Safe Speed Forums

Has anyone lived or worked in Germany in recent years, and travelled extensively on their motorways? I lived and worked there in 1996-97, have been a frequent visitor since, then and have driven tens of thousands of km on the motorways there.

At quiet times, and in parts of the country that are not heavily populated, motorway speeds of 180-190kph are very common, and completely safe and OK. The absence of any speed limit makes for very relaxing driving which tends to sharpen up focus and concentration. You also get to where you are going in half the time, so arrive more refreshed.

Back in the UK, with its ridiculously low 70mph motorway speed limit and the heavy enforcement culture, I think that stress levels imposed on drivers are consequently are much higher. I would be interested to know if comparable accident statistics are available for these two regimes with very different road safety cultures.

I have to say that in two years of driving all over Germany on the autobahns I only ever saw evidence of two accidents, and both these coincidentally involved 42-ton trucks with large trailers. I found my normal comfortable travelling speed to be around 180kph (about 115mph), but often travelled as a passenger with other drivers who drove much faster than this. They all had 20+ years of accident-free driving at these speeds, so the phrase 'speed kills' is self-evidently stupid and meaningless.

Anyone got any experience of driving there, or other jurisdictions with no speed limits in force?

Any thoughts on this?

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'The normally careful and competent actions of a reasonable person should be considered legal, regardless of the letter of statute'

Rioman, Herts

See:
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/germany.html
and
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/international3.html

You hit one of my favourite nails on the head when you said: "safety culture". See:
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/roadsafety.html

And finally...

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I have only ever driven in Germany on two occasions, once in mid 1980's and once in the late 80's.

I have to say that of all the countries I drove in (Holland, Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy and England) the Germans were by far the most courteous drivers and had the best lane discipline.

I was also fortunate enough to be driving high powered cars, the first time a new 535 BMW and the second time a new M3 BMW. I achieved short bursts of 240kph in the 535 and sustained runs between 220 and 250 in the M3.

I always reduced my speed when approaching more than one car in the right lane in case one pulled out. In the week of driving I never had anything like a 'moment' as no-one ever seemed to pull out, even in reasonably heavy traffic, if they could see a car approaching in the left lane.

I always drove with my headlights on and I also kept a sharp eye in the mirror for any traffic moving faster than I was. It was truly the most wonderful driving experience I have ever had.

For about 20 minutes on one section I was driving at an almost constant 250kph with another BMW and watching the cars clear away ahead was amazing.

Speed is purely relative to the situation. I would never even have considered driving at those speeds when I was in the UK as it would have been entirely inappropriate but in Germany it just seemed right.

In Australia the road discipline is absolutely atrocious and the courtesy almost non-existent. In Victoria you get booked for doing 4kph (2.5mph) over any speed limit including motorways which have a limit of 110kph (almost 70mph) and you would lose your licence for driving more than 25kph (16mph) over any limit or exceeding 125kph (78mph) anywhere in the state.

If you enjoy driving do not come to Victoria, there is nowhere other than a race track that you can even consider driving at a reasonable pace.

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Ross

Yes I'm a hoon, but only on the track!!!!

Hm.. that sounds like the place for me! What is the cost of living like in Victoria?

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I stole this .sig

I'm sure that you would:



Do you want help packing? It appears that this is a fast-track to what the UK is turning into, and it sounds awful to me. Give me courtesy, road dicipline and the ability to control my own actions everytime.

I don't know, but I'm sure we could have a whip round...

(Only joking - we love you really BW)

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

I lived in Munich for 8 years up to 1994. As I am sure you are aware, Germany has less yobbos than we do. Germans in general are law abiding, regular people, much more so than Brits, anyway. There is less chaos there – things work. They are much more able to get with the programme (which has its downsides as well).

I don't think we can introduce their system here because many brits don't have the mental discipline to measure up to it. It would be instant carnage as yobbos race up down at murderous speeds in 200 horsepower cars! I'm not saying it would never be possible to sort out the British, but it is going to take a long time and a lot of ASBOs!

