The awkward truth about driving on Germany's derestricted autobahn | Ti podcast
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ม.ค. 2024
- Dan Prosser and Andrew Frankel compare the myth of the German autobahn with the stark reality. It is possible to drive very quickly on the derestricted sections, but too often heavy traffic or roadworks stop play. Dan and Andrew also discuss the political debate surrounding the derestriction of Germany's autobahn.
How has the autobahn influenced the design and engineering of German cars? Are derestricted autobahns more dangerous than speed restricted motorways? It's all in this video.
#autobahn #cars #driving
This is episode 195 of The Intercooler podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.
The best writers, the finest stories and no ads, all on The Intercooler’s beautiful online car magazine. Visit www.the-intercooler.com. - ยานยนต์และพาหนะ
@5:20 As a German who likes driving more than almost anything else, it is still not normal for me when I see the sign of all signs. It is still very special and means a lot to me, because I know that it is a privilege and a huge part of the ingenuity of many of the German cars. In my opinion, the derestricted Autobahn is part of our identity and a manifestation of freedom, that needs to be defended over and over again.
Having lived, worked and driven here for nearly 20 years (I'm a Brit) what I would say is that the local standard of driving here is (on average) probably the best in Europe not least because you are taught to drive on an autobahn as part of your driving test. The other thing is which was perhaps missed is that when you drive here you can focus on the conditions, the traffic and the road without being overly concerned about a certain speed limit (where unrestricted). In a many cars 160km/h is very comfortable and dare I say it, a bit boring. Taking the liberty of providing some advice (and although I have the feeling that people are going a bit slower in the last couple of years), for those who visit and are not familiar, even if you think you are going pretty fast, there will often be folks who are much quicker and it is always best to have a really good look in your mirrors before moving left into the next lane. As others in the comments here have said, 250km/h (155mph) is common and even faster is not uncommon. Some locals will happily go at 200km/h+ (124mph) as a cruise on the way home from work and will mostly move right if they are not overtaking. If you really want to visit and use the potential of your car, the eastern part of Germany where the autobahns were rebuilt is often better with less traffic. As a note of caution, there are some parts of the autobahn which are unrestricted which have curves which turn into bends once you are north of 200km/h and some cars can handle very differently as lift becomes a factor especially if it isn't dry. And finally, people who live here, their service dealers (and police) are mostly very serious, thorough and diligent with maintenance and checks (because we have autobahns) especially the chassis and tyres. If you visit I would urge you to do the same before you stretch your car. Oh and the French autoroute comments - I agree if it's busy - but as trucks are mostly not allowed on the weekend -if you are early or late in the day you can cover the ground much more quickly in Germany. Tank size, consumption and fatigue are more the issue.
Sitting at 160ish kph on a long stretch is a massive time saver. Every summer I’m reminded of that when we drive to Italy and I get to compare the pace before/after the border. I often shave 45mins to 1hr off of Google’s estimates with ease without hitting 180kph/112mph. Granted I live here and know when to time traffic (weekend mornings leaving around 6:30). some of the places you mentioned are particularly busy (eg areas near Nürburgring). In the east (former GDR) you find newer, wider emptier autobahns if you wish to try v max for longer stretches, and like you said it isn’t the most spectacular thing after a while - a winding road has much more fun to offer.
POD IS BACK ON TH-cam with a proper podcasting setup. 👏👏👏
Well done for getting this on TH-cam Dan and Andrew, much better 👏🏻. Better conversation in person. Also in the States there are lorries doing 70mph, they aren’t limited to 55mph.
Autobahns are "full" of unmarked police cars. The standard of driving is very good generally. 180kph on a dry day in light traffic is "slow" but at this speed a car approaching from behind is doing 3kms/min or 50M/sec. "Fast" traffic on a dry empty day is approaching 300kph routinely. What does this actually mean? Even if a UK driver is doing 120mph and thinks that they are "fast" there will be a quicker driver approaching from behind at (84M/sec -50M/sec) 34M/sec and unless U.K. drivers understand closing speeds they will always be a risk to local drivers. I rarely use my brakes at speed on the Autobahn. I simply lift off several Kms from behind, and coast up, waiting for the driver ahead to notice me, before re-accelerating. The danger is always a lorry in the right hand lane with a car close behind which appears to suddenly pull out into the left hand land to overtake the lorry, having checked its mirror and seen that the left hand lane was clear behind for 1kms. BEWARE!
