German Autobahn speed limit would bring €1bn in benefits
carbonbrief.org
carbonbrief.org
It’s been going on for decades, there's really no good reason not to do it, and due to powerful lobbying, it’ll just never happen.
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/specialist/statis...
Truck drivers aren't necessarily dangerous, but trucks are larger, slower to react, and have longer stopping distances. Truck drivers are more likely to have driven for longer, and may not be as familiar with the behaviour of either the cab they're driving or trailer they're pulling if they have to break/swerve etc.
It's truck drivers not keeping enough distance and are distacted by their phones. Watch that accident in Great Britain where the driver looks up from his phone too late and killed a whole family. If there is a traffic jam on the autobahn, NEVER approach it on the right lane with your car.
There's horrible externalities of course, which I don't deal with myself, but it's got nothing to do with a speed limit on one road in a country with speed limits on many roads already (can't even make a freedom of movement case).
Philosophically, I guess, but in actuality it's completely pointless.
If the state is taken over by a tyrannical dictator and the military themselves are complicit (don't attempt a coup/rebel against it) then someone owning a handgun is going to be scant resistance.
It's work keeping in mind that the amendment was written when the military and civilians had the same "hardware": muskets and cannons. In those times, protecting against a tyrannical government was entirely feasible with a large enough group. In fact, that's exactly what the USA did ~350 years ago. Granted, they had help from places like France, but they still did it.
At best the 2nd amendment will just lead to another brutal civil war as the weapons are turned away from the government and to the people on the ‘wrong side’. Like the average Joe would ever stand a chance against a militarised police force anyway.
Philosophically pure, maybe, but philosophy needs to be messy if it aims to cover edge cases. Otherwise, too much is open to interpretation.
The county I am in (Ghana), had a spree of military dictators for over 30 years but the military didn’t go on a killing spree. Guns are available and the military had the weakest amount of influence in the countryside where many farmers had weapons.
Having the half the population armed with handguns would have been a huge restraint on the army since they wouldn’t have been able to operate safely in cities either.
While it’s true that it wouldn’t stop indiscriminate genocide committed by the government, most counties are factional and the military is made of people who have relatives in the general pop.
Also, do you remember what just happened in afghanistan?
I'd argue there's plenty of things that we do that have negative effects on society or on the climate, which aren't really necessary to do, and which we allow only because people enjoy them.
There are reasonable middle-ground solutions, such as limiting the speed to 150 km/h if 130 is considered too low for majority but unlimited speed is just crazy because people tend to overestimate their driving skills and cars' capabilities.
As such, if the autobahn isn't a death trap, is there a good reason to impose a speed limit where there isn't one?
"There's no reason not to" is a rhetorical trick but not an argument.
The title of the article states the reason for restrictions the study is making: "Autobahn speed limit would cut carbon and bring €1bn in benefits, study says"
Not saying the pros weigh against the cons, for anyone or for everyone, just that claiming there is not one reason is patently false in light of the submitted article which this thread is about. One could say, in response to your edited-in last sentence, that pretending there's no reason for it is a rhetorical trick!
I don't know who that is directed to but that does not correspond to my comment.
> that pretending there's no reason for it is a rhetorical trick!
Well, good thing that I neither claimed nor 'pretended' that there is no reason, then...
Now, "emissions" is a weak reason that is used to justify about anything and everything these days, and as already mentioned in another comment, in this case that argument disappears with EVs... so I would not count that as a persuasive reason.
It is a rare sight that you even cross someone going at 200 km/h. First there are continuous construction works on the roads. Then you need to remember the constant traffic jams just about everywhere.
The picture on that article is from the autobahn in Frankfurt with direction to Darmstadt. It is one of the few places with 4 lanes where you can speed at your hearts content for about 10 kilometers and then slow down. This if you are lucky that slow drivers go the right-most lanes, often that doesn't even happen so you have to slow down again.
