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Comment by froh42 | Hacker News Reader

Over here in Germany a speed limit typically means there's a good reason to follow it. On the Autobahn we've got places where there is no speed limit at all (yep, there's places where I can legally go 250 km/h) and on other places the speed may be set as low as 80 km/h (around 50mph).

A low speed limit typically is enforced with a traffic camera. Additionally we've go a lot of dynamic speed signs which show a speed limit which fits the current traffic conditions. (empty road at night - it's turned off. Rush hour - 80 km/h. Fog - 60 km/h And several steps in between)

Not having a "fixed" all the time limit makes drives accept the speed limit more easily.

Oh yes, and 85'th percentile. I frequently drive "+15km/h", so I go 95 when there's 80 allowed because the fine when I get caught that is not too expensive. (Fines for speeding are lower when you get caught outside city limits, speeding in a residential zone or in front of a school for example is one thing I have no tolerance for as well.)

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Germany is also the most stressful country to drive in I think. You usually have three or four lanes - 80 kmph truck lane, 140 kmph standard lane, 200 kmph I'm slightly crazy lane and 250 kmph I'm a loonie lane.

When you accelerate from the 80kmph to the 140kmph you better have a good engine or you feel stressed like hell slowing everybody else down.

And keeping right all the times just creates a lot of unnecessary dynamics in traffic flow.

Don't even get me started on congestions when everybody slams their breaks and hit the warning blinkers.

German traffic is for macho wannabe race drivers.

I rather have US traffic or the traffic in the Netherlands where everybody just set their cruise control and drive casually.

In the Netherlands they also have trajectory speed checks, so you cannot speed anywhere from point A to B, since they clock your total time. Works wonders for getting a nice steady flow on the highway.

My 5 cents anyway.

My experience driving in Germany is that it's very rare to see four lanes. Three is common enough, but usually around major cities where there's a speed limit. More typical is two.

The highways are also regularly torn up and rebuilt to maintain a glass-smooth surface on which one could safely drive 300 km/h, but it's only possible to maintain that for a minute because then you hit another construction zone or traffic jam caused by inadequate capacity. Despite all the construction, the highways rarely get widened, just resurfaced.

I don't think the main problem is that speed differentials are causing poor dynamics, but that the roads don't have enough lanes.

> I don't think the main problem is that speed differentials are causing poor dynamics, but that the roads don't have enough lanes.

I don't know.

I drove throughout Germany a few times last year, and I didn't really understand why there were so many jams and general slowdowns. I usually drive in France where the highways are almost exactly the same as Germany (most often two lanes, frequently three, rarely more, usually in very good state) and traffic is rarely as bad. I got stranded a few times in completely still traffic, for tens of minutes, during a normal working day, while this only ever happens at the worst time of holiday traffic in France.

Maybe it's because French highways are paying which probably discourages some drivers, but I also noticed a lot of roadworks in Germany (almost as bad as Belgium during the height of roadworks there last year). Enough, as you said, to never be able to maintain a high speed for long, while you barely ever notice those in France. I don't know how French companies do it, but I'm pretty sure it helps with the traffic.

Other than the traffic though, driving in Germany was a pleasure. People are aware of their surroundings and don't drive like the road was theirs.

Having driven in both countries, I think that has a lot to do with the extremely steep tolls on French highways, and the much higher gas tax. I believe Germany also has a higher rate of car ownership and the average population density is higher.

In 2015, according to estimates by the World Bank, Germany had 234 people per square kilometer. France had 122. And then there are the tolls.

I'm pretty sure Germany is trying to use less road for a lot more cars and everything else is secondary with regard to traffic jams.

Germany Autobahn see more use and needs more maintance. Besides more Germans on the road, a lot of trafic pass through German, a lot more than in France.

And the fact that the French highways require payment reduce trafic even more. But they are a joy to drive on. Set the CC and just go.

And the fact that SNCF has dedicated high speed infrastructure for the TGV, whereas DB runs the ICE mostly on mixed use tracks which makes it more challenging to provide fast, predictable service, all while having to compete with faster best-case speeds on the road.

The difference really is that many French motorways are toll roads (that péage sign) and have far fewer cars and lorries than the German autobahns.

In Germany, the logistics clearly utilizes the autobahns a lot. You see constant lines of heavy vehicles on the rightmost lane, and sometimes your overtaking them is interrupted by one truck passing another one, very very slowly as they both have a speed limiter, just adjusted slightly differently.

> that the roads don't have enough lanes.

Almost every freeway around major American cities is 4 lanes and yet traffic persists. Some freeways in LA are 6 lane parking lots.

Yes, and Manhattan has hundred-story apartment buildings, yet living there still costs a fortune.

It's pretty well known that simply building more roads does not fix traffic problems, it basically only generates more traffic.

