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I can see the pedestrian traffic fatalitues in germany only slightly increased http://www.bast.de/EN/Publicat... [www.bast.de] granted i do not have the 2016 numbers but this is still below the 2005 numbers.

On one street, they had two fatalities because pedestrians were using their phone and stepped right into traffic at a red pedestrian traffic light. So they installed red and green LEDs in the ground. Where you can't miss them when you're on your phone and looking in the right direction.

I can see the pedestrian traffic fatalitues in germany only slightly increased http://www.bast.de/EN/Publicat... granted i do not have the 2016 numbers but this is still below the 2005 numbers.

Around 40% of Germany's Autobahn already does have speed limits. Other than this, most parts of Germany's Autobahn has been built more than 50 years ago, using material estimated to last 40 years - which means: road works.

According to "Baustelleninformation" at http://www.bast.de/, Germany's 12845 km of Autobahn right now do feature 673 road works (with common speed limits of 60 kmh = 37 mph) and 105 full road closures (requiring to leave the Autobahn and continue part of your journey on some crowded federal highway with a usual speed limit of 100 kmh=60 mph). Just some statistics: that's one road work or closure in about every 16 km. Some of those road works are just a kilometer, others are as long as 40 km. And those road works tend to last years, so if you're regularly driving the same route, you always know where to expect your daily traffic jam (next to road works, during beginning or end of holiday seasