Germany’s Autobahn superhighway system has a worldwide reputation for speed, but for German drivers, a lot of the time that’s only a dream as they spend more and more time standing still or creeping.
The German automobile club ADAC reported last week that Germany had 745,000 traffic jams last year, more than 2,000 a day. That’s 3% more than the year before, and includes the monster jam shown above from last July near Stuttgart.
ADAC’s penchant for numbers has thrown up some more stats: the length of the jams last year increased by about 5%, yielding a total length of 1.5 million kilometers, or 38 times around the earth. Due to the jams, drivers spent 459,000 hours standing still, the equivalent of 52 years.
I lived in Germany and drove the autobahns for 18 years and was a member of ADAC. A big stau (traffic jam) can be a nightmare. One minute you are tooling along at 110mph, then the next you are sitting still for an hour or more.