From: orchard@informatik.uni-ulm.de (John Orchard)
Subject: Re: Passing cars on the right...why?
Organization: Uni-Ulm
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 92 12:06:36 GMT

In article <1992Apr15.013802.23837@menudo.uh.edu>, kevin@taronga.taronga.com (Kevin Brown) writes:
> 
> Unfortunately, the distribution of the original article was USA only.

But I got it anyway for some reason. Thanks, though.

> 
> In article <11819@sail.LABS.TEK.COM> vinay@sail.LABS.TEK.COM (Vinay Sathe) writes:
> >
> >	An interesting experience from Germany: 
> >	
> >
> >	A couple of years ago I took a ride from 
> >	Frankfurt to Munich. On a stretch of the Autobahn, 
> >	there were only two cars in sight. One was ours, 
> >	driving at about 90mph rapidly approaching the 
> >	other car driving in left lane at ~ 50 mph. 
> >
> >	Vinay Sathe 
> >	vinay@sail.labs.tek.com
> 
> This is why it is illegal to pass on the right in Germany.  There, the
> convention is that you will pass on the left and *only* the left.
> 
> The bozo that was acting like a typical American driver by hogging the
> left lane violated this convention and endangered *everyone* on the
> road in his vicinity by making the driving situation less predictable
> and thus harder to respond to.The car in the left would be expected to move to the
> right *immediately*, and failing to do that could very well cause an accident
> in a 130 mph closure situation.

I am a native Californian living and working in Germany, and I've been here
for about two months now. I've driven quite a bit on the autobahns, and I
obviously can't help but notice the differences between US and German driving.

On the two lane autobahns there really are very few bozos who stay in the
left lane. Just as it should be. But there are still problem drivers. There
are idiots who pop into the left lane to pass and seem to take forever to
pass and get over. These guys are truly the biggest danger on the autobahn.
Trucks especially are guilty when passing other trucks (it's called "Battling
Elephants" here). You just cannot be sparing with the brakes when you drive
on the autobahn.

> 
> The reason the accident rate in the U.S. is so high is because *everyone*
> (well, you know what I mean :-)  ) who drives a car is a bozo.  Nobody
> out there on the road gives a damn about the safety of the people around
> them (to the extent that they endanger their *passengers*).  The fact that
> they're late to work is of much more importance to them, and of course they
> think they have the *right* to do anything that gets them to work on time,
> including things like traversing 4 lanes in a matter of a couple of seconds,
> cutting others off in order to make the exit they were about to miss because
> they were too busy talking on their cellular phone, driving over the GRASS
> in order to make their exits, tailgating, refusing to move out of their
> lane (if there is a lane to their right) so that someone else may pass,
> and a whole host of other driving obscenities.

In Germany, there are these people too. Only they generally stick to the 
right lane. But they still cause problems. Weaving, tailgating, poor merging,
and generally not paying attention is not unheard of here.

But there needs to be a serious reshaping of the way Americans drive. There
is no reason other than bad drivers that keeps the accident rates so high in
the US. The roads in Germany are not perfect, and there are many US highways
that I've been on that are more logically laid out and safer, were it not
for the quality of the drivers. Traffic, too, is often lighter in the US.

I must say that city driving in the US is FAR superior. In the large
cities I've driven in (Hamburg, Munich, Stuttgart), driving ettiquette is
pretty much thrown out the window and it's you against the world. I
had to describe driving in Munich to one of my German friends as somewhat
"mediterranean", and he had to agree. It was much worse than driving in
any of the US cities I've driven in (San Francisco, LA, Wash DC).

Here's some stats I got out of the German Car magazine "Auto Motor und Sport"
issue dated March 20, 1992. Page 216, in an article discussing the pros and
cons of speed limits.

Country                  speed limit(km/h)      hwy deaths(per million km)
-----------              --------------         -------------------------
Netherlands              120                       3.2
United Kingdom           112                       3.8
Denmark                  100                       4.9
Switzerland              120                       4.9
Germany                   -                        6.0
United States             89                       6.7
Japan                    100                       7.0
Belgium                  120                       9.5
Finland                  80-120                   10.2
France                   130                      10.4
Italy                    110-130                  12.7
Austria																		130																						15.7
Portugal                 120                      39.3
Spain                    120                      61.0

Notice that ALL of the countries in the list with lower death rates than the
US have higher speed limits. It is very interesting to see where Germany's
highway death rate is... Lower than the US's.


> 
> 		Kevin Brown (kevin@taronga.taronga.com)
>
> 

John Orchard        orchard@informatik.uni-ulm.de
Newsgroups: rec.autos