Ford has announced that the new S-Max, which goes on sale in Europe in August, will have a new feature that automatically slows you down so that you're traveling within the speed limit.

Called the Intelligent Speed Limiter, the new feature is a combination of two nascent automotive technologies: adjustable speed limiters and traffic sign recognition. An adjustable speed limiter might sound like cruise control, but it's slightly different: cruise control keeps your speed constant, while an adjustable speed limiter stops the throttle from delivering more fuel to the engine once you reach the desired speed.

Traffic sign recognition is exactly what it sounds like: using a forward-facing camera, usually behind the rearview mirror, an on-board computer scans the environment for signs that might be important. Over the last few years, there have been a number of cars that automatically recognize signs and flash up alerts on a digital dashboard display.

Now, Ford is combining these two technologies to create a car that automatically slows down when you pass a traffic sign that indicates a new speed limit. If you're going over the speed limit, the S-Max will reduce the amount of fuel being delivered to the engine, smoothly slowing you down.

For now, the automatic deceleration can be overridden by pressing firmly on the accelerator. Amusingly, you can also tell the car to decelerate to 5mph above the speed limit—so you can actively choose to do 35 in a 30 if you so wish.

Ford's Intelligent Speed Limiter, like lane-departure warning, adaptive cruise control, and parking assist, is yet another mile marker on the route to fully self-driving vehicles. While autonomous cars already have myriad ramifications to work through—and surely many more issues that are yet to be discovered—something like the Intelligent Speed Limiter, on its own, is just a helpful tool to stop you accidentally getting a speeding ticket.

It's not difficult, though, to see how this could be the beginning of the end for spirited driving. The first cars to offer an automatic speed limiter will have the feature turned off by default—but at some point down the line, it's not inconceivable that a car company might offer an on-by-default vehicle for safety (or speeding ticket) conscious customers.