Speed Limit Can't Keep Up - 2015 Volvo S60 Long-Term Road Test

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Speed Limit Can't Keep Up - 2015 Volvo S60 Long-Term Road Test

Our 2015 Volvo S60 displays the speed limit in the instrument panel. But it's usually wrong.

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jasond52

Both my parents and I looked at Volvo's when we bought our new cars over the last two years. It was surprising (and sad) how far behind Volvo was with in-car electronics and systems compared to their competition. Neither of us bought a Volvo...

I hope they catch up, but this post shows that they might still be lagging. My daughters 2014 Mazda 3 handles speed limit notifications remarkably well.

legacygt

Is the goal for drivers to no longer need to look outside the car? This is a solution in search of a problem.

sharp_cai

Volvo is the car that once you own one and you will stick with it. My dad has a 2000 Volvo S70 and the car always give him troubles on different issues, but my dad loves the car. It's not a great car compare with other car brands on the market, but it definitely got his own characteristic.

zimtheinvader

That would add to my usual guilty panic when I end up with a cop behind me on a road I'm not super familiar with. Usually I just start wondering "35? 45? 55? What is the limit here? I know I usually drive around 50 but is it 50 or 35? AHHHHHHH" Now looking at that it would be "It can't be 30! But it says 30! But it can't be. If it is 55 and I'm driving 30 they are going to think I'm up to something. Should I drive 30? What if it isn't 55? Why would the car lie to me? AHHHHHH"

kirkhilles1

Having systematic "reading" of the stop signs IS indeed an important technology to perfect as it'll be one piece of the self driving car. HOWEVER, I don't understand how my 5+ year old Garmin was able to very accurately show the speed limit (usually within 30 seconds of being in a new speed zone) and while other manufacturers can't do that. Certainly there should be (or needs to be if there's not) a database of all of the official speed limits somewhere and then the car would just need to optionally "look" for construction zones or whatever. The car would only need a cheap, simple GPS chip and a small database to work.

ctpaul

Many aftermarket GPS systems display the current speed limit too without use of an outside camera (is a camera really how the Volvo gets it data)? I was surprised how accurate the GPS speed limits were so there must be a pretty good database out there, just like all the street signs the GPS units display.

saulster

kirkhilles1 and ctpaul have it right! Working technology has been out there awhile but Volvo doesn't bother to use it. I turned off this useless feature in my 2015.5 S60. Thanks for educating me as to WHY it doesn't work and how it should work. Fail!

Saul

nsbio1

Which is why all of this tech must be user-defeatable at least until it matures to be reliable. ABS and DSC, for example, are good enough by now such that most cars are OK with having them constantly on. Other things included as all sorts of driver assistance tech - not so much just yet.