> on which one could safely drive 300 km/h, but it's only possible to maintain that for a minute because then you hit another construction zone or traffic jam caused by inadequate capacity

Anecdote: recently went from Offenburg to Stuttgart and back and could drive a pretty much constant 190~240kph all the way (~1h30) except for a couple sections which were not unlimited. Having to slow down to 190kph isn't quite what I'd call a traffic jam. 300kph is just harder because there's not that many vehicles able to go that fast, so you end up catching up with the "slower" (so to speak) ones, and since vehicles are (supposed to) be electronically limited to 250kph, you're bound to meet some anyway.

vehicles are (supposed to) be electronically limited to 250kph

It was my impression that vehicles aren't supposed to be able to go faster than the speed rating of their tires. Since 250 km/h is a common speed rating for tires, and higher ratings tend to get expensive fast, German cars are often limited to 250 km/h.

No current Porsches (real ones, not the SUVs) are that slow, and the Porsche tire recommendation guide calls for tires rated for 300 km/h, or "over 300 km/h" (the standardized ratings don't go higher) for all models except the Macan SUV with 18" wheels, for which it recommends 270 km/h.

http://files2.porsche.com/filestore/download/usa/none/porsch...

The index rating on a tire basically reflects the speed limit that a tire can sustain for at least (IIRC) 10 mins before giving up and being destroyed, minus one. So a tire that sustained 10 min of U rating (200kph) speed and suffered drastic damage (typically, tire blows and tread band goes off) right after that mark gets a T rating (190kph). This is oversimplified but that's the gist of it.

You can thus see why the index of stock tires always vastly overshoot the top speed of a car, e.g my car gets a Y tyre stock even though its top speed is 245kph, and my ex car has a W rating when the top speed is 210kph.

It's not a good idea to go anywhere near the limit of your tire speed index, nor to go cheap and skimp on the index when buying a replacement tire.

I bet the Macan that gets 18" and the W index is the one with low enough top speeds (below 230kph, that'd be 2.0L four-pot petrol and 3.0L V6 Diesel ones)

EDIT: found a reference again WRT index tests

> Speed ratings are based on laboratory tests where the tire is pressed against a large diameter metal drum to reflect its appropriate load, and run at ever increasing speeds (in 6.2 mph steps in 10 minute increments) until the tire's required speed has been met.

https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=...

> I don't think the main problem is that speed differentials are causing poor dynamics, but that the roads don't have enough lanes.

Actually the limited number of lanes is what enables us to survive the speed differentials. Fast/[middle/]slow lanes can easily be enumerated without counting, which makes situational awareness so much easier. And you certainly do need a lot of situational awareness. It's a bit like CPU registers vs. an unconstrained stack.

I have only ever seen more than three regular lanes in large metropolitan areas where there is hardly any open road between interchanges and where speed limits are a certainty. I don't know if a single piece of four lane unrestricted driving exists in all of Germany, I would not even be entirely surprised if you could not legally build one.

>Germany is also the most stressful country to drive in I think.

I'm guessing you've never been to any developing country. India doesn't even respect traffic lights or the concept of "lanes." You have modern cars sharing the roads with literal ox-drawn carriages and they're all splitting lanes with hundreds of little scooters.

Hell, even Italy is a complete clusterfuck. If Germany is stressful to drive in for someone I would question if that person is comfortable behind the wheel of a car at all.

In fact, I'll say this is one of the big problems with how lax driving standards are in America. There are lots of people who drive everywhere here who do NOT have the skill, attention span, or reflexes to be behind the wheel of a car. It's too economically essential to be a functioning member of society to make the standards any stricter, but they're so lax that we have a glut of terrible drivers. Terrible drivers lead to overly permissive road design (that winds up being unsafe for anyone not in a car like bikers, cyclists or pedestrians) and that just leads to a bad quality of life overall for everyone.

Last time I was there, Indians referred to western traffic as "Streamlined." I remember Delhi had the words "Relax" printed on all the stop lights, in English. I'm not sure it really helped.

Hmm, on a related thought, how could self driving cars ever work there?

They won't. Firstly because the traffic is insane. Secondly because labor rates are so low that rickshaw and taxi drivers are dirt cheap. The productivity function is way skewed towards labor in India to where expensive robots to drive the cars don't make economic sense.

Won't in the short run, perhaps. Sure, in the long run we're all dead, but somewhere in the middle there will be robots and automobiles in the more complete sense of the word.

I would think they would work even better there?

Highly doubtful. There are way too many variables. If they worked at all, they'd be unable to move or only at a speed of <5kph. It's simply too chaotic and way too many variables.

I see what you are saying, but I still think a computer would do better in an environment like that with less rules than say the US. At least with the goal being not causing accidents. A computer with 360 vision is undoubtedly better at avoiding accidents probably in any condition. It may result in as you say too slow speeds or paralyzation, but many "rules" in the US either arent written down, or often arent followed making that situation more likely than with less rules imo.

If it follows other tech trends(eg: cell phones bypassing land lines), India and other developing countries will see self-driving cars before freeways and owned cars. Well, I'm an optimist.

Maybe. But I'm not sure it's as easy as putting things in a scale from more modern to less modern. The places where India has leapfrogged has been on stuff that needs new infrastructure development since there was never any good old infrastructure to take up resources or incumbent players to choke out new players.

Self driving cars don't need new infrastructure, its functionally an application that runs on existing infrastructure. If you have decent roads it'll work the same way whether you're in India or anywhere else.

