As US cities and states grapple with surging traffic deaths and underperforming Vision Zero programs, their leaders face a challenge. Although they can take steps like implementing road diets or (if they’re fortunate) installing automatic safety cameras, there is one risk factor that lies beyond their reach: car design.
Ever since the establishment of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards in 1967, the federal government alone has wielded the power to regulate how cars and trucks are built. Your local and state leaders might want to require safety features like hoods that can cushion a pedestrian in a crash or automatic emergency braking systems that can prevent collisions entirely. If so, too bad — the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) doesn’t mandate either feature on new cars, and its word is the law.
But an intriguing move in New York City suggests a possible workaround: Even if cities and states can’t regulate motor vehicle design, they still wield power over their own sizable fleets.
Last week, New York City Mayor Eric Adams unveiled a pilot program that involves installing “intelligent speed assistance,” a flexible kind of speed governor that prevents a driver from exceeding the speed limit on a given street or highway, on 50 city-owned cars. The first program of its kind in the US, it represents a refreshingly proactive approach toward improving vehicle safety.More fromBloombergCitylab
As I recently wrote in CityLab, intelligent speed assistance (ISA) uses geolocation to adjust the allowable speed as the posted speed limit changes during a journey. If a driver hits the maximum threshold, the ISA system applies resistance to the accelerator and makes it more difficult (if not impossible) to go faster.
With more than 10,000 speed-related deaths in the US every year, ISA’s potential safety benefits are enormous. The European Union will begin mandating the features in all new vehicles in 2024. But to date, the NHTSA has shown little enthusiasm for requiring US automakers to follow suit. The idea of limiting top speeds has been unpopular with carmakers, and most US vehicles are equipped with governors set at sky-high levels: Many models are capped at 155 mph, and even safety-conscious Volvo lets its cars reach 112 mph.
Although few US-market vehicles are factory-equipped with ISA, it’s possible to add it later. MAGTEC, a company based in Canada, offers ISA retrofits to customers managing fleets of trucks, delivery vans and school buses. Facing liability risk from crashes, fleet owners are often more receptive to speed limiters than professional drivers, who may resent constraints placed on how they operate vehicles. “It’s a no-brainer,” MAGTEC vice president Mitch Morisset said. “It makes sense for every fleet to adopt, when you’ve got someone else driving your vehicle.”
Morisset said that his company initially focused on commercial trucks, only later expanding to other models: “After a horrific 2016 school bus crash in Chattanooga, with six children killed, we realized there were definitely other industries that could use this.” Although MAGTEC has worked with a variety of private-sector clients, Morisset said that the new New York City pilot marks his company’s first foray into city fleets.
According to a New York City spokesperson, the MAGTEC’s technology used in the city’s program costs $1,500 per vehicle to install. Announcing the pilot last week, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said that the city will install ISA on 50 vehicles, including sedans, SUVs, pickups, vans and trucks (emergency response vehicles are not involved). He presented the move as part of the city’s efforts to reduce road deaths, which declined 7% in the first six months of 2022 but remained 29% higher than in 2018.
“Even as the speed limit changes from highway to the streets, we are going to ensure that the vehicle stays within the speed limits,” Adams said at the Aug. 11 announcement.
A handful of vehicles driving at the speed limit can force those behind them to follow suit, amplifying safety benefits. “It’s the power of numbers,” said Meera Joshi, New York City’s deputy mayor for operations. “Depending on how prevalent they are, the vehicles with ISAs set the tone of the road. You can’t do anything but follow the speed they’re going.”
The city is partnering with the US Department of Transportation’s Volpe Center, a national research organization, to evaluate the six-month pilot. The analysis will examine data captured by the vehicles’ telematics system to compare speeding behaviors before and after ISA installation, a city spokesperson said. Across the Atlantic, ISA deployed on London buses in 2015 produced encouraging results: Prior to installation, the buses exceeded posted 20 mph speed limits 15% to 19% of the time; after ISA, that figure fell to 1% to 3%.
With just 50 vehicles involved, the pilot isn’t likely to noticeably calm city streets. Its significance lies in the leverage it could generate if it expands.