[4x4addict]

Personally I think this is a good move for Taxi Fleet Owners and for Passengers. Although they may crib, it is actually sensible thing for the Taxi driver as well.

Many of the Taxi's that I have seen are poorly maintained. They tyres are literally down to the steel belt or re-treaded. Besides Taxi's are usually the lower ended variants that have no ABS. Due to huge demand for Taxi drivers in most metro's you find many inexperienced drivers who are overworked and fatigued.

Sometimes, they speed to just get the damn trip done with.

I feel that govt should make take the next step and ensure that the the Taxi variant of any car MUST have ABS.

[Sawyer]

Apologies if this is answered: how has this been done? Is it by restricting RPM such that the road speed in top gear will not exceed 80?

If yes, this makes the car tricky and even dangerous to drive on our roads where there is almost always a need to overtake because we have vehicles driving at a wide range of speeds on them, because it will mean corresponding lower maximum road speeds in each gear and will force more time taken in overtaking; I have been taught a long time ago that overtaking is the most dangerous manoeuvre to do in traffic and one should plan to do it as fast as possible, to stay in the danger zone for as less a time as possible.

Or has this been done in a way that does not constrain the need to do this?

[vb-saan]

Originally Posted by bb8778

The number of accidents will come down only if:
>> People are educated on proper road sense
>> Illuminating all the roads with proper street lighting >> Not to mention the quality of roads that we are plying on daily needs to drastically improve.
Are we not paying road tax for 15 years?

All the points above are valid, but still not a reason for not implementing this 80 kmph rule. I feel it’s a great move and hope they get really strict on this. In fact this should be applicable for buses and trucks as well.

[coolclouds]

Originally Posted by lamborghini

There is no denying taxis are the worst maintained vehicles on the roads - and even if the car is capable, the drivers don't have the experience to drive them at high speeds.
How many of them are running on bald/retreads tyres? How many of them have non functional indicators and lights? How many of them have their seatbelt hidden away from passengers who would like to use them?
Majority of them, judging from what I've seen!
.....
In Mumbai too, when it's pouring and you see these pesky Xcent taxis zipping past on the WEH, 20kmph over the speed limit, swerving in and out of lanes; you really wish they had a speed governer.
Especially when you see the same taxi aquaplaned and smashed on a divider a few KM's later.

Just curious to know what is the benchmark for "Experience"! These call center/Uber/Ola cabs drive 200-300 kms a day which means at least 50,000 kms a year. They are behind wheel at least 10 hours a day.. still we, who spend few minutes/hours a day call them inexperienced to handle cars! We also say that cab drivers have fatigue. You too working for 9-10 hours in a stressed environment before heading home. You too may have lot of things in mind for tomorrow..Are you still feeling fresh?

Regarding all other concerns, this is applicable to private cars too. How many private cars do periodic maintenance? They too run on bald tires, they too don't comes with ABS factory fitted.. they may have lights above permissible limits.. lot of us drive and text.. use cell phone while driving.. the offences are not vehicle specific..

We say that we can control vehicle at triple digit speeds but a taxi can't. This is illogical! There are many experts and novices in both sector. I know few drivers who are good mechanics too.

The move to regulate speed is indeed a good move. How is it going to help by only regulating speed of taxi vehicles? Do we have a data to show that taxi cars driven above 80 cause accidents? Just look in to threads and see the number of zoomcars involved in accidents! It all depends on the person, not on registration plate.

Think of a nano taxi allowed to drive at 80kmph on Bangalore-Chennai 6 lane highway along with a BMW too at same speed! Who think that a Crysta or Ciaz taxi is unsafe above 80kmph in Hyderabad ORR? How can we compare Indica and BMW when it comes to its primary duty of commuting between cities? on a side note, I have seen Maruti 800s struggle and overtake high end cars at 100+ speeds in National Expressway 1!

Somebody here mentioned that he drive fast only when his family is not in car! Does it mean that other cars are driver alone? I also want to drive fast and safe on open roads but why shouldn't a new generation cab with safety features?

I agree that we all feel unsafe to send our dear ones in a cab doing high speeds. Don't we have the option to ask driver to slow down or stop, if we find uncomfortable rather than keeping our fingers crossed? I am not comfortable in any other's cab and I promptly ask them to slow down or stop the moment I feel its unsafe.

From an operator point of view, a taxi cab does some 200 kms a day in city and outer roads. I have the option of tracking a cab's route, speed, fuel consumption etc by installing a simple gps tracker.

The point I am trying to make is,
I am against the view that my car is a private Nano still I should be allowed to do triple digit speeds.

The speed should be regulated, irrespective of private or taxi! Authorities should set different and decent speed limits depending on road and ensure that all vehicles adhere to it. They can use technology/cameras/interceptors etc to ensure that vehicles are monitored. We have laws in place.. but fail to implement it. There is no point in imposing rules only to a category.

Few years back, NH47 had lot of cameras (working) with many of them in signals. Trust me, signal jumping and over speeding was reduced a lot!

If authorities don't have the expertise, give it to some third party vendors.. but ensure that rules are followed.

