2009 BMW 7 Series: Electronic Back Seat Driver

A little write up over at CarAdvice.com.au talks about one of the coolest features in a new car since sliced bread (huh?). We've had trip computers and speed monitoring computers in cars for ages but this new feature called Speed Limit Display will, well, display the speed limit.

The system uses a little camera mounted near the passenger side rear-vision mirror which watches the side of the road for any speed limit signs (including those funky LED-based electronic ones they like to use around construction zones) and pops up a little alert on the car's HUD if you're going over it.

However, before alerting the driver the new system chats with the car's nav system to see if the speed matches the speed in the GPS data so maybe it's not exactly like a back seat driver.

Oh, and BMW really wants to make sure you understand that the system won't try to slow you down, we wouldn't want THAT now would we!?

Read more about the 2009 BMW 7-series.