Although I guess you could argue that Indians are less prissy about what they're willing to tolerate. A self-driving auto-rickshaw wouldn't fly in America, but it would be just fine for just about any Indian, and it's a much more useful application of self-driving tech than expecting everyone to have their own robo-chauffeured luxury cars.

Cell phones bypassing land lines makes sense because you can cover more customers with less cost. Self-driving cars may eventually be less costly than human driven cars, but for the near future, the costs you add (sensors, software, actuators, etc) are way more expensive than the costs you save (driver's attention, optimistically damage to persons and property reduced through collision avoidance), particularly in developing countries where a person's attention has less monetary value, but the raw materials for the car have similar costs. It's unlikely that you'd get much of the ancillary benefits of usability by unlicensed drivers either -- few people will be able to afford a driverless car to cart their kid around to school or wherever, anyway those people could just hire a driver and a normal car.

> In fact, I'll say this is one of the big problems with how lax driving standards are in America. There are lots of people who drive everywhere here who do NOT have the skill, attention span, or reflexes to be behind the wheel of a car.

So should we only allow some of the population to utilize cars? Considering how vital they are to the American lifestyle (the US covers so much land), that seems unreasonable.

Only those who are qualified to operate a vehicle should be allowed to do so. Where is the controversy in that statement?

The way you seem to put it is that only a small portion (sounds like less than 25%) should be allowed to drive.

How is the rest of the population supposed to get around?

Ever heard of public transports?

I have as my girlfriend and I have lived for over a year without a car. We walk/lyft/occasionally use the Seattle lite rail to get to 90% of the places we want to go.

However, despite the amazing hiking/backpacking places we can go here, we have only done that a few times (relying on other people driving).

Should we always rely on other people to go to non-public transportation routes (This has also hampered us from doing lots of other things hence why we got a zipcar membership recently)?

I'm not from the US, but the hearsay is that getting a driver's license is a lot easier than in e.g. in Germany. Here in Germany getting a license costs ~1500 Euro and it's not uncommon for people to flunk their first attempt.

I took a semester long drivers education class and then had to have a 50 hours of driving with my parents (Although I heard of other parents just signing the forms for driving with parents (my parents did not)).

> had to have a 50 hours of driving with my parents

The assumption with this requirement is that the parents are good drivers. That may or may not be the case. It would be better to require that the 50 hours be completed with a certified driving instructor.

Well, at least drivers should be prepared and trained thoroughly. I'm not sure if this is still true but it is my understanding that getting a drivers license is a very casual affair in the US - a quick theoretical and a practical test and you're done. In Germany you have to finish about two dozen practice sessions, in class and on the road, before you can apply for a theory or road test.

And it will cost you - over the whole course it will almost certainly be above € 1000 and generally depend on how well you do, how many sessions/tests you need. With these kind of costs people take this very serious and still fail all the time.

Naturally I'm not a fan of the costs, but I think thorough preparation and training is essential. Operating a car is a huge responsibility that affects not only your safety but that of other drivers, pedestrians, passengers, etc. Getting the license to do so should not be a cakewalk.

On a sidenote: Of course this approach requires valid alternatives to a car, like efficient public transport options, but that's another discussion.

The US covers a lot of land, but the American population does not. And there is no real reason it even needs to occupy as much land as it presently does. It's bad urban planning and dubious tax incentives that makes us sprawl. Most people in or near major metros shouldn't need a car to be a functioning member of society. It's a major policy failure that it is presently so.

I don't know how you just pulled "25%" out of the air. Most people could be trained to drive better, they just never bother learning because the standards for licensing are so lax that there is no downside to doing so. There are lots of areas where you can get a drivers' license without even knowing how to parallel park.

Yep, not trying to be disrespectful to fellow South American or African HNers, anyone that thinks driving in Germany is stressful won't ever manage to drive in those countries as well.

Yet people do manage to have some kind of order within chaos, that makes the whole traffic flow.

I'm the original poster and I've driven in central and south america and found it completely fine. I guess I prefer common sense to idiotic speeds and strict rules ;)

> Italy is a complete clusterfuck.

Yes, but only until you understand the trick: do NOT expect perfect adherence to driving code from others. That's it!

For example, when approaching an intersection where you have right of way, expect someone to try and pass anyway: it basically means slowing a bit down and paying attention on the incoming roads. Applying this grain of salt would prevent a good part of the car crashes I see on youtube (namely "driving in Russia", but not only).

And, by the way, expecting bad behaviour from others is not a justification for when I'll be the other.

It's very subjective. I find driving in Germany to be not very stressful, despite the relatively narrow lanes and high speeds.

Now, one has to compare similar situations, not a German Autobahn in a Metropolitan region with a empty desert highway... But comparing a busy Autobahn with a busy freeway (say the interstate into Chicago), I found the freeway to be much more stressful. People are passing on both sides! And there is not much speed differential. I can't just fall back to the right if I want to take it slow. There is often no emergency lane. I feel like I'm being pushed along, and if I can't keep up, I will be ran over.

In Germany, people can go faster, but it feels very predictable, clockwork-like. Yes, you have occasional idiots speeding with 250 km/h on the left lane that don't slow down and assume you will move out of the way out of self-preservation. But those are outliers, other than that I rarely have complaints. Maybe it is a cliche, but it seems the drivers' education, and the condition of cars and streets, is really good in Germany.

