grand old job of pulling attention away from what ever it is they dont want you looking at. Imagine trying to make regulated universal 'kits' for every car made in the last 5 years let alone all the 18 year old cars on the road. laughable.

This might come into city centers and specific types of city vehicle some time but not until we are all travelling in personal maglev pods will they have the ability to control this kind of thing.

imho when stuff like this hits the news stands there is something more insidious going on in the background.

I could see them coming to new cars, but retro fitting? Never! I know the article says that's what they want, but it'll never happen.

Imagine, driving down the motorway and the speed limiter that has been retro fitted to a 20yr old car malfunctions, slams on your brakes and causes a multi car pile up.. or it malfunctions by not working, everyone around you automatically slows to 50mph for roadworks, your car doesn't, multi car pile up..

Stupid idea.

There's not a September Fool's Day as well now is there?

I am not quite sure why you think "they would never do this because it's stupid".

Haven't you noticed what has happened to the European economy since the introduction of the Euro...?

30% unemployment in Spain, Greece and Portugal - millions of people on the scrapheap, some folk nearly starving.

Try telling that to them!

I wouldn't expect this to happen, but who knows...

I don't believe that the EC could mandate this for UK motoring law (an area of UK laws that are not actually in any way European 'driven', no pun intended) but I would think that they could quite easily make it part of the standard comformance requirements for newly manufactured cars (which is very sensibly an EC driven thing). That would mean new cars sold in the UK would be sold with it in place. Even then though, unless the UK government legislated that the system had to be working and included the offence for not maintaining it as operational, it doesn't mean the thing would actually have to 'work' within the UK.

I also wouldn't interpret the UK ministers response as proving that the UK is powerless in having to implement it, I'd more interpret it as being "yep, this fits with all the advice we have that it will reduce deaths/accidents, but we've always known it'll be so unpopular it isn't worth taking on the british public yet. This way though, I can stand back and blame the whole thing on those nasty Europeans, meaning it quietly slips in with no damage to my reputation whilst at the same time feeding another personal agenda that's deep routed in my party... Excellent! "