The only exception are fridays when driving to East Germany and Poland. On those roads you can speed and the large majority of them are just trying to get earlier home and enjoy more time with family.
Quite frankly, the most dangerous road in Western Europe have got to be French highways. In those you get young kids doing all kind of dangerous moves and speeding right behind you without respect. German drivers are noticeably more mature, you drive fast but with experience without thrills.
My favorite highways are the Spanish ones. You can drive for hours completely calm without a worry in the world. Very long straight roads with calm people driving. It is a complete breeze to drive for hundreds of kilometers without stressing you. The only problem is when driving close to urban centres over there.
If you look on statistical data, you will see that France keeps increasing the death on the roads since the past ten years, whereas Germany keeps lowering: https://etsc.eu/euroadsafetydata/
Edit: According to the OECD itf (random source I found on the internet ;)) Germany had 317 deaths on motorways vs 201 in France in 2022.
https://www.itf-oecd.org/sites/default/files/germany-road-sa... https://www.itf-oecd.org/sites/default/files/france-road-saf...
I am not German, but I drive in Germany frequently and I find it liberating when you see the all restrictions lifted sign and I can just floor it for the pure fun of it.
At first I found it pretty intense, but then when I saw space wagons doing 200+ with kids in the back I calmed down and its business as usual now. I just need to remember not to flash slower drivers to signal them to get out of the way.
And this is what upsets me, the no limit Autobahn is part of Germany and now under the guise of climate fight someone wants to take this away from people that actually enjoy it.
Funny that this only happens to people who are advocating for a speed limit. Maybe you should stick to the center of your lane which should be at least 2.50m on the Autobahn. With an average car with a width of 1.80m (VW Golf for example), there should be even 35cm space to the left side of your lane.
I can just say for me German autobahn with its rasers and semi hidden police vehicles around every other corner is always a scary experience. I honestly felt more safe in Bangkok on a scooter than some of these public racing tracks near Munich.
There's F1, race cars, and street-legal sports cars. To me, this sort of performance is on par with the latter category (as one never needs either of those specs in regular driving) and I can definitely see someone calling them a car capable of behaving like a sports car.
There were votes on this topic, your opinion is a minority which by large portion does not even drive cars at all.
Then try to get only people with drivers license to vote and you get a clear opposition to limits.
Buses will not do 200kmh not because nobody can build a really fast bus, but because it will not be great for passengers to go from 200 to 50 really fast :) Basically same as with planes, passenger confort is the priority.
Anyway, if you would read up on Autobahn death statistics, very few deaths are related to over speeding.
If you mean private vehicles, you'd be surprised how even more lax are the regulations for private-owned airplanes. It all depends on the class of your airplane. Speed limits apply mostly on air traffic control direct indications and things like being on the vicinity of airports/corridors.
So yes, flying faster or slower is responsibility of pilots to a great extent of their own travels.
Stop interfering with other people's life. Noone prevents you from driving 130km/h or taking the train.
Exactly. The faster you drive, the more stuff you are emitting. Be it gases, particles, noise.
This is such a controversial issue in Germany (see other comments already here), for this marginal improvement in emissions... people will feel like they are already being impacted by government restrictions and refuse to do more, when switching to an electric vehicle (there's also lots of voices "you can pry my combustion engine from my cold dead hands") would halve the emissions today, let alone when the grid is properly renewable and not running on coal and gas with a whiff of wind.
It seems like the wrong battle to fight to me.
Also for myself: for most trips, I already drive 90~100 km/h on German highways, basically truck speed such that they don't have to overtake me and I'm not a nuisance, but very occasionally I want to save time and drive 120-140. We already buy green power from a provider that actively builds out renewable energy (still, we draw from the gray grid, but we do what we can), and sooner or later we'll be able to get charging infrastructure in a future home and get an electric vehicle. In such a scenario, why should I be impacted by others driving continuously fast in their combustion vehicles? If the goal is lower emissions, why isn't the solution allowing it only for emission-free vehicles? Every vehicle already has a green sticker to be let into low-emission zones, speed cameras can see them as well.
