The co-drivers view: Sunday on the Autobahn

The German Autobahn, subject of many discussions around the world. One say it is the ultimate road of freedom, while others claim that the freedom is curtailed by many speed limits and other traffic. On a nice sunday in may I turned the car into a camera car to give you an impression of what is going on this road of speed.

An Audi A6 3.0 TDI Avant (4F / 2011) is a perfectly suitable car for the Autobahn, it has enough power to drive at high speeds (200 to 250km/h or 125 to 155mph/h) while still having a moderate fuel consumption.

In this video we drive in central Germany along the Autobahn "A6" towards the east, from Frankenthal towards Heidelberg (greater Frankfurt area). You will see that on certain parts (bridges, road works, interchanges, near urban areas) the speed is limited while on the regular stretches one can drive as fast as he / she wishes (letting it fly at 155mp/h 04:45).
Also you can notice that most cars move towards the right when a faster car approaches (01:05), although some drivers to not respect this unwritten rule and still get in the way (04:20). This also works the other way around, if traffic in the left lane cannot move to the right the approaching driver usually waits and does not tailgate or use signals to indicate his / hers wish to overtake.

Ater the "Dreieck Viernheim" interchange the Autobahn A6 switches to a 3-lane road with generally leads to a more relaxter and faster travel because there is less trafic in the left lane.

Tales of the Autobahn: road construction

From the north to the south, in many places the Autobahn is subjected to road works. In order to maintain the capacity of a dual carriageway, the hard shoulder is replaced with small parking spaces each few hundred meters and the left lane is narrowed down to just 2 meter. Espacially with large trucks on the right side, these can be challenge to overtake.

But to quote the famous Barney Stinson, "challenge accepted", as can be seen in the video below.

Tales of the Autobahn: Part 1

Tales of the Autobahn: Accident on Autobahn A3

In "tales of the Autobahn" everyday stories of what happens on the Autobahn will be published. If driving on the Autobahn, one will encounter accidents, road works, traffic jams or just beautiful scenery's.

This episode, Guitigefilmpjes is cruising down the Autobahn A3 between Frankfurt am Main and Cologne (Köln) in Germany. As the end of the holidays are rapidly approaching, there is a lot of traffic coming from the south, transiting through Germany, towards the Netherlands. Combined with the rainy weather, aquaplaning is a dangerous situation waiting to happen.

While driving the satnav displayed a TMC-warning, informing about an accident that had happened on my route. Of the 3 lanes, 2 lanes were blocked and a traffic jam was growing rapidly. Several kilometers from the accident site the end of the traffic jam was being secured by a police vehicle, trying to prevent more accidents at the end of the traffic jam from happening. And although medical assistance rushed to the scene, by the time we passed it the cars had already moved to the hard shoulder. Cause of the accident was a too high speed in rainy condition, resulting in aquaplaning and several cars bumping into each other.