Autobahn Accidents: Are They Common?
The Autobahn is famous for its laissez-faire attitude toward speed. Do German regulations counteract potential speed-related safety issues?
Written by Alex Reale
Reviewed by Lisa Steuer McArdle
Speed limits are the comfortable sneakers of car rules: sensible, uncontroversial, and cheerfully adopted by lots of people. And they tend to save lives, too—research shows that high speed limits tend to invite unsafe driving, and more
crashes
.Germany, famously, doesn’t totally buy in. The highway system in this country, called the Autobahn, has major stretches that don’t impose any speed limits at all. This begs the question: are accidents on the Autobahn common?
Jerry
, the trustworthy insurance comparison app, takes a look.A brief history of the Autobahn
The Autobahn, reports
MotorTrend
, has its roots in a 1913 highway project called Automobil Verkehrs und Übungsstraße (Automobile Traffic and Training Road). This small tract of road officially opened in 1921, and it laid the groundwork for the next few decades of building. The Nazi party was responsible for much of the construction of a highway system that they called the Reichsautobahn. Throughout the reign of Hitler, the Reichsautobahn was expanded, and when work on it stopped in 1943, the road comprised about 1,300 miles.
After the end of World War II, the road was renamed the Bundesautobahn (Federal Highway) and the newly formed West German government set about patching up the holes that the Allies, and the Nazis themselves, had created during the war.
Over the course of the next half-century, as Germany refashioned itself in fits and starts, the highway eventually grew into the 8,078-mile super network, called simply the Autobahn, that it is today.
Let Jerry find your price in only 45 seconds
No spam · No long forms · No fees
What’s so special about the Autobahn?
Besides being quite a massive system—MotorTrend notes that in 2004, Germany’s highway ranked as the third largest in the world—the Autobahn has a few attributes that set it apart.
For one thing, says
MotorBiscuit
, road quality is taken very seriously by the Germans. The Autobahn is composed of a “freeze-resistant concrete mix,” which means safer winter driving, and maintenance is not just a suggestion—the authorities have scheduled checks in place to ensure that any damage is mitigated right away. Pesky potholes and faded lane lines are not tolerated.So you’ll be driving on a smooth dream of a road if you take the Autobahn, but the biggest differentiator on the German road is a bit more dramatic: on much of it, you can drive as fast as you want. There are whole stretches that have no official speed limits whatsoever, only suggestions.
Even if you’re going a speedy 80 mph, you might well see a BMW whipping past you.
MORE: What is the Fastest BMW?
So is it safe?
Without official speed limits, safety is effectively crowd-enforced: all the drivers on the Autobahn have to be extra self-aware. If you can handle hanging with the big dogs, great, but if you can’t—you better be safely out of the way.
The left lane/right lane distinctions, so often treated with indifference in the U.S., are of paramount importance in Germany. It’s not so much courtesy as bodily safety that dictates staying in the right lane, unless passing or agreeing to go the speed of left lane traffic, which is often well in excess of 100 mph.
Self-awareness is a nice safety feature, but MotorBiscuit also notes that Germany has a high barrier to entry for getting a driver's license. It’s a lengthy, expensive, and sometimes difficult process, so you know that German drivers are, at the very least, highly disciplined. Plus, individual vehicles’ maintenance requirements are highly regulated, and behaviors like tailgating or passing on the right are fined.
So we have crowd-sourced enforcement, a well-trained driver population, and well-kept cars and roads. Does this mean the Autobahn is extra safe?
A
New York Times
report from 2019 noted that “The number of deadly accidents on stretches of autobahn that have a speed limit is 26 percent lower than on those without. In 2017, 409 people died on the autobahn and in almost half the cases, the reason was inappropriate speeding, according to the German statistics office.”The answer, annoyingly, is…yes and no. Yes, if you’re aware of your surroundings and don’t attempt to drive beyond your own limits. No, if you’re engaging in “inappropriate speeding.” So go ahead and book that German road trip—if you’re ready to take on the Autobahn.
4.7