For most people not to feel impacted, the limit would have to be around 140 km/h, but then there's no point: the article already says that 130 helps a lot less than 100 km/h (as in, 4 versus 1.5 Mt, on a total of 148 MtCO2e for the sector). They'll also never get 100 km/h to pass, so any middle ground (such as 120) will have two losing sides.
Everyone is going to feel it's unfair, whether their reason is justified or not, and there are bigger 'favors' to ask of people such as home insulation, reducing beef/lamb consumption somewhat at least, installing a heat pump, using mass transit where available, etc.
Driving this fast was awesome. You have to keep an eye on the horizon because you will be there in less than 10 seconds.
But it was absolutely nuts. As I see it, from an environmental perspective, it's indefensible.
I'll miss the lack of a speed limit, as driving fast is absolutely awesome, but I can't justify the tax of this 'perk' on society.
But for me, as soon as I have the funds I'll swap it for electric.
The modern S60(2010-2015) is a far cry from the sizes of the old models, it was made as small as the P1 era S40. The S80 P3 model is the size of the old S60 P2.
Honestly I cannot say why the engine is so inefficient, maybe it was the weight + it being an automatic, who knows really.
My S60 is from the Ford-era and is basically a Ford Mondeo with volvo interior and exterior. In some sense it's too bad, it's not a 'real' volvo, I always loved the 5-cylinder sound, but I'd rather do 1:14-16
I had to do an emergency break maneuver and almost crashed into the truck. Only then it dawned on me that driving this much faster than the other vehicles is very dangerous. To me it is completely nuts that this is allowed. If you want to drive fast, you can always drive on race tracks...
I rarely went over 130kmh since then, nowadays I mostly cruise at 100-110kmh, because it is the ecological sweet spot of my car and in general it's less stressful.
And we may feel fancy at 200KM/h but you really have to watch out for the anry BMWs/Audi/Merc and so on that will want to pass you at 250-300KM/h.
I would favor variable open road tolling where someone doing "200km/hr" pays a higher, possibly premium rate.
I’d personally love it if this labelling would be illegal, and it had to say “lower local emissions” instead.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1300500/electric-cars-sh...
Which is often lorries, slow vehicles etc. Thus even though you could drive the speed of sound in theory, in reality you can not, unless its very late at night. This is mostly a law that is pushed by carbon groups, to rile up car-centric society against crazy "green" politicians.
Similar things can be seen with the refugee policies. Some Putin puppet pumps a refugeestream into the heart of europe, so that another putinpuppet can win elections. Thats how - if you have no good arguments, you win elections. By manipulating the narrative and forcing your oppossition into retarded splits between reality and principles.
But this does not happen in practice. Even with Rechtsfahrgebot (you must default to stay on the right lane) most people will drive none stop on the left lane. I see this so often that even the right lane becomes faster, because all driver think that they are driving none slow vehicles like trucks, so the can just drive permanently on the left. It is so silly. This came especially clear to me after a two-week holiday in the states, where they have no such thing.
That "study" does not even measure the costs of having more cars on the road for a longer time (congestion increases and increased accidents).
France has a speed limit and yet the car crashes there are more frequent, same for levels of pollution since they use older cars. Go fix France first, please.
One of the things I love about Germany is the Autobahns. If there is no speed limit, most of the time there are physical limitations like vehicles that make people go at reasonable speeds.
I believe going at 140Kph today in a highway is totally reasonable, but politicians want to make it illegal so they have more power over people and because they can fine-tax them billions.
Fines are a huge business.
There is magic in going as fast as you can on the Autobahn - and the sensation when you see your car doing 250-260kmh... best.
Reminds me of Volvo's plans of limiting their cars to 180kmh or less, because "nobody needs that speed anyway".
Then go to a racetrack. Jesus, a public road is not your private formel 1 track.
And 250km/h is not even the fast cars, those zip by at 320 or more.