>Maybe it is a cliche, but it seems the drivers' education, and the condition of cars and streets, is really good in Germany.

It is not a cliche. I have lived in the US for the past 5 years and lived for 20 years in Germany before that. Germans roads are like 5000x better than US roads (at least here in California).

Road paintings here are a joke, especially at night or when it is raining. The only exception is when a road gets painted freshly. Then it is good for like 2 months.

What do the German road engineers do that make road paintings last for more than 2 months?

I think it's just the overall road maintenance that is better.

Not have to deal with salt, snow plows and residual abrasive material.

There's winter in Germany, too, you know? Salt is used, too.

However, you hardly see any grit/sand on the roads. There's a lot of salt.

Where I live (Finland) we have lots of sand but much less salt. The salt use is diminished to protect the environment, but the sand eats the road, as well as the studs most people use in winter tires.

(Yes, we change to winter tires in the autumn and summer tires in the spring; this seems to be an unknown thing in Britain or France and even a bit of snow produces a mess there. Germans have non-studded winter tires which work fine with the amount of salt.)

Do drivers in Finland ever use studless snow tires like Bridgestone Blizzaks, or do they always rely on studded tires.

I live in the US and switch to those tires in the winter and find that they have much better traction compared to the all season tires I have on my other car. Other than icy conditions, does having studs have much advantage over studless. I suspect that the damage to roadways caused by studs could be substantially reduced if more people used studless snow tires in the winter.

In Finland, about 85 % use studded winter tyres, 15 % use tyres without studs. Sweden is similar but somewhat less studs.

Studded tyres are more noisy, and they do eat the road more. They are more consistent - in snow, there's no difference; when the road is clean, studs do slightly worse; when the road is particularly slippery and icy, the studded tyres are much better. However, I can deal with that, so I prefer studless tyres. Last winter I had studded ones because they came with the used car I bought. I'm switching to studless for next winter.

It would be good to reduce the number of studded tyres, but people like them for the consistency. However, it wouldn't be good if all switched to studless tyres, because then the roads would sometimes become extremely slippery and polished. The studs remove the ice so that main roads become safer also for studless tyres. I think that a ratio of 30 % of studded tyres would be good for the whole.

If everyone had studless tyres, there would need to be substantially more salt and grit on the roads, and then there would again be more dust and damage to waterways.

(Currently we can see the polishing impact on bus stops: buses are heavy vehicles which do not have studs, and they sometimes get stuck on bus stops at a slight uphill, as the area is polished ice, while everyone else drives by normally.)

Wow. I live within the USA snowbelt, but studded tires are pretty uncommon outside remote undeveloped areas and mountainous areas. Studless (or unstudded, studdable) winter tires are very common in the winter. Poor or clueless people or those who don't drive much will use all-season year-round. Studded (and obviously even winter) tires are very much a regional thing, but studded tires do very much eat the roads and are regulated or banned on many roads.

We do use a lot of salt. I don't think rock salt is much of an environmental concern. It can kill plants by the roadside until it's flushed out of the soil, but the roadside is already a degraded environment for flora. Normal rock salt is a natural material.

What's worse is that some towns will use raw "frack juice" as we call it for deicing roads. This is a mixture of water, salt, and chemicals that spits out of gas wells in the hydrofracking process. Often they'll just remove some of the water to concentrate a brine and apply it to roads as well. There is unbelievably little oversight, it's done on a local level, the chemicals are considered an industry trade secret and god knows what they're spreading around in those communities that allow this to happen.

I'm gonna guess some combo of "pay for materials that last more than 2 months" and "paint every two months". Which is doable when you have 200% less roads / vehicles and politicians unwilling to let the infrastructure of your country fall to shit.

German autobahn is fine driving. You would just have to make sure your car got that extra kick if you want to go to the left.

Driving in Italy, Rome esp, is fine too. There is a reason the red light is so big and so much larger than the green light though :)

Driving in Italy, and Spain for that matter, is....exciting. Especially the intersection rules in Spain takes some getting used to. Oh there is green, I can go - but why are trafic still going from the other direction? Oh, the light closest to me is red, so I may not drive...

Good thing is you never really have to drive if you don't want to. Most small towns are connected by commuter rails, ICE and PostBus (5 euro rides if you book early). Small towns like Jena of only 100k people have full tram and bus networks.

I just returned from a 2 week driving trip through Germany and vastly preferred driving there to driving in the U.S. The "always pass on the left and never on the right" seemed like it led to more systematic and predictable behaviors, and also tremendously reduced the competitiveness of the driving experience as compared to the U.S.

It might all be cultural differences though. I noticed drivers seemed more attentive and never used their phones (unless completely stopped in traffic jams), whereas here in the U.S. it is extremely common to have drivers piddling in the left lane and absolutely oblivious to the goings on around them.

The only stressor I could see from driving on the autobahn was easily overcome - before passing someone on the left, just be sure to check really, really far back towards the horizon to make sure one one is coming.

