Hacker News Reader

Comment by Semaphor | Hacker News Reader

> is like driving 60 mph on a road with no lane dividers

That’s somewhat funny, because a Landesstraße in Germany has no lane dividers and the speed limit is 100 km/h (about 60 mp/h).

Unless I’m misunderstanding and lane dividers mean the printed lines.

View on HN

There are a lot of roads in the US with a 55MPH speed limit and no lane dividers. In many states, all rural roads with no posted speed-limit have an assumed speed limit of 55MPH. People drive 60 on such roads all the time.

Where I used to live in Texas, there were two-lane rural roads with 75MPH speed limits

Largely true, but worth noting that each state has its own speed limit. Vermont, for instance, sets the state non-highway speed limit at 50MPH, so you'll almost never find 55MPH undivided roads in that state. Colorado, on the other hand, has undivided roads with 65MPH speed limits. Much of the Midwest and the East Coast tend to set their limits at 55MPH, though.

the bar to drive in Germany is significantly higher than in the united states. Requirements for getting a drivers license in America is ridiculously lenient because the American lifestyle is completely car centric. taking someone's license away is tantamount to sentencing someone to poverty.

I think the other possible effect is the maintenance construction work in the Autobahn, which can create an upper speed limit anyway.

Also, only about 70% have no speed limit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn (ctrl+f "No speed limit" for a nice table)

The Autobahn has a recommended speed of 130 km/h. OP was talking about Landstraßen having a speed limit of 100 km/h. The two are very different kinds of roads. The Autobahn does have concrete dividers and hard shoulders for example. It also has a much more predictable design compared to a Landstraße.

Germany makes you get a license to play golf. It sounds extreme at first blush but when you start to think about it...

Not so funny considering that more than half of fatal car accidents in Germany happen on exactly those streets (744 in 2021). Followed by Bundesstraßen (606 in 2021), which only sometimes have dividers and are usually limited to 100 km/h as well.

In compare, on the Autobahn, which always has dividers but often has no speed limit at all and is not below 100 km/h under normal circumstances there were "only" 318 deaths.

Source (German language, Federal Statistical Office): https://www-genesis.destatis.de/genesis/online?operation=abr...

Interesting, thanks. Note that your URL does not work, searching for "46241-0003" gets the right category, though.

I do wonder how many of those accidents are related to cars overtaking others.

It's worth pointing out that Landstraßen often have trees next to them for cosmetic and "noise reduction" purposes (the latter has no significant effect, although many people believe in it). They are also not necessarily illuminated and can have crossings or sharp turns in addition to nearby wildlife and houses.

In many cases the roads are also used by cyclists or agricultural vehicles which many drivers feel compelled to overtake, which can be dangerous because of limited vision and the need to switch onto a lane that may contain oncoming traffic.

Compared to the Autobahn, Landstraßen are chaotic and often dangerous, not just for the people driving on it.

Does comparing raw number of deaths here make sense without taking into account the total distance travelled / time spent per person on these different kinds of roads? Not to mention other factors like e.g. how tired/inebriated/distracted the average person using these roads is, which is unlikely to be the same for short distance and long distance travel.

Also 744 < 606 + 318 so it doesn't even seem to be "more than half" even with some road types missing.

"Unless I’m misunderstanding and lane dividers mean the printed lines."

Well, we also have plenty of really narrow roads on the countryside, with no lane divider, no printed lines and - no speed limit, where you could do 100 km/h, as well.

(And well, some people do, but if you crash, it would be also legally your fault, for not having the adequate speed, even if there is no formal speed limit. Which is a nice counterexample to the usual, everything is forbidden unless it is explicitely allowed mentality)

Yeah, my point is not that such roads don't exist, they are relatively common, as you say.

My point is that your only "defense" against oncoming drivers on such roads is to pray that they stay in their own lane. This mostly works because people are mostly sober and undistracted and not malicious. It is kind of terrifying when you start to think about it.

Same speed limit in the UK, and there are roads without painted lines.

The speed limit and the speed you should be driving are different though

In most of the western US, the speed limit is about 10 mph lower than the actual speed of traffic.

Depends. In Germany we try to set the speed limit at the speed you should be driving in clear and dry (or slightly wet) conditions. In Sweden in the other hand I've seen roads where no sane person should be going the posted speed limit

In UK there's basically single track roads that have a speed limit of 60mph, and you'd be crazy to use them at more than 30mph most of the time.

If only a route planner would understand this fact too!

I assume Google Maps has data on average speed its users travel along all the roads.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com