Germans asked to reduce "Fahrvergnügen"
Due to global warming the United Nations has advised Germany to finally put speed limits on all its roads. Until now it was normal for a 210 km/h Porsche driver to overtake the 175 km/h BMW-driving businessman on the german "Autobahn". The debate has heated up in Germany and though the answers to this question are few (Yes/No/Maybe), the reasons for the different answers are plentiful.
Many Germans feel that having a speed limit is like taking away a human right (a german human right, in this case). But was it their right in the first place?
"Mis-allocation" of production capacity
On a german talk show an ex-environmental minister of Germany, Jürgen Trittin - he's the environmental minister who took over that job after the current chancellor Angela Merkel left that post, noted that the non-limit might not be the problem itself, but it's the cars that are engineered to take advantage of the streets that are not speed-constrained. In fact, only about 2% of german roads and less than 50% of highways have no limits, but the german auto industry is geared to build cars for these 2% - BMW, Daimler, Audi, Porsche are all working on "faster and bigger".
But his main concern with speed limits is not environmental sustainability or climate change but more for the safety on the roads. As you can see in the table, safety is an issue when considering speed limitations. Lowering your speed from 200 down to 125 can reduce the distance you need to get a full stop by over 55%! And the traffic would also flow better. This would reduce crashes, accidents, deaths. (Interesting fact: More than 4 out 5 people caught speeding in Germany are men.)
So introducing a speed limit might have only very small direct environmental impacts, but it can have so many useful positive indirect impacts. All the big car manufacturers would then start building less powerful cars and more research can go into efficiency, reducing pollution and safety.
(A notable fact: Looking for a news video clip on YouTube on speed limits, all I could find was guys showing off how they can drive as fast as they can on the german highway. Some up to 290 km/h!)
The CO2 constraint set by the EU
It would also go great with a new regulation set by the European Union. All EU car companies must now reduce their average emission of their car fleet down to 140 g/km by 2008 (2009 for Japanese/Korean producers). In a second step it wants to reduce the emissions down to 120 g/km until 2012 - this all sounds drastic, but the carmakers had a whole decade to sort this out themselves. Words were spoken, actions not taken. Voluntary agreements didn't work this time.
A typical Porsche spits out about 321 g of CO2 each km it drives and a BMW about 191 g/km which poses a big challenge for the luxury- and sports-type car makers. And unless the Hummer goes electric, it probably will never reach the EU market (470 g/km). But this shouldn't be a hindrance but a challenge for Germany's engineers. Other countries like France and Italy have less of a problem since their car fleet emits little CO2 already - Renault, Citroen, Fiat aren't famous for building big and fast cars.
Is Emissions trading the answer?
One idea put forward is to introduce an emissions trading plan, much like the carbon market set up by the EU recently. So a car company like Porsche has to buy certificates from a car manufacturer like Fiat in order to be able to produce cars with higher-than-allowed emissions. This would add extra costs to Porsche buyers (and would give Fiat a bigger price advantage) but on average an EU car would reach regulation standards. But this would dim any competitive thoughts: Porsche can just buy their guilt away.
And even an average emissions limit across the car fleet, in my opinion, also reduces innovation. Wouldn't it be possible for Porsche to buy a small car company which produces low emissions to get their emissions average lowered? (They probably wouldn't do this because of many other reasons - but with only 100,000 cars produced annually and such a big profit margin, it would be feasible for Porsche.) My thought is - in the long-term - to put a hard emissions limit on every car.
The road ahead
While in neigbouring countries speed limits are normal, the people there don't seem to be more stressed or having less fun driving their cars. On a trip to the Netherlands once I had to get used to that there is no road where I can drive over 120 (this is when I still had a car - a red Toyota Corolla). It took me about an hour to get used to this, but after that it was fine. I think people won't voluntarily drive with less speed, it would frustrate them to see other cars whizz by with 160 km / h. But with regulations in place, it might work ("I will if you will") and it would create a more enjoyable and safe driving experience.
Think UK - A public service ad from UK (on driving 30 mph - beware, a bit brutal)
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