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I stole this .sig

The world wide web has reached Australia now, so I'd still be able to chat to my 'fast-lane' pals.

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I stole this .sig

So it's not about speed, it's about attitude, alertness and driver education. Does the Germans' experience illustrate that travelling speed, as an isolated value, really is irrelevant to accident causation? If this is so, why do other jurisdictions seem to ignore all the real causes of accidents and and police only the irrelevant factor of speed? What kind of stupidity is this?

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'The normally careful and competent actions of a reasonable person should be considered legal, regardless of the letter of statute'

Rioman, Herts

So the solution is to support the current policy then (which you do, BW)?? Dumb it all down to the level of the cheapest, lowest common denominator rather than invest in raising the bar.

Sometimes you contradict yourself so....

One was the double fatal on 22/12 on A74 which closed the road for over 24 hours. Weather conditions were bad with high winds.
One where an HGV ran into the back of a slow moving crane. I'll leave any assumptions to yourself as I don't know whether the inquest has been completed on that one


Hard to say, speed would be a factor. but if it was due to falling asleep, the driver has little control over his a) collision speed, and b) his own injury avoidance strategy.

Tired drivers are not generally driving at speeds much in excess of 70 mph in any case.



These pedestrians were acting illegally. These are the news reports.

One
Two
Three.

We knew about two of the three pre-collision and were trying to do something before tragedy struck.


There were a few more fatalities the previous year which followed a more traditional pattern. I have no figures for them or causation stats - sorry. I'd imagine the reduction of collisions from 2003 to 2004 would be seen as justification.

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Fixed ideas are like cramp, for instance in the foot, yet the best remedy is to step on them.

Ian

Paul,

You had me fooled. For one moment, I had mistakenly believed that the main thrust of this site/debate was motorway speeds were inappropriately low. Now I realise I was wrong, you actually believe that "drivers should be able to pick their speed in all conditions" - presumably including urban environments (a subject close to my heart).

Rather than take note of the speed limits put in place by traffic planners, your suggestion is to let your team of superdrivers take matters into their own hand - tell me if I wrong in my supposition?

I'll grant you this, your members have a lot of spunk. What could possess them to think that their knowledge of local conditions allow them to be better positioned to judge a "safe speed" than a traffic planner who has probably taken into account local influences such as accident blackspots, imperfect camber, concealed entrances, etc.

Furthermore, not withstanding the ability of your super-drivers to observe, assimilate and compute the optimum driving speed (this should be made a lot easier by the fact that they no longer have that tiresome impediment of actually looking at the speedo that is positioned right in their field of vision), they're going to have to do this right through the British Isles like a SATNAV.

The other thing that troubles me about this breed of superdrivers who have been specially trained to judge the best speed limit, is the poor souls like me who take comfort from the fact that somebody more experienced than me has suggested/imposed a maximum driving speed.
Are we going to be kept off the road, perhaps you have a eugenics programme planned, or some type of profiling algorithm whereby the members of SafeSpeed sit outside BMW dealers "taking out" potential customers - what's left for us?

Actually, before I forget, I'm going to start a new topic where I can pin my colours to the mast for all to see. It's going be called "The Food Chain - Where I Rank Road Users" - I urge you all to contribute.

PS: Ian, thanks for the lengthy reply. I'll give it the attention it deserves when I have time later today/weekend.

PPS: You're a little premature in rushing to judgement on whether the 30 km/h works in Stockholm. Its only been in place for 45 days.

The kind that allows politicians to pretend that they are doing something about the "dreadfull situation", while avoiding the unpleasent costs of looking for real solutions, such as 10,000 additional fully trained traffic police and proper road improvements such as by-passes that would remove much of the conflicts between motor vehicles and other groups. The fact that they have a self funding mechanism for doing it is a great bonus, and if a little "spin" (this is New Labour Spin, i.e. total fabrication) is necessary, well it worked before and will work again.

