I spent five hours on the German autobahn yesterday (Saturday).....traveling down from Mainz to Saarbrucken, crossing the border into France, and spending ninety minutes at a French grocery store.
The bulk of travelers on the autobahn (roughly three-quarters) were going in the 90 to 120 kph range (55 to 75 mph). Over the 150 kph speed? (93 mph) I would take a guess that fewer than 2-percent of the cars that I noticed.
At some point with no traffic and great weather conditions, I hit 175 kph for about five minutes (108 mph).
The problem with this current German public discussion over bringing speed limits onto the German autobahn system is that probably a quarter of the population will occasionally go above this ideal speed 'limit' of 130 kph (80 mph).
The problem of danger? It goes to density of traffic, weather, and general road conditions. The pro-speed limit crowd have a point, if they were including these three elements into the bigger discussion. You could easily identify hot summer heat affecting asphalt pavement, causing potential 'blowouts' of the pavement. You could easily identify black-ice conditions throughout the winter months. You could easily identify 5-percent of the autobahns in Bavaria as being marginally 3-star for high-speed travel (the ripple-effect as you drive along at 150 kph). You could identify snow-fall periods in January where an inch of snow could fall in twenty minutes, and you ought to down to 40 kph on the autobahn.
The A4 going east out of Giessen toward Dresden? With the exception of traffic periods around 7 to 9 AM or 4 to 6 PM.....you would rarely find any dense traffic on the autobahn.
Eventually, I expect this to turn into a state by state discussion, and you end up with twelve German states where 130 kph is the max speed on any autobahn. The rest will all remain as they are today.....with no limit.
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