In late January, Germans got wind of a proposal by a government-commissioned taskforce calling for a top speed limit of 130 kilometers per hour (80 miles an hour) on all stretches of the country’s autobahn highway system. Desisting from the hallowed practice in Germany of putting the pedal to the metal on the speed limit-free parts of the highway system, the taskforce said, would be the easiest and least expensive way to reduce the carbon emissions that help cause climate change. The country’s transport minister, however, said the idea went “against all common sense.” Chancellor Angela Merkel sought quickly to unruffle feathers by consigning the proposal to bureaucratic death via “further study.”
To an American observer, the German autobahn speed limit debate looks much like the struggle in the United States over gun control: full of sound and fury but ultimately going nowhere. Yet beneath the current rhetorical battles, the German autobahn speed saga harbors some intriguing twists and turns that make it quite special. Not least of these oddities is that today’s proponents of autobahn speed limits have Adolf Hitler on their side.