Theoretically "always pass on the left" is a rule in the US too, it's just a rule that is not consistently observed.

That's because too many people drive in the left lane all the time. In my commute, traffic gets inverted where the left lane becomes clogged with people not going fast enough and to get anywhere requires passing on the right.

I can appreciate not wanting to go back and forth between say the middle lane and left lane all the time. I just wish people could figure out they are holding up traffic and get out of the way for a minute or two every now and then.

> I can appreciate not wanting to go back and forth between say the middle lane and left lane all the time.

That is about as self centered one can be in trafic. In reality, they are endangering themself and everybody else near them.

Why?

If I do a steady 140 km/h in the middle lane, as mostly everybody else (here in germany), then why am I endangering anybody, if I just stay there? There is still the left lane for the faster ones and the right for the slower. (in the 3 lane scenario)

Sitting in the middle lane with adequate speed is fine when there is heavy and/or slower trafic in the right lane. The grandparent talks about sitting in the leftmost lane because it's more convient, rather than sitting in the middle lane and using the left lane when passing.

Eh, I'd have to agree that staying in the middle lane and going the speed limit is the smarter thing to do. There are too many badly-designed on-ramps and people that don't understand how merging works for staying in the right lane to be practical, in most cases.

It's about sitting in the right most lane, because it's more convient, and not because you're passing.

Lane changes are dangerous too. I have no real statistics to back me up, but most of the signs of accidents that I see appear to stem from lane change collision.

I base that on sideways skid marks and wall impact.

In the 3 US states I've lived in, always pass on the left has been a "rule of thumb" but has never been illegal. So long as the right lane is a legal travel lane.

Huh. I thought it was a law in CA, which it technically is... but with exceptions for highways with two or more lanes in each direction.

It's illegal here in Massachusetts.

It's legal on highways, e.g. "any roadway on which traffic is restricted to one direction of movement"

https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXIV/Ch...

I lived in Massachusetts for 3 years and routinely passed people on the right, sometimes even in the breakdown lane if it was open for traffic.

I have noticed a tendency for many slow, timid appearing drivers to prefer to campout in the left lane because it gives them the least amount of interaction with other highway traffic.

On a typical 3-lane highway, the right lane will have many big trucks, plus merging traffic entering and exiting constantly. The center lane puts them right in the middle of all the chaos, getting passed by other traffic regularly on both sides. In the left lane they can set their cruise control to 5mph below the limit and squat.

Even when there are lulls in the amount of traffic, many times I have approached this type of driver from behind in the left lane, paused to see if they would move over for me to pass, and they almost never do.

Disclaimer: I like to drive 5-10mph over the speed limit :)

>5mph below limit, left lane

Horrifying! :) But yes, the left lane is much nicer to camp out in on, say, a long commute - as long as you can handle maintaining the speed.

I live in the Dallas area and the lanes usually seem to be, from right to left: "the limit", "+5-10” and "+10-15". 15mph over is my cutoff, more or less, so I keep an eye on the mirror and try to shift over if someone is clearly coming up fast. Besides, don't want anyone tailgating me at those speeds tbh.

Does get a bit aggravating when what I consider "safe following distance at speed" is considered by the driver behind me as "this dumb econo-box being slow" and they whip around me. Doubly so when all it achieves is the two of us swapping places because there are no open avenues forward, lol. I'd have given it to him if there was one.

But "everyone else is a bad driver" will always be with us (myself no exception) so what can you do but grin and turn the music up.

> The "always pass on the left and never on the right" seemed like it led to more systematic and predictable behaviors, and also tremendously reduced the competitiveness of the driving experience as compared to the U.S.

Isn't that a thing in the U.S. as well? At least where I'm from (the northeast), passing someone on the right generally gets you a loud honk on the horn and occasionally a flip-off.

It depends on the state. In many states passing on the right is illegal and considered rude, but California is a notable exception. Also, while there is a law here in CA that slower traffic should stay out of the left lane, I think it is more of a recommendation -- I can't recall ever seeing it enforced. I think most drivers make some effort to follow it, but not to the extent that people do on the east coast.

In most states (all?) "passing on the right" does not mean passing someone on the right in a regular traffic lane.

It refers to passing people while in an exit-only lane, turn-only lane, shoulder, etc.

In Massachusetts, passing on the right on a divided highway is legal. I'd argue that in a lot of cases, it's the fault of drivers on the left not moving out of their lane. But you also have situations where, with lanes of steady traffic, the right lane just gets moving faster.

Now, yes, you get situations where people veer from lane to lane because the overall flow of traffic isn't fast enough for their tastes. But, especially on three lane each direction roads, you get cars and trucks that don't want to deal with merging traffic at exits just sitting in the middle.

The problem with "pass on the left" is that it requires to drivers to consciously treat the left lane as a passing-only lane. That doesn't happen in California. The left lane in California is the "let me zone out and ignore all these cars passing me" lane.

I disagree with strictfp that "staying to the right" creates unnecessary traffic dynamics. What happens in California is worse. Someone holds up the left lane, so all the faster cars will pile up on the right lane and try to sneak in front of the slow car, but inevitably they'll cut someone off and set off a chain reaction of braking for everyone that was patiently queued up in the left lane.

