Autobahn

The Germans’ obsession with driving incredibly fast across a country that isn’t even that large by the standards of the really big nations with big open spaces is something I’ve never quite gotten. And now that energy use in Germany really is on the front pages due to Russia….it isn’t really making any difference on this question.

Germany is trying any range of measures to combat an energy crisis that is only expected to worsen this winter. Public buildings can be heated to just 66 degrees and most private pools not at all. Starting this month, billboards and other landmarks go dark at 10 p.m. The government has even extended the lives of two of the country’s last nuclear reactors.

But the one thing Germany will not do, apparently, is put a general speed limit on the fabled autobahns, a proposal raised — and shot down — even though it could save gasoline and cut carbon dioxide emissions.

The speed-limit issue has a special resonance in Germany, akin to debates over gun control in the United States. So sacrosanct is the absence of limits that when a Czech developer posted a video of himself on YouTube last year driving nearly 260 miles an hour — or as fast as a prop plane flies — prosecutors could bring no charges.

A vow of no general speed limits on autobahns was even part of the agreement that allowed the current three-party coalition, which includes the environmentalist Greens as well as the libertarian-minded Free Democratic Party, to take power.

If guns pass for “freedom” in American culture, maybe driving absurdly fast with no consequence being the German version of “freedom” isn’t quite as bad, but it’s still pretty dumb.