A duty to drive more slowly.

last updated 8 January 2015

Germany

Manfred Kriener

We Germans think we have a God-given right to speed, said Manfred Kriener in the Berlin Tageszeitung. Zooming on the Autobahn speed-limit-free is what defines us, like eating pasta does the Italians or wearing berets does the French. Left to our own devices, we will never do the responsible thing for the environment and slow down. Instead, we seem to do all we can to increase our greenhouse-gas emissions. German automakers’ “enormous advances in engine efficiency” keep getting offset by our “lust for ever more horsepower.” Here’s one area where the meddling of the European Union bureaucracy could actually do some good. E.U. regulators have proposed a universal E.U. speed limit of 100 kph (62 mph). German environmentalists have countered with an offer of 120 kph (75 mph). Somewhere in between, there ought to be a speed limit that even Germans can live with. Drivers on the Autobahn are told to use their “common sense” to find a safe speed. That sense should be telling us that we endanger not just our lives but everyone’s with our “selfishness.”