(Granted on two-lane I-5 there are some legitimate a reason for this: the right lane is used heavily by trucks, so the road wears down quicker and becomes rougher in the right lane than the left. Naturally people gravitate towards smoother asphalt. And if you just passed a truck a few minutes back and are gonna pass another one again, why not just stay in this lane?)

This only happens on poorly designed roads that cannot handle their traffic flow. Most people in most places will obey the left passing rule only so long as there are enough lanes that the traffic fits in lanes - 1 so one can always be open.

Since the US infrastructure system is a colossal piece of shit, highways built 40 years ago still stand exactly as they were then today having to accommodate multiple times more traffic than they were ever meant to. This breaks down the road rules when its bumper to bumper and every lane is backed up.

The scenario illustrated in the GP happens because the the rightmost lane is subject to merging traffic from onramps and offramps, and also tends to be the lane where trucks and vehicles obeying the speed limit (or both) congregate.

Meanwhile, the leftmost lane attracts people wanting to drive faster than traffic, the people who just want to get one car ahead, as well as the people who just want to drive without having to let cars in all the time.

If there's only two lanes -- like on most rural interstates -- and sufficient volume exists to prevent the left lane from actually clearing out cars, this creates a tragedy-of-commons situation in the left lane where there's more empty space in the right lane than in the left. A subset of people will then use the empty slots in the right lane to try to get ahead, making the situation even riskier.

But this poster's right; the root cause is not enough lanes to ensure a high level-of-service.

Totally agree, but the US is huge!

It would be much more informational to take into account things like average number of cars traveling between various locations, number of lanes between said locations, residential density...

Another issue is mobility in America. It's not uncommon for people to move across the country for work. So cities like Portland or Austin don't expect the sudden boom in population and increased traffic that entails.

> Most people in most places will obey the left passing rule only so long as there are enough lanes that the traffic fits in lanes - 1 so one can always be open.

By that logic, that would mean at 11pm at night on US-101 between SF and San Jose, I shouldn't need to pass anyone on the right, but I guarantee you there's always drivers lingering in the left-most lane.

If the road is usually congested, frequent traversers of that road will just get in the habit of staying left until they are near their destination. I do it on PA-22 all the time (albeit not in a condition where people need to pass me on the right), even when the traffic is light, because its what people expect behavior wise on that road.

highway 5 between sf and la is notorious for this. it's a 2-lane highway and the right lane is filled with trucks, so all cars go in the left lane. passing is some crazy game where you try to get around slow cars in the left lane while trying not to get stuck behind a truck. it's just awful. rush hour makes it even worse.

> Isn't that a thing in the U.S. as well?

Yes, but not normally observed in more densely populated areas. In Los Angeles, for example, it's use any lane you can to pass. I've personally witnessed people, who were driving slower than the flow of traffic, move all the way to the left to "get out of the way" of other drivers. It's well-intentioned, though poor understanding.

Licensing needs to be more rigorous, but many cities rely very heavily on commuting without a proper public transportation infrastructure in place.

I believe that there it's ruled so that you have to use the rightmost lane that's free - so if it's possible to pass someone on the right, then it means that they're not in a position to honk and flip off because they're driving wrong themselves.

The left lane is also, almost universally, a "I expect to speed" lane. When I need to use the left lane to pass and I'm driving the speed limit, I'm almost always tailgated.

Well at least you know why they're tailgating you.

I agree with all of this. Driving in the US is very unpredictable-- from the road surface to the drivers. In Germany, the road surface is great, and the flow of traffic is easy to understand. Sure, sometimes someone will flash their lights at you because you're only doing 130 in the passing lane, but you just pull over and they go by and everything's fine.

That said, if you do have an accident at those speeds... The one wreck I saw looked like a tin can had met a hydraulic press.

Wait, german highways are frequently concrete highways with junctions. Not so great??

Much better than the average concrete US interstate. ;-)

Also, speed limits on the Autobahn are lower in construction zones, urban areas with more traffic, and anywhere the roads are not that great (still good by Jersey Turnpike standards).

The stretches with no speed limit are really well maintained.

Huh. Fascinating how different experiences can be: I found the roadtrip through northeast US I made a few years ago one of the most relaxing freeway driving experiences ever.

Sure, as an Austrian I prefer driving on German autobahns as well (due to better perceived discipline), but the US trip was something else entirely - and I've come to think that it's maybe because almost every car has cruise control.

It's not even the speed differences between different lanes, but staying in lane, setting CC and not having to correct it for a really long time is not something I was used to, and going 600km or more a day left me far less tired than over here.

EDIT: Maybe there are intra-US differences as well? Since most here seem to talk about California...

Depends where in the US. You're unlikely to set your cruise control and leave it in a big city, unless it's late night/early morning.

Outside of the big cities, it can be much more relaxing. I drove across the mid-west and did the same as you. Drive at 70-80 mph and not take the cruise control off for hours.

Anyone who hasn't driven in congested roadways like 880 or new jersey turnpike cannot understand that left lane as passing completely breaks down when you have too many cars and too many exits. We just have too many goddamn cars.

