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Fog light speed limiter

 Thinly disguised rant ... or aide memoire.
  (+9, -3)
(+9, -3) 		  [vote for,
against]

Simple idea - wire the fog-light switch (both front and rear) in cars to an automatic speed-limiter, so that the car cannot go faster than, say 40mph (65kph).
You're driving in fog - you shouldn't be going faster.

What do you mean, it is twilight / drizzling and you need to put your fog-lights on?

Thinking about it (though not very hard), how about the same scheme for parking lights, to prevent morons driving on unlit roads with the candle power of an anaemic firefly?


<marked-for-deletion> rant. [-]
—coprocephalous, Feb 12 2008

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       Yes, yes, yes!   

       No. It would become cruise control for the 'A' road country crawler. A bit too fast, however: could you make it 35mph?   

       [marked-for-delectation]
—Ling, Feb 12 2008
   

       Speed limiter [-]. Under any conditions except tyranny they can and will be removed/disabled.
—Ned_Ludd, Feb 12 2008
   

       Damned relativity strikes again. That's why they are so slow!
—Ling, Feb 12 2008
   

       Counter-productive. A driver in a hurry will be tempted to refrain from fog-lamp use so as to allow higher speeds.
—angel, Feb 12 2008
   

       [angel] Over time, Mr Darwin will take care of them.
—coprocephalous, Feb 12 2008
   

       Perhaps, but they take a lot of other people with them. [+]
—baconbrain, Feb 12 2008
   

       I simply cannot fathom how people can get into trouble driving in heavy rain or fog. There's a very simple rule to follow - Always make sure you can see further than you stopping distance. Ie at 100km/hr my stopping distance might be as much as 150m with wet roads, heavy load, etc. So I make sure I can see for at least 200m - in heavy rain, etc. If not, I slow down until I'm safe. Under what perverse circumstances would you not do the same?   

       Same goes for following traffic - No matter what the dude in front of me does, I make sure I can stop before hitting him.   

       You see footage on TV/movies etc all the time where someone is stopped in the road, or driving slow in fog, etc and some bastard plows right into them. I just don't understand how this can happen.
—Custardguts, Feb 13 2008
   

       Nice idea, but let's smart it up a bit, with some radar to measure fog density and an algorythm to set the appropriate speed limit.
—BunsenHoneydew, Feb 29 2008
   

       //with some radar to measure fog density //
Can radar see fog?
I didn't know that.
—coprocephalous, Feb 29 2008
   

       I'm not sure exactly how it's done, but the shiping forecast uses automatic visibility detectors on bouys and so forth.   

       M25 Northerly 6 increasing 7 later, rain at times, good
—MadnessInMyMethod, Feb 29 2008
   


 

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