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Comment by krylon | Hacker News Reader

Personally, I would welcome a speed limit on the Autobahn. OTOH, I don't own a car, so that's very easy for me to say since it wouldn't affect me.

However, I don't think this is going to happen anytime soon. Outlawing music or the Internet would be more popular in Germany than a speed limit on the Autobahn. Every couple of years some politician floats the idea, and inevitably, the public backlash is huge, so nothing happens. Nothing will happen this time, either.

Anyway, I have a gut feeling that moving all that cargo rolling around on the Autobahn every day to trains would have a bigger impact, but after decades of giving cars and roads preferential treatment and minimizing investments into the rail network, this would take at least a couple of years of intense construction work, which I don't see happening, either.

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Why would you welcome a speed limit on the autobahn when you don't drive?!

For environmental reasons. Also, AFAIK, a significant portion of traffic accidents on the Autobahn could be avoided by introducing a speed limit.

But like I said, I do not consider it likely because it is not popular at all. And frankly, we have bigger fish to fry, both where the environment is concerned and things like traffic safety.

The title of the article suggests that a speed limit on the autobahn would reduce CO2 emissions.

1. It's a 0.3% reduction of the German CO2 emissions so that's not really a useful point.

2. Killing 100 people also reduces CO2 emissions, doesn't make it a good idea...

0.3% is not an insignificant amount. Find a few more things like this to do to reduce emissions and it will add up.

Indeed, especially given the negligible amount of time this will add to a given commute, i.e. the majority of people's regular trips. Unless you drive from Munich to Hamburg at these speeds, but then you're just being a jerk to everyone who has to still live on this planet and should really be looking at the 300km/h trains. (Yes, they don't run every time they're scheduled for, but if more people put more money into the system, the system can improve.)

Because you might still sit in a (slow going) car on a highway and high-speed crashes involving other (slower going) cars can still end deadly for the passengers on the slow car.

Most highways in Germany already have a speed limit and setting limits for the few areas where it's not the case sounds like a good think for me as I had some quite negative experience with people going way to fast (for the amount of traffic).

But I also feel that the 130cap is a bit low, while taking over cars I would like to be able to go a bit faster. Like ~145?? or so?

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