Why not only show speeds upto 75mph on a car dash?

[obi_waynne]

Why is the top speed always much higher than a typical car can ever hope to reach?

Surely they should just stop at 70 mph or 75 mph.

Without admitting that some drivers out there break the speed limit how can you justify a higher speed shown on your speedo?

 

[Rudders666]

What if you want to drive through to Germany and nail the autobahn? You won't have any inkling of the speed you're going. Or take it on track, same story. Or have private land etc etc. Never gonna happen

 

[Lunchmoney]

The dash is the same for many countries where they don't have 70mph limits. It keeps costs down by only making one dash for all markets.

 

[gladrags]

It bugs me that a lot of car speedos are marked off at 20, 40, 60 mph etc while a lot of the speed limits here are 30 and 50 mph and are sometimes difficult to judge on the display. My Audi has both analogue and digital display so lucky me.

 

[old-git]

If speedos only read to 75 people would end up driving at their car's maximum speed. When we drive we constantly adjust our foot on the pedal in order to keep our desired speed. We do this by going over our desired speed then pulling back. If the speedo stops at 75 we will keep trying to go past this so end up maxing out.

I have personal experience of this. We were driving up the west coast of California back in 1979 (I know, before most of you were born) in a new Dodge Aspen. The speed limit at the time was 55 so I was keeping to this. After a while I noticed that we were passing everyone but thought nothing of it. Then we were buzzed by a plane that waggled its wings at us. We realised that this was a police plane and that we must be speeding so I started to slow down. And slow down. And slow down. Finally the speedo needle moved off of 55mph. That was when we noticed that a small piece of trim inside the dial pod had become loose and just happened to stop the needle on 55!

 

[MADRod]

Am I on a Performance car site or an audition for Miss Daisy driver.

 

[old-git]

Am I on a Performance car site or an audition for Miss Daisy driver.

Haven't noticed anyone say they approved of restricting speedos to75mph.

Another thought. If speedos stopped at 75 drivers would have no idea what speed they were doing once the needle stopped. Speedos have to cover a car's whole speed range, so said car would have to be restricted to 75. Who is going to buy that, apart from Miss Daisy?