Originally Posted by sumeethaldankar

Are you sure your quotes are for reference and nothing personal.

We never interacted earlier and nothing personal indeed dear friend. Sorry, if you felt otherwise.

[sumitkalindi]

Just an additional information, as per the govt circular in west bengal, the speed governing device is mandatory to be set at 80 for commercial vehicle carrying 8 passenger +driver, or a vehicle with gvw of 3500 kg and more. While buses, tankers, trailers, and trucks need to set the speed governor at 60.

[abhishek46]

Originally Posted by purohitanuj

Well in case of a generator, the rpm does not change significantly during load. Let me explain:

There can be n number of implementation like current/voltage control.

Hope this clears the initial argument.

You answer has satisfied me. Thanks! I appreciate your deep knowledge and explanatory skills.

Originally Posted by ecenandu

https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitst...=1&isAllowed=y

Hope the above is 'technical' enough.

Agreed.

[r0nit7]

I am having ambivalent feelings towards this move.
On the one hand, restricting the speed "should" lead to better highway manners but this doesn't solve the maniacs from the inner roads where 80km/hr is deadly, but still something is better than nothing.
On the other hand, the yellowboards are only a fraction on the roads, what if the Govt decides to restrict the speeds of private vehicles as well, to lets say 90, then what?
We all have our views on the taxi community & make them out to be the devil and how this is a good move for the greater good (I am sure no Uber/Ola driver has had a chance to represent their views on this forum).
What are the views of t-bhp members if this is extended to private vehicles as well?

PS: If this does go thru, an Alto will be able look at the Audi's, the Mercs in the face - no looking up or giving them a side on the highways

[911er]

I can't believe so many people in this thread are supporting this idiocy.

Not saying speed limits are wrong. I totally support it but this is NOT the way to enforce them. There are better means to do so. Implement, educate, fine and suspend if you must - but there are many cases when one might need to speed up and not being physically able to do could be a potential disaster!

Also for those in support of this, why the hypocrisy? There are lakhs of private car owners who drive worse than cab drivers and their actions directly affect the lives of people in vehicles around them - so let's set speed limits on private cars too!

[SlowRider]

I don't like the idea of fixing a hard mechanical/electronic limit at what is a very common *passing speed* on our highways. If you're driving at a sustained 80km/h on a 70km/h road, that's definitely speeding. But I'm sure most of us appreciate some leeway when overtaking other vehicles. If you're driving a rather common 1.2L petrol or 1.3L diesel vehicle, you don't look at the speedo when overtaking. You just keep your foot on the throttle until you've passed. Now imagine running into a hard limit in this scenario! On a typical KL single-lane highway, that means you've got a bus coming at you from the other direction and you've got your life flashing before your eyes. Maybe you'll be able to squeeze back into your lane, maybe that gap has closed already. It takes away an option you had to speed out of harm's way. By all means, penalize speeding drivers, but this is not the way.

I've been in this situation countless times and my first choice has always been to use the DDIS's torque to power out of harm's way.

[Geo_Ipe]

Here's a new Bolero pick up - a milk van - with the speed limit sticker on the front windshield!

[Guite]

Originally Posted by Shreyans_Jain

We want cars to travel from Delhi to Jaipur in 2 hours and trucks to do Delhi Bombay in 2 days, and that's not going to happen by limiting at 60 or 80kmph. At that speed, our fancy new highways will basically be money wasted.

It will be more realistic to limit passenger cars to 110kmph and new heavy trucks and buses to 90kmph. Nothing less. Of course, exceptions can be made where necessary, like school buses or mining dumpers at 40kmph.

I have been thinking along similar lines for quite sometime now. For example Delhi has very wide roads but lots of traffic jam. The number of vehicles is high but situation could have been better. We have not been able to maximise the throughput of our wide roads because:
(1) Slow traffic speed. There are a lot of people who think less than 40 kmph is the safest, and associate higher speed than this as rash driving.
(2) Lack of lane driving, graded to speed. Many years back some Delhi roads had numbers (speed in kmph) written on the road; 60 on first lane, 40 on second lane, etc. In reality the same people who drive at 40 kmph or less hog every lane.

80 kmph limit for taxis is a good move. It could have been more for expressway trips but then you can't have separate governors for city and highway.

[Shreyans_Jain]

Originally Posted by Guite

I have been thinking along similar lines for quite sometime now. For example Delhi has very wide roads but lots of traffic jam. The number of vehicles is high but situation could have been better. We have not been able to maximise the throughput of our wide roads because:
(1) Slow traffic speed. There are a lot of people who think less than 40 kmph is the safest, and associate higher speed than this as rash driving.
(2) Lack of lane driving, graded to speed. Many years back some Delhi roads had numbers (speed in kmph) written on the road; 60 on first lane, 40 on second lane, etc. In reality the same people who drive at 40 kmph or less hog every lane.