It is a law everywhere that you must pass on the left. Slower traffic keep right. It is a cultural issue.

Passing on right is legal on roads with two or more lanes going in the same direction.

Laws for passing on the left was intended for roads with one lane going in opposite directions.

Driving the speed limit is considered normal speed according to case law. Slow traffic is going 10 on a 25.

I think "Slower traffic keep right" is part of the problem, nobody wants to think of themselves as "slower". The signs should read "Left lane for passing only" or similar.

Also, I pass people on the right all the time, but I blame them for it. :-) If people don't want to be passed on the right, they shouldn't drive on the left. Simple enough.

At least here, the signs say "State law: Left lane for passing only." Slower drivers never enter the left lane, and the right lane is consistently fast and accessible if you're willing to meet the speed requirements of going above the limit a bit.

I agree that driving on a German highway is a stressful experience. Especially since there is not so many highways with more than 2 lanes, occasionally changing to 3 lanes.

On a highway with no speed limit and only 2 lanes, the difference between the right lane and the left lane is just so freaking huge, you are stressed out every time you need to pass a truck or slower car, and almost always see your random Ferrari / Maseratti / Porsche approaching at a fraction of second of the time you spend on the left lane.

I would advocate for no speed limit on highways with >= 3 lanes, but would put a limit of 140-150 on those with only 2.

It depends on where you drive. Where I'm from, most highways have 3 lanes.

I find the US much more stressful to drive in, because you have to constantly assume that people don't use their turn signals when changing lanes randomly. You obviously also have to do these dangerous lange changes because people drive slowly for no reason whatsoever wherever they want (e.g. most left lane).

I have noticed that a lot of people change into the middle lane for no reason at all. This results in you having to pass on the right, especially if there is a slow driver on the left lane. So now you have to change 2 lanes to pass 2 cars....

Fact is, if you learn how to drive well and everyone else does as well, then driving is not at all stressful. You can still use your cruise control in Germany, just not on the left lane (if you are going 80 or whatever).

Having grown up in Germany and living in the US, I feel the opposite. The US traffic is far less predictable. In the US, you have to look, left, right, back and ahead when trying to switch lane, as anyone could appear from anywhere. You never know which lane you should stay on to drive "a little faster". Generally, people just don't pay attention.

In Germany it is in one direction only. Left to overtake, right to pull back over. In addition you do have to monitor your back mirror more carefully, which people in the US do not seem to do (though they should). In Germany, virtually no one plays with their phones on highways.

Also, traffic deaths are more than half in Germany than in the US, despite higher speeds [0].

I feel like traffic rage in the US is much more prevailent, particularly in the east coast. Having said that, Dutch or Danish traffic is far more relaxing. But also much much slower...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

US resident here. On the local freeway, when I signal I wish to make a lane change, other drivers often speed up. I really don't get it. What did I do to their family?

The trick is to follow the mirror, signal, maneuver method. In other words, you don't signal until you know you have a gap to change lanes into. If you signal first without checking for a gap first, then you're treating the signal as a way to ask for permission to change lanes. Other drivers may or may not allow you to do so.

Driving on the German Autobahn is not stressful. 3-4 lanes highway are usually around the bigger cities and they have a speedlimit anyway.

Because people know cars can fly past them with more than 200 kmh, they also actually stay to the right and use the left lane to pass and not to cruise. All in all it's a pleasant experience and all a driver really needs to wrap his head around is to keep as much track of the traffic behind and as in the front.

A differing five cents:

Germany is the best country in the world in which to drive.

Drivers are trained well. They look before they turn. THEY DON'T USE THE LEFT LANE AS A CRUISING LANE - they move over, pass, and return to the right lane. They use their turn signal.

You can go very, very fast in situations where it's warranted. In situations where it's not, people slow down. As someone who walks, rides a bike, and enjoys not being deafened by road noise in towns, this is good.

My experience driving has primarily been California, Ireland, and Germany, and Germany has been _far_ superior to the other two.

Personally after living in the Dutch half of Belgium for 7 years, I find Belgian and Dutch (it's possibly Belgian drivers in Dutch cars) drivers to be the worst drivers I have come across, certainly compared to German and British drivers.

I've always wanted to take a dash cam and compare the driving styles when driving to the Eurotunnel in the UK and then driving across Belgium. The ring around Antwerp is an absolute mess of people driving in a dangerous manner.

Belgian drivers typically will leave no more than a 1 second gap. In the UK this is repeatedly drummed into you that it should be 3 seconds.

Also I find Belgian and Dutch drivers react erractically, they will switch lanes erratically and move very close to the car in front before switching lanes often without indicating. Germans and British seem to leave much more room and perform maneouvres in a much more deliberate manner.

Certainly with Belgian drivers, this is back up with statistics, their death rates per 100k population are 2x that in the UK and 1.5x Germany [0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

I certainly agree about the Belgians ;)

Try India. According to the WHO, traffic fatalities is the #4 health problem there.

Wouldn't even go near India ;) It's read on every death cause map I've ever seen, from traffic incidents to presence of diseases to antibiotic resistance.

If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you --Oscar

One interesting reason for imposing speed limits on some sections of German highway is to reduce road noise. It's not always a traffic engineering reason.

