#960 Why doesn’t the Autobahn have a speed limit?

Why doesn’t the Autobahn have a speed limit? The Autobahn didn’t have a speed limit when they were introduced in Germany and it was left without one. Trying to apply a speed limit later on was met with a lot of resistance.

Germany is the only country in the world that has roads without speed limits. Most of the country does have speed limits, but 70% of the Autobahn is speed limit free. There is a sign at the start of the road that says “130 km/h”, but that is an advisory speed and not a limit. The road is three lanes wide and you can technically go at any speed you want. In 2021, somebody drove a Bugatti Chiron on the Autobahn, reaching a top speed of 417 km/h and holding a speed of over 400 km/h for quite a while. The YouTube comment says that it was a Sunday morning, they used a 10 km straight piece of road, and safety was paramount, but if a car had veered in front of them, even from several hundred meters away, there would have been very little they could do about it. The fact that they didn’t have an accident seems to be more down to luck than anything else. A car stopping distance calculator says that at 400 km/h, the driver would travel 75 meters before they would be able to react and then it would take another 940 meters to come to a complete stop. That’s a whole kilometer, and that assumes they can brake in a straight line and not lose control of the car.

Specific speed limits didn’t become a thing until the invention of the car and the speedometer. Before that, there were speed limits, but they couldn’t be exact because nobody could know how fast they were travelling. In New Amsterdam, in 1652, there was a sign posted demanding that wagons and carts weren’t drive at a gallop. Then, in 1832, in the UK, a law was passed making it illegal to drive “furiously”. The first speed limit was created in the UK in 1861 and it was 16 km/h on open roads and 3 km/h in towns. There was no way to measure the actual speed of the car, which they got around by having someone walk in front of the car with a red flag.

There were no speed limits in Germany until the Nazis imposed them in 1939. A limit of 60 km/h was set in cities and 90 km/h on open roads. These speed limits were brought in at the behest of Adolf Hitler. The Nazis had built the Autobahns as one of their schemes to improve Germany and their economy. However, it turned out that the new highways with no speed limits were death traps and between 1933 and 1939, 8,000 people died. Hitler raged that the drivers who deprived the Reich of their manpower were irresponsible, and he demanded speed limits. During World War 2, speed limits were reduced to 40 km/h in towns and 80 km/h on open roads to conserve fuel. After the war, Germany was occupied by different Allied countries and they each imposed their own national speed limits. Once they left, Germany was divided into East and West. East Germany kept Hitler’s speed limits, but West Germany voted in 1949 to remove all speed limits because of their ties with the Nazis.

The logic was that Germans would drive responsibly and adjust their speeds to meet the conditions of each road they were driving on. What actually happened was that lots more people died and were injured in road traffic accidents. When it was realized how many people were dying, there was a movement to reintroduce speed limits in 1953. This was brought down by the German automobile industry that said German cars were built for speed and if there was a speed limit, people wouldn’t buy fast cars. Germans continued to drive fast, and people continued to die. It became a badge of honor and symbol of freedom, just like the way many Americans see their right to bear arms. In the 1970s, the number of deaths couldn’t be ignored and speed limits were reintroduced on all rural roads and in the cities. There was a motion to impose speed limits on the highways as well, but it fell through. And most of the Autobahns were left speed limit free.

There has been talk of introducing a speed limit, but it is for environmental reasons and not for safety. The Autobahn, surprisingly, is not much more dangerous than any other road and the number of fatalities has dropped since 2010. This could be because of how advanced cars are becoming and that more people survive crashes that might have been fatal a year ago. Bringing in a speed limit on the Autobahn would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 2.9%. On private surveys, more people vote in favor of introducing speed limits than vote against, but it never seems to be able to get through the government. And this is what I learned today.

Photo by Snapwire: https://www.pexels.com/photo/autobahn-highway-lights-long-exposure-7312/

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