Yes.
Please keep the podcast on youtube! Much better this way. 👍
I have just liked the video and it is now at 195 likes (for Ti podcast #195!). 195 likes is way below what this podcast deserves. A fascinating topic handled by a well balanced mature discussion. Well done to The Intercooler.
following the rules and don't be a moron on the derestricted pieces of Autobahn; also, proper driving training and knowledge. In countries where this is happening, the number of deaths is lower. Honestly speaking, ppl get their driving licenses much to easy these days and lack proper understanding of driving, car behaviour, car control and also present a severe lack of capability in anticipating what's going to happen. That's why most of accidents happen!, simply because ppl don't understand what's going to happen 2 or 3 seconds in the future, from the point in time and space where they are situated.
The US and A is the worst kind at this..., honestly, the average american wouldn't pass a driving school examination, here in Europe. They lack basic, I repeat, basic knowledge. This is true for both car driving but also for motorcycling(it is horrendous to see ppl on big bikes not knowing to counter steer in order to take a turn or making figure 8s in advance skill moto programs; ffs, in Europe, if you don't do all of that and more, you don't get to hop on a motorcycle.
At the other spectrum are countries like Holland and Austria, who have reduced the speed limit as much as possible, so much so it terribly unpleasant to drive there, especially in Holland, with their 100 km/h(62mph) autobahn maximum speed and 30 km/h(19mph) in towns; at this lvl, they aren't even pretend that they don't want to force ppl out of their automobiles.
There are few places left in western societes where you can do things that feel like absolute freedom. Driving used to be one of those things and now they want to take that away. Soon, we'll have only the freedom to play chess on bench in the park, maybe not even that, as we could stress some sparrows in the nearby trees.
As a fresh 40 year old men, I am honestly upset that I wasn't born 40 years earlier or at least 100 into the future. The current years we are living look like the worst in history because nothing that is remotly dangerous and enjoyable is allowed to exist.. and it is only getting worse by the day.
Here in the states i would love for people to learn lane discipline, but slow drivers feel entitled to camp in the left lane.
I don't yearn to drive 180mph but would love to be able to cruise at 100-120mph when conditions allowed with no worry of a ticket.
The podcast is way better with you two together in person, less accidental interrupting, it just flows more naturally. And the sound quality is nicely improved! Also being back on TH-cam is great for when I have time to sit down and watch instead of listen on the move
Very interesting, chaps. 👍
I hit 99 on the bahn once. In a diesel Terrano, on a work trip for Nissan Cranfield. Just floored it for miles! I know, a bit rubbish, but hey.
Enjoyed that. Missed you guys
Interesting and well thought through discussion.
I finally visited Germany and the Autobahn. July buddy and I rented from Porsche Stuttgart museum. 911 drive through Germany, and Alps. Loved not worrying about speed.
Have been on the autobahn a few times, mainly A1 Puttgarden to Hamburg and A7 Hamburg - Hannover. I think it really feels great to drive according to circumstances without the fear of 6 month long ban which you get here in Sweden pretty easy.
Speeders paradise I would say! 😁
You have to pick your moments carefully. It can be very stressful in busy traffic but it is lots of fun in the right conditions
Sorry, but i have been driving on the Autobahn since i got my driving lenience. It is definitely faster than in France. Try beating about 4 hours from Berlin to Garmin Partenkirchen (about 700km) . What you need for this is something like BMW 330d (if you are fancy an alpina d3) that looks not out of place and might be an undercover police car and than you have the space you need.
Die Autobahnen im Osten sind ja auch besser ausgebaut als die im Westen ;) besonders von Berlin nach München ;)
@@bjornkumpf274
Geht auch gut in 3 stunden von Helmstedt nach Bonn und speziell NRW ist alles andere als Osten und gut ausgebaut und das ist dann so ziemlich alles im Westen ...
p.s.
Aber in NRW sehe ich ein das es für Leute die nicht gerade da Aufgewachsen sind nicht gerade offensichtlich ist welche Autobahn den gerade fließt und welche nicht ...
brilliant.. so much better sound now they have proper set up.. keep up the good work.
Is it? It sounds quite compressed and hissy to me
The 20mph limit in wales in slooowwww. I just got 3 points for going 33mph 10 meters past the sign. I was decelerating from a 40 to the correct speed.
Fair enough if I was going past a school, or in the middle of the zone. But I drove the whole thing at 20, just came in slightly too fast, and there were absolutely no hazards.