The article talks about differential speed and lane discipline. In Germany, it's not rare to see people driving 250 km/h (155 mph), but some heavy trucks are restricted to 80 km/h (50 mph) regardless of the speed limit. Germans are very strict about lane discipline though. It's generally illegal to pass on the right or be in the left lane when not passing, and someone who puts their turn signal on to move left will usually respond to a flash of the headlights from an approaching car and wait for it to go by.

As an American who has spent a lot of time in Germany, and driven across Texas a few times, I sometimes wish for German style speed unlimited-speed highways in the US, but I think it would be hard to get American drivers to adopt German attentiveness and discipline.

I live near the Germany border and the speed limits here in France just consistently produce some of the most dangerous behaviors I've witnessed, while crossing the border and it's just fine, even if people sometimes pass you on the right, and even if, like anywhere, shitty dicks do exist. Also, it's far from a stress free experience in France when there are speed checks at every corner and you spend your time looking at your speedometer and on the lookout for controls even if you respect the speed limit instead of the road and other drivers, because it's so easy to ever so slightly drive above the limit as it's set to such an unnatural value. You just feel coerced, constantly watched and judged as guilty by default and it's terrible. Worse, there is a whole category of people that feel safe as long as they dutifully respect the limit and since it's so low they get bored and text or phone or play with the kids or fiddle with their GPS, not feeling responsible the least about hurling more than a metric ton of metal at speeds that are anyway entirely unnatural. In Germany you just drive and since there is quite the gradient of speed alongside the perpendicular axis of the road, it's just fine and you feel safe at whatever speed you drive: people just don't close-call zoom past you at 200+kph when you cruise at 120kph. It's just surprising at first because you got that message shoehorned at every moment that speed kills and speeders are the worst scumbags on earth, but as soon as you learn to drive socially so to speak and not like an individualist prick isolated in your cage of metal, things get really better. The road is best lived together, pay respect to the flow which you're part of and you'll be damn fine.

> when there are speed checks at every corner and you spend your time looking at your speedometer and on the lookout for controls even if you respect the speed limit instead of the road and other drivers

If you cannot check your speedometer, and safely navigate in the trafic at the same time, you should stop and look inwards. It is not hard.

There's a difference between looking at the speedo because you're rechecking your speed and feeling pressed into doing it out of fear of being caught speeding 2kph above the limit simply because there's variability. I'm not saying it's hard, I'm saying it's distracting and stressful having to constantly poll and check for an arbitrary number that bears no actual relation to safety (which is the factor that drives anyone's natural speed limit feedback loop). IOW here I'm talking about the psychological effect that induces fear, stress and guilt in the driver, not the technical ability to do it. I believe coercion is not the proper way to educate people into living respectfully together.

When driving in Germany I noticed that I hardly ever used cruise control - you need to change speeds quite often since areas with reduced speed and unlimited speed change all the time. In US I use cruise control all the time since speed limits are constant over very long stretches. This makes driving in Germany fun, but driving in US less stressful and tiresome.

I love driving in Germany. The only things I wish they'd explained to me before picking up a rental car:

1) The "priority road" system, indicated with diamond signs, for right of way on secondary roads. This isn't quite as weird for outsiders as the weird British Columbia flashing green lights thing (wtf), but still, almost caused an accident the first time I encountered it at night.

2) When traffic is stopped and you want to allow emergency vehicles, you make a gap between (California) lanes 1 and 2, i.e. where Californian motorcycles go; in the US (and everywhere else I've seen), emergency vehicle drive on the shoulder. Either makes sense, but knowing what's going to happen is good. I naturally pulled toward the right in the leftmost lane until I looked behind me and saw flashing lights coming up fast.

> a speed limit typically means there's a good reason to follow it

I'd say in the UK it's pretty similar as well. The standard limit on single-carriageway roads, unless indicated, is 60mph/97kmh. This could be anything from a bypass around a town, to a small country road with tight bends and steep drops at the side.

The limit is usually only lowered if going through a town/village (typically 30mph or 40mph) or if there is a some sort of danger that you wouldn't expect, like a hidden junction on a bend.

Other cities might be different, but small (and some no-so-small) streets in Munich streets have a 30km/h limit (note to Americans, that's less that 20 mile/h). I never saw many cars obeying those limits.

As far as I can see those limits exist to make the politicians responsible for them look concerned about safety.

Drivers don't obey those limits to the letter, but they certainly do recognize them in so far as that they go considerably slower than the speed they would drive if the limit wasn't there.

> we've got a lot of dynamic speed signs which show a speed limit which fits the current traffic conditions.

> Rush hour - 80 km/h

Does "rush hour" mean something different in Germany? You couldn't go 80 km/h in rush hour if you tried.

It's a maximum speed limit, not a minimum speed. Rush hour means jams in Germany too - that is the reason for the speed limit, so you don't drive into the back of a traffic jam going 80 miles an hour.

> A low speed limit typically is enforced with a traffic camera.

Is it possible you live in NRW? It's a bit extreme there. Much fewer speed cameras in other parts of the country.

Don't you get a point on your driving record when driving over 10km\h over the limit or was that 20?

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