Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-06-17-Speech-2-453"
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"en.20080617.42.2-453"2
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"Mr President, congratulations to the rapporteur on his excellent report. As already mentioned, many thousands of pedestrians and cyclists are killed or injured every year on the roads of the EU. Our aim as MEPs is to help reduce these numbers as much as possible.
One way of trying to do so is to alter the technical specifications of motor vehicles. Some of these – for example, frontal protection and brake assist systems – have been considered in this report, but one of the most important of all life-saving vehicle specifications is not given attention: this is a speed limiter. Such a system would limit the maximum speed of a car to the maximum permissible speed in any given country. This limit, in most EU Member States, is 100 km/h on the motorway, and 50 km/h in built-up areas.
Through relatively simple and cheap electronic gadgetry, it would be a straightforward matter to fit vehicles with a device which would ensure that these limits are not exceeded on the motorway or in town. Such speed limitation would probably prevent a third of all deaths of pedestrians and cyclists. Such a speed limiter could also be adjusted to control the rate of acceleration of vehicles, and this would save even more lives.
We must ask ourselves how necessary and wise it is for our vehicles to be able to accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h in five or six seconds, and how important and legal it is for our vehicles to be capable of doing more than 200 km/h, if the relevant speed limit is only 100 km/h?
I can understand how a rapporteur with the name ‘Ferrari’ would find it difficult to agree with me on car speed reductions, but the real truth is that speed kills road users in excessive numbers, and at some point we, as law-makers, will have to make up our minds on the following. What is most important: fancy fast cars and speed-enthused drivers, or saving thousands of human lives?"@en1
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