Will the Autobahn Finally Get Speed Limits?

A heated debate over fast driving in Germany can tell us something about freedom in America too.

The round sign is iconic, printed on T-shirts and keychains. A black circle rings the perimeter, with five black lines slicing diagonally from bottom left to top right. To spot this sign in the wild, you must head to Germany, where it is a familiar presence along the country’s dense network of autobahns. Its meaning: no limits. Although the German government “recommends” a top speed of 130 kph, or 81 mph, drivers on the majority of the autobahn’s 8,000-plus miles can go as fast as they like. (Only about 30 percent of the network has posted limits.) Although most drivers hover around that 130 kph threshold, some take full advantage of the autobahn’s freedoms. A video on YouTube, filmed via a GoPro at dashboard level, shows the driver of a Bugatti Chiron hitting 417 kph (259 mph)—more than triple the highest U.S. speed limit of 85 mph. Another video features a carload of young Americans shrieking “Byeeee!” at the vehicles fading in the rearview mirror as their car zooms along at over 100 mph.

Autobahn speed may be unregulated, but an array of rules still dictates driving behavior. Slower traffic must keep to the right, and passing is allowed only on the left. Impatient drivers may come uncomfortably close to a slower vehicle and flash their headlights—Lichthupe, as the Germans call it—demanding that the car ahead move over. Driving on the autobahn can be exhilarating—or terrifying. “The airflow really hits you when a car passes you going 250 kph,” said Giulio Mattioli, a transportation researcher at TU Dortmund who grew up in Italy. “You really feel it—boom!—and your car moves slightly to the right.” 40% German, a website run by expats, notes that driving on the autobahn demands quick reaction times when conditions change: “One minute you’re blasting down the road at 170 kmh, and then suddenly there’s a massive traffic jam.”

Germany’s laissez-faire attitude toward highway speed makes the country an outlier, not only in Europe but globally. A 2014 analysis found only one other place in the world without speed limits: Australia’s Northern Territory, which has since adopted them. With unlimited speed its defining feature, the autobahn has grown internationally famous. It lends its name to everything from a classic 1970s techno song to Politico’s current transportation newsletter. Decades of fast driving have left a cultural imprint on the country. “As far as quasi-religious national obsessions go for large portions of a country’s population, the German aversion to speed limits on the autobahn is up there with gun control in America and whaling in Japan,” the New York Times’ Berlin bureau chief once wrote.

But German attitudes are shifting. Five years ago, the country’s parliament debated something that would have once felt unthinkable: a national autobahn speed limit. That proposal was voted down, but the issue continues to fuel fiery disagreements. A growing number of Germans are dubious about a policy whose benefits are harder to quantify than its costs—in terms of safety as well as pollution. Although polls show that a majority of Germans support the imposition of autobahn speed limits, the country still invites drivers to floor it. For now.

The autobahn began during the darkest chapter in German history. Its first 14-mile section opened on May 19, 1935, connecting Frankfurt to the nearby city of Darmstadt. Adolf Hitler himself was on hand to mark the occasion with a parade and rally captured on film. Expanding the autobahn network was a national priority under the Third Reich; about 120,000 workers (including many forced laborers) built 3,800 kilometers of roadway over the next six years. To conserve gasoline, the Nazis imposed strict speed limits—including on the autobahns—when they were in power. (During the war, private cars and gas were in such short supply that the autobahns were temporarily opened to bicyclists.)

In 1953 West Germany got rid of a slew of other Nazi-era regulations, and the speed laws were dumped too. With drivers suddenly free to go as fast as they liked, even on local streets, traffic deaths surged. The country was torn on what to do next, with some arguing that new speed limits were essential for road safety, and others dismissing the rise in crashes as an inevitable consequence of growing car ownership. Business interests factored in as well, said Christian Traxler, an economics professor at Berlin’s Hertie School who has studied autobahn policy: “Speed limits on streets were perceived as threatening to the West German car industry.”

The national auto industry, led by Volkswagen, BMW, and Daimler, was becoming an economic powerhouse. If cars’ speed was constrained, the argument went, vehicles would be less useful and sales would fall. (In the U.S., historian Peter Norton has documented similar fears among American automakers in the 1920s that led the industry to propose crosswalks and jaywalking laws to keep traffic flowing freely.)

After acrimonious debate, in 1957 West Germany left its autobahns alone, but it did adopt 50 kph speed limits (about 30 mph) within urban areas. At the time, an absence of highway speed limits was a relatively common policy in Europe (unlike in the U.S.). Then, in the early 1970s, the global oil crisis caused the price of gasoline to skyrocket, creating shortages and draining foreign reserves. Many European countries, including Italy in 1973 and Denmark a year later, adopted motorway speed limits as a strategy to conserve gasoline. Under similar pressures, West Germany considered following suit. It actually did, a little bit. To study the effect on safety, the West German government limited speeds on some sections of the autobahn but not on others. It was a “fantastic randomized control trial,” said Traxler. The result: Crashes on slower autobahn sections fell. The speed limits were particularly good at reducing accidents that resulted in serious injury or death.