Speed kills. Or does it?

[Cayman911]

Speeding doesn't kill, Becoming stationary does.

[Fluffy Cat]

Have any of you peeps actually been to Germany?, eh?...
It's not all straight autobahns, a lot of the countryside is like Scotland or NZ. Great alpine roads, yes a lot of the roads are well designed but it's not the roads that make you drink drive, overtake into on coming traffic etc. Nor are they over represented in youth deaths. What sort of moron would allow a child/ 15 year old drive a vehicle that can carry 5 mates.
I agree the Germans are it appears right.
Bugger.

[Toaster]

Say that in Bagdad and you'll get laughed at.

Yep! If you see a "low rider" parked up over there you run like hell!!

[Toaster]

I have been to the German and other higher speed motorways around Europe.

LOVED the long open wider roads, smooth, many lanes, long sweeping bends and separated by concrete and grass median gaps/barriers. Great for relative safety. BUT they did have massive tolls, fog and traffic.... and if a crash happened, all hell breaks loose, especially in fog.

I hit 230 at one point and it felt like 100 less if here. At one stage was going 150 or so and a car flew past so fast the air pressure wave almost sent me off into another lane and really shook.

Oh and they all seemed to have speed limits between 80 or so and 130kmh!

I would point out though that general driver behaviour was far better than here. Polite if anything.... mostly. Flash the headlight and the vehicle ahead almost always pulled over to let you rocket past.

FANTASTIC, but I would HATE to come off/crash at those speeds.... bits of toast everywhere!

[Jonathan]

Hear hear, our roads are crap and ill-maintained; they range from being potholed and uneven with big drifts of loose gravel at the edges
to being so smooth they are like riding on ice when wet. In most sections on our highways traffic going in opposite directions is often squeezed far too close together with no kind of barrier to separate them meaning that if someone stupid inevitably does something stupid it is very difficult, if not impossible, to avoid them.

But then again, even if the money spent on speed awareness and such is diverted into maintaining the roads there is no way that it will be enough to bring our roads up to the standard of Germany and Western Europe. We must face the fact that our roads are not tolled (Germany's aren't either but they are an exception) and our population is minuscule. NZ is approximately 75% of the size of Germany (square kilometres) but has less than 5% of the population size (4M compared to 82M). So, the best we can do is hope that people go slow enough on our crap roads that when they do crash they sometimes don't die too much...

[Jonathan]

FANTASTIC, but I would HATE to come off/crash at those speeds.... bits of toast everywhere!

I very nearly got to experience this when my friend driving our car at 160 along the autobahn fell asleep behind the wheel. Can't blame him though, everyone was asleep in the car.

[Jonathan]

Yargh Argh

[Toaster]

Scary, a few seconds of blankness is a heck of a distance at that speed!

[McJim]

The thing to consider is evidence. I haven't actually had the opportunity to look into this and verify. The other thing to consider is motive. Mercedes Benz, unlike most European car manufacturesrs are still in the business of putting large powerful engines in cars. Most of the cubic centimetres in most Mercedes Benz cars are rendered pretty surplus to requirements by most of the speed limits in their market places (They are the largest supplier of Taxis to the 3rd world) so it;s in the interest of Merc that speed limits are relxed so that their customers are relaxed too.

In short, I smell bias.

[MadDuck]

.... bits of toast everywhere!

Are there any seagulls over there ?

[EJK]

Yay Mercedes. We love you.

[Toaster]

Are there any seagulls over there ?

If you mean good looking birds that have a crack at the Toaster, then yeah. Got me in lots of poo poo.

[MaxB]

One problem we are going to have to face if we are going to get a highly trained, safe driving population is that a lot of drivers especially in the lower socio-economic group will not be able to afford the driving lessons, insurance and road user charges they have overseas.

A lot of European countries have jail time for people caught driving outside their licence conditons.

Politicians seem reluctant to make the changes to prove they are really serious about safety. Maybe adopting Euro laws would take too many of our drivers/voters off the road?

[MadDuck]

If you mean good looking birds that have a crack at the Toaster, then yeah. Got me in lots of poo poo.

Hmmm...Oh oh.

[riffer]

I completely agree with the Mercedes man. Interestingly enough, this is also the position of the AA.

The German's have got it right - engineer a roading network that implicitly suggest tot he driver the correct speed. Even been on back roads, with an open road speed limit, and then suddenly found a corner that was much sharper than the rest of the road - aka, a road built to surprise the driver, not to reinforce the speed needed.

Trouble is in this country people would crash, they'd call it a black spot and reduce the speed for the entire road and send our coppers to police the straight sections.