Germany is not only the home of fast, gas-guzzling limousines from the Audi, Mercedes, Porsche, BMW and Volkswagen stables. It is also only place in the world where these mechanical monsters can be driven at the speed they were built to go at.
The German Autobahn or motorway is the planet’s last bastion of unlimited foot on the floor driving. The country has more than 12,000km (750 miles), of such motorway, and driving as fast as you like or can, is permitted on 6,000km of the network.
At a key party congress in Hamburg, the Social Democrats (SPD) voted by a slim majority in favour of a blanket 130kph (80mph) speed limit on the 6,000km of the Autobahn network where driving as fast you can is still legal.
The decision by one of Germany’s two main political parties to break with a tradition that has existed as long as the Autobahn itself was as controversial as an attempt to ban guns from America.
Ernst Dieter Rossmann, a spokesman for the left wing of the party, which backed the idea, said yesterday that the limit was a logical response to global warming. “A speed limit is simply common sense. With the price of car fuel constantly on the rise, everyone knows that we cannot carry on as we are, ” he said.
The SPD’s new initiative came only days after the Nobel laureate Al Gore criticised Germany for not having motorway speed limits during a conference on climate change in Berlin.
In an otherwise rule-obsessed country, being able to drive as fast as you can on the Autobahn has become a potent symbol of what many Germans consider to be one of the few genuine freedoms left to them. As Der Spiegel magazine put it last week: “In a country where nearly everything is regulated, its a question of the joy one experiences in seeing the speed limit dropped – even if its only as far as the next road works. ”
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