Putting the Brakes on Germany's Autobahn?

There is something almost mythic about German autobahns. To many they are nothing less than freedom itself, the ability to drive as fast as one's heart desires and one's automobile engine allows. The network of well-maintained, black asphalt ribbons snaking their way across the landscape are symbols for some of one of the last unregulated aspects of German life.

For a first timer on a German highways, the first brush with high-speed, high-performance driving can be an unsettling experience. It's not unusual to be cruising along at a brisk 160 kmh (100 mph) and suddenly feel like you're standing still as a BMW or Mercedes flies past you in the left lane going 200 or 230 kmh (125 or 136 mph).

But that freedom to drive full throttle might be entering its sunset as politicians from across the spectrum renew their demands to "bring sanity" to the country's freeway system. While calls to reign in unfettered drivers have been occasional occurrences in Germany over the years, they have been generally received by the public with a mixture of scorn and derision. This time, however, with gasoline prices at near record highs and increasing concerns about the environment and public safety, the pendulum is swinging toward a grudging acceptance of future limits on highway speed.

"It just makes sense," Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker (photo), chairman of the environmental committee of the German parliament and member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), told DW-WORLD. "We do a lot of things to force industry and households to get their carbon dioxide emissions down, why shouldn't we do the same for cars?"

Last month, he and politicians from across Germany's political spectrum reignited the debate over speed limits, calling for the introduction of a general limit of 130 kph limit (81 mph) throughout the autobahn system.

"It would be good for the environment and the climate, since pollutant emissions go up with high speeds," said von Weizsäcker. "We could avoid unnecessary accidents and keep gasoline consumption down, since at very high speed, gas consumption is very high."

This time the calls for a deceleration are not just coming from the left-leaning SPD and its environmentalist coalition partners, the Greens. The conservative opposition has also shown a willingness to move into the slow lane. Josef Göppel, a parliamentarian for the Christian Social Union and member of that party's environment committee, told reporters he has long been in favor of a general limit of 130 kph and is sure many of his party colleagues feel the same. He added it was now "unavoidable" that the country hold a rational discussion about speed limits.

Next Page: Taboo topic

Rationality has not always characterized past debates about forcing drivers to let up on the gas pedal. Since the construction of the first autobahn between Cologne and Bonn in 1929, there have never been regular speed limits on the system.

A national limit of 100 kmh (62 mph) was imposed during the 1973 energy crisis but was repealed in fewer than four months. In the past, surveys have regularly shown that between 70 and 80 percent of drivers were against putting any kind of general limit on the German freeways.

"The car is something very special in Germany, so discussions about speed limits are not easy," Mathias Knobloch, head of transport policy at Auto Club Europe, a German automobile association, told DW-WORLD. He compares German's affinity for unrestricted speed on the highway to many Americans' feelings about guns.

"In the United States, they say, 'OK, we are free, we can use weapons,'" he said. "In Germany, the equivalent might be 'we are free citizens, we have to drive without a speed limit.'"

He added that just as American politicians tread carefully around the gun issue with voters, leading German politicians have generally been unwilling to wholeheartedly endorse highway speed restrictions. Social Democratic Transportation Minister Manfred Stolpe rejected the most recent calls to introduce a general limit, a stance that did not surprise Knobloch, given the SPD's already low popularity ratings.

"You can't win elections with speed limits, but you can lose them," he said.

Long, close relationship

The country's relationship with cars and driving is long. The first successful internal-combustion engine was constructed in Germany in 1878 by Nikolaus Otto. Today Germany is home to some of the world's leading makers of luxury, high-performance cars. The names Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Porsche have become synonymous with German expertise and play important roles in both the German economy, directly or indirectly employing some 18 percent of the work force, not to mention the national psyche.

"When you buy a car in Germany, you don't do it with your brain, you do it because of the feeling," Jochen Hövekenmeier, spokesman for the AvD automobile club, told DW-WORLD.

He and others in the car industry and related fields are strongly against putting a general limit on autobahn speed. They note that many stretches of the country's 11,980 km (7,444 miles) of freeway already have permanent limits on them and that other sections have so-called dynamic speed limits, which are imposed according to traffic, road or weather conditions.

"We also have to remember where our jobs are coming from," Hövenkenmeier added. "We sell a lot of cars all over the world because we have no speed limit," he said. "People want German cars because they know they've been built for high speeds on the highway."

Those kind of arguments appear to be carrying less and less weight with both politicians and the general public. In a June survey commissioned by the newsmagazine Stern and carried out by the Forsa polling firm, 52 percent of Germans asked said they were in favor of autobahn speed limits, while 45 percent rejected the idea.

European harmonization

But for von Weizsäcker, it is time for Germany to get in line with its European neighbors, all of which have speed limits on their freeways. He also pointed out that after the May 1 expansion of the European Union, Germany lies in its center.

The levels of transit traffic from east to west and vice versa is skyrocketing. A speed limit could help keep traffic moving on the highways, which are almost at capacity.

And while he understands that many drivers enamored with high speeds do not want the state to interfere in what he calls their "masculine showing," he thinks it's time to discard such ideas and cut the speed.

"I believe it's a reasonable thing," he said, "a symbol of mature civilization."