There is a book called Wizards First Rule, which is a fantasy fiction and probably not to everybodies taste, but underlying it is some basics about human nature. The First Rule demonstates how to do "magic" just using words:



Ther plural is important - people collectively are stupid, individuals might not be, but that doesn't matter. "Speed Kills" has been rammed down our throats since Labour came into power, and it doesn't matter that it isn't true; anti-motoring groups want it to be true (it does sound plausible doesn't it?), others fear it to be true, and the Government have been able to use it as a justification for stopping dead all planned road improvements thus avoiding awkward conflict with roads protestors, and saving a significant amount of money at the same time....

.

Paul,

Sincerely, I'm sorry to trouble you further but I forget to ask you this in my earlier email. As you know I'm new to the site and not able to navigate so easily. Perhaps to better my understanding you could point me to these new piece of data - a link maybe.

What also would be useful, would be a link to something illustrating your progress, maybe a letter of support from an MP (Tory?) or a Motoring Group, or perhaps evidence that road regulators are embracing this new science.

I'm sure its out there on the site somewhere, I just can't be bothered to trawl through it.

Many Thanks

EB

Just to let you know where I'm coming from,

I don't see this as new science.

Simply the analysis and evaluation of old science.

The recognition of what was right wrt road safety.

And the recognition that things have recently gone a bit wrong.

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Fixed ideas are like cramp, for instance in the foot, yet the best remedy is to step on them.

Ian

No question that you are right in the perfect world. I quite like the aspirational aspect - you just want to improve communications and everything will be OK. We should invest in raising the bar in the UK, standards have slipped. The trouble is getting everybody on the same page. In the real world, we need simple messages, like ‘obey the highway code or we will ban you’, and good people need to actually do it.

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I stole this .sig

2003's M6/A74 stats were subject to some heated discussion on the CSCP forum

From memory (I stand to be corrected) the SG made a big issue of 2004's fatals being much reduced from 2003's. 2003's total, was I think, 15. It took much probing to get to the real truth ie this was by far the worst year in the last 10. (I think the next worst was 7 or 8)

Shame the forum isnt viewable as this topic is worth revisting

So no suprise at all that 2004 was a big reduction on 2003.

But CSCP started up on 1/4/03; they operated on the M6/A74 corridor for 8 out of those 12 months - clearly it didnt work...

Steve to quote, said CSCP sought "special permission" to operate on the M6. Was that "special permission's" real reason to enable CSCP to maximise its income

So come on JJ (or whoever's turn it is today on his profile) tell us why they are targeting any driver at 79mph+ when Ian isnt, using his experience and discretion where appropriate.

Road safety entirely depends on drivers seeing hazards and adjusting speed to suit. This process does not involve the speedometer.



The traffic planner does not know the weather conditions, daylight or darkness, type of vehicle, behaviour of other road users, condition of the road surface and a thousand other things that drivers must account for.

We're not talking about 'superdrivers'. We're talking about making a good system better by small nudges.

Driver's speed choice according the the conditions is an irreplaceable fundamental component of road safety.

And that's the last reply you'll get from me UNLESS you deal with the central points of my replies.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

And just to show what good enforcing a motorway limit does:

85th percentile speeds for the M6 sites are as follows:
Tebay, 91 mph
Brunthwaite, 88 mph
Capplerigg, 83 mph
Cowperthwaite, 87 mph

The average speeds for the M6 sites are as follows:
Tebay, 79 (80) mph
Brunthwaite, 81 (79) mph
Capplerigg, 75 (82) mph
Cowperthwaite, 80 (78) mph

2003 speeds are in brackets.

So well done CSCP for slowing everyone down. Not.

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Carl Prescott

Help me Paul, list the outstanding points for me as they've been lost in this quagmire of discussion.

Then I'll get back to you.

Thanks for your patience.