What we actually need is a concept of minimum speed. That is how we can increase the efficiency of the roads and move more traffic on them. If you have random vehicles doing 20kmph, 60kmph and 110kmph on the same road (generally 4 laned) with the kind of lane discipline we have, obviously it is a recipe for disaster. Its a lot safer when the cars are all driving at a similar speed, even if it is high.

[Guite]

This concept of minimum speed is quite good. I once saw in a TV show wherein two reality show participants from SE Asia, driving on a New Zealand highway being pulled over by police for driving too slow and holding up traffic.

Speed limit of 80 kmph being enforced on taxis is a sensible limit for city roads. In daytime traffic, in Delhi, there is not much chance of crossing this limit anyway, except in few stretches like Gurgaon expressway, DND, Barapullah Nalla flyover, etc. Even on these roads, graded speed for each lane and maximum speed of 80 kmph in the first lane, coupled with proper lane discipline will greatly improve traffic throughput. This will result in less jam and more efficient traffic; people reaching their destination faster and with less fatigue.

[im_srini]

Of all the automotive policies that they could've come up with, this is the best they could do ?

There is an AI joke that goes like this :

All the great minds in AI came together & created a 'Universal Thinking Machine' capable of solving any problem in the world, think of it like the super-duper-computer in 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'.

Once their machine was ready, the scientists thought they'd test it with a simple problem, they fed it the statement : 'most accidents involving flights of stairs occur at the top or the bottom step', & asked it for a solution.

The machine pondered the problem for a while & then spat out : 'The solution is simple, remove the top & bottom steps from all flights of stairs'.

This is pretty much how decisions are made in our country, the sun-film ban, life-time road-tax for 30-days, the ban on 10-year old diesels, the ban on 2-liter diesels, the threat to 'bulldoze' the car companies ...

It's an endless string of ill-informed, half-baked, knee-jerk reactions, disguised as policies, & now we have this 80 Kmph limit to add to the list.

That said, I'm positive there's some 'brilliant' bean-counter in the depths of Maruti's bean-counting department thinking 'if the speed limit is just 80 Kmph, why waste our brilliant DDiS engine in the Dzire, why not use the brilliant 2-cylinder diesel we developed from the Celery instead'.

Of course, this brilliant idea would be 'fleshed out' in a Power-Point presentation & presented to 'upper-management', so obviously it would be approved for production & destined for success
.

[extreme_torque]

Originally Posted by Guite

I have been thinking along similar lines for quite sometime now. For example Delhi has very wide roads but lots of traffic jam. The number of vehicles is high but situation could have been better. We have not been able to maximise the throughput of our wide roads because:
(1) Slow traffic speed. There are a lot of people who think less than 40 kmph is the safest, and associate higher speed than this as rash driving.
(2) Lack of lane driving, graded to speed. Many years back some Delhi roads had numbers (speed in kmph) written on the road; 60 on first lane, 40 on second lane, etc. In reality the same people who drive at 40 kmph or less hog every lane.

80 kmph limit for taxis is a good move. It could have been more for expressway trips but then you can't have separate governors for city and highway.

I am no expert in traffic management but having lived in Europe and now in Melbourne for a few years I have a fairly good idea of how to make it work.

Firstly lets look at the problem statement itself, the problem isnt that the roads are not wide, the problem is that the flow of the traffic is not proper or in other words the average speed. Now all you need to do is to ensure that there are as little obstructions to traffic flow as possible. How do you do that?

1. The most important piece of infrastructure here is not just the width of the road but a road or a highway code which specifies how any road will be designed and the appropriate signages. A very simple example is the right turn - in India the right turn lane is basically the rightmost lane so if the right turn traffic light is red, the traffic on the right most lane cannot move, even those who have to go straight. And when they change lanes, the knock on effect is even worse. How do you deal with that? Simple... just make sure that you create a short separate lane that turns right and does not go straight as in the screenshot below. See how the road has widened to allow a third lane which only goes right, leaving the two lanes of traffic going straight go uninterrupted. I have more exmaples to give for example merging into high speed traffic so that you do not disturb the flow but I hope you got the point.


2. Our traffic lights are dumb i.e. that they be programmed to remain red or green for a certain duration but little else making following the rules dogmatic not pragmatic. Why do we jump traffic lights? And will imposing higher fines itself will take care of the problem? The answer is no. The traffic lights here are intelligent. If the signal detects motion on my side and not on the other side, it should immediately change to green. Infact if the signal detects there is no traffic in the right lane, it would not even turn the right turn signal to green! This way you are making following the rules pragmatic, not dogmatic. What happens in India is that a traffic light which is 180 seconds during the day time is also the same duration during the night time even when there is no traffic coming from the other side. Why should I wait 3 minutes when I can see there is no traffic coming from the other side? If the traffic light turns green immediately, you have now taken away the incentive to jump the signal. Every traffic light installed does the same function apart from sequencing in case of traffic lights one immediately after another.

Apart from having scientifically designed roads, signals and signages, we need to make sure that lane discipline is strictly followed and that our licensing is strict. The mentality is that if I can afford a car in India, its is my "right" to drive. No sir, driving is a privilege which comes with an obligation to follow road rules and if not, you should not be eligible to drive.