I'm all for speed limits when used in the right way, for safety. But some of these are just silly now.
South of Campbell River BC (Canada) the average speed of cars is about 90 miles per hour (the posted limit is 120kph)
Can you please up the volume on your podcasts - it seems to be only about 50-60% of the average TH-cam video volume.
As an American that lived , worked as drove in Germany, drivers education in Germany is vastly better than in the US.
You also fail to mention, in Germany, late discipline is practiced by everyone driving.
Also when a crash does happen on the Autobahn it can be very bad because of the speeds people can crash at.
For me, the unrestricted parts of the Autobahn have some of the most stressful and difficult driving I've encountered. You have to be on edge, looking at your mirrors should you go for high speed in the left lane (someone could come from behind). You have to make sure you don't suddently enter into a 120kph zone, so be ready to slow down. When you are driving in the right lane and have to overtake trucks or very slow cars, it's a constant care and worry about over taking, estimating distances of cars in your mirrors and intentions of drivers going 40-100+kph faster than you. And then you drive in France, Belgium or Italy, everyone cruising at 130-140, everyone is calm and safe (relative vehicle speeds are within 10kph. I used to think the Autobahn is how is driving should be, but having lived it, I prefer the calm roads of the surrounding countries. That is freude am fahren. Not, can I trust a complete stranger with my life, over and over and over again on the A-bahn.
Regarding the death rates in US vs. Germany, I think the most important factor is that US driving tests are a joke. I feel like most drivers in germany seem to know what they are doing. Also, when you are used to see cars flying by at 150 mph, you adapt to it. You do watch your mirrors more carefully before you change lanes and you keep an eye on your mirror when you are in the outside lane.
I really like your differentiated way of looking at doing high speeds by the way. I think it's fairly safe to do 120 mph+, as long as the traffic isn't too bad and you don't agressively tailgate people. If the traffic is bad, you better adapt to the flow and go as fast as everyone else.
Yes studio studio, it has exposed conduit. How about a chapter breakdown gents?
In my experience, BMW M products are limited to around 167mph…
I had an Alpina D5 which would get to 177mph, I was told the BMW M models were mainly electronically limited above the usual 155 mph gentlemens agreement too 👍
I had an RS6 C7 after the D5, that was limited to bang on 155mph however
Every buys into driving properly on there, every understands the rules , not like the u.k. Having worked in Germany and driven it is refreshing and serious in both aspects.
Speed gets a disproportionate amount of attention because it's low hanging fruit. It's the easiest thing to spot and enforce. Studies have also shown that speed enforcement encourages better behavior all around.
As an American, I'm conflicted about this because driving conditions have gotten so bad over the past decade. Lack of education, sensible regulation and law enforcement are all massive problems. In some areas it's an absolute nightmare, rivaling the worst of Russian dashcams. I can't help but wonder how Germans would react if they were faced with conditions this bad.
More cynically, I'd argue that speeding is the only thrill for your average enthusiast. They don't have the skill or nuance to appreciate handling so all they do is drag race and speed, followed by panic braking any time the road bends.
Those studies are nonsense
The truth is that accidents will happen because drivers can never be perfect, and accidents at high speed are exponentially more deadly.
One added problem of driving in the US is that there is NO compulsory driver education!
The issue isnt speedlimits, its non-adaptive ones. 130kph everywhere is not really effective. If you drive in western germany, you get lots of curvy-hilly parts with no runoff signed to 100, yet ppl still drive so dangerously there inside the speedlimit. in flat eastern germany there is no reason to go 130 if the road is free. what would make sense is adaptive speedlimits depending on time of day, weather and congestion. there are already plenty of signs like that but for some reason they always only go up to 130 instead of lets say 160 oder 190.
Just wondering, in the light of this, what you think of offering EV’s with ludicrously fast acceleration to anyone and everyone?
In your podcast it sounds as if everyone who drives on the autobahn in Germany instantly wants to drive around at 100 miles or more.
For you british journalists it might be that way but for sure not for 90% of german autobahn users. I'm German, I drive around 60,000 km a year, half of it on the autobahns. The reality is that most people want to get to their destination swiftly at 130 to 150 kph but don't want to drive their family car in late puberty like races against the clock or against themselves. Like many other Germans, I have absolutely no idea how fast my car really goes. Of my 30,000 km a year on motorways, perhaps 10 km were driven faster than 150 kph and maybe 500 were faster than 130 kph.
Still, it's very comforting to know that I could legally pass another car at 160 or 180 kph if necessary.
But if you really feel that in your country everybody would just press the pedal to the metal as soon as they enter a motorway then a general speed limit might actually be the better choice for you.
You are bound to know you can match this professional studio for the price of a few rentals in every respect except one. And that is I bet you are meeting in this studio 1/2 way between where you both live. That’s the bit you are paying for. The rest you can set up yourselves for very little if you have a monitor and a laptop (and btw, I see you are using your own laptop…). Anyway, great new setting and improved quality. Lastly, the place to see a Napier Deltic is in the York Railway Museum where you can go and touch one, see how vast it is and it benefits from being cut-away to see its innards.
Headline topic from: 5:04
Awesome podcast guys but if you want to film this and post to TH-cam you need a more interesting and car oriented background and decor. Just a thought. Cheers!
No speed cameras, no police cars , no unmarked police cars, no do-gooding dash-cam vigilantes, it’s just you and the A-Bahn. For me, this makes for a calming, focused experience where I can get on with the sheer enjoyment of coordination, anticipation and acceleration inherent in driving swiftly and well. Yes, there’s always the Dutch tourist in the pork-pie hat in his Skoda drifting into the fast lane…but it’s still one of the last bastions of freedom we’ve got before the Woke finally take over.
Then you cross the border into Switzerland and the opposite slaps you in the face 😂
I do love the freedom to not worry so much about the speedometer even when I’m taking it easy
Your description of the joy of driving was eloquent. Someone who "gets it."
@Pkari, when I drive through France (from the UK), I see a lot of drivers from B, Ch, and sometimes from further away, Est, etc. I do remember a stubborn Swiss-registered driver who wanted to drive slow in the left-side lane. When I over/under taked in the right-hand lane that was travelling faster, he very stubbornly ensured to overtake me. I could feel his rage with me for "breaking the rules." Belgian drivers were typically very fast but capable and adaptable to others. I like to drive around good drivers and they tend to be Belgians.
As an American, we have some shockingly dumb drivers. Allowing them to go over 75 or so mph scares me. There are folks that go 50 in 35's, residential areas. 40 through school zones. I see this every day. I'm sure everyone does. Americans aren't the only dumb ones. But my country is so much bigger than yours. To visit family, I'm driving a minimum of 350 miles. 5.5-7 hours depending on construction / stops.
Part of the problem is the long stretches where you're inside "city limits" of some nowheresville that's decided it's city limits are 15 miles outside the populated area, and slow the speed limit right on down in order to get folks on the speeding ticket income, because that's realistically the only way that they make money as a municipality. But I want to take this a slightly different direction because why not. I thought about going out for a pilot's license, because it'd be super convenient if I could go rent a plane for a week to or a weekend to visit family on a more or less entry-level pilot's license, swing down and back in a weekend. Most aircraft one can rent with that level of licensure max out their airspeed around 70mph. Fair enough. What about trains? I'd have to drive 3 hours, partially in the wrong direction, to catch a train that'll at most do 50-60 mph. It'll take longer by train, in other words, even direct.
If we had trains that could go 300kph, a TGV kind of situation, problem solved. We'd visit family so much more often. If speed limits are raised so we can get there that much faster, call it 80-85mph on the interstates, still running into 18-wheelers and endless construction clogging the roads. And most importantly, if you give that ability to any idiot who's license test is make 3 rights and parallel park, take a written test that says you know not to take a truck that weighs 18 tons on a bridge with a weight capacity of 15, then the problem isn't being solved for real. Folks will bin it.
I'm not pro-speed limit or anti-speed limit. I'm pro-getting-somewhere-quickly-and-cheaply. I just don't fundamentally trust folks can handle that responsibility when they haven't been properly trained and tested. As a car enthusiast, I wish we had better and more trains. More folks would take them, allowing me to have my fun more safely. And when I just need to go from A to B, fast, 0 thought, 0 effort. Take a nap.
Any conversation about speed is, as mentioned, about a lot more than speed.
sorry you are talking absolute b*ll*x. Driving on any shared public road at 150mph is nothing but plain stupid and really isn't safe for you or the poor other unsuspecting souls you entangle with when things go wrong.
I know this because i live in Germany and have seen plenty of awful fatalities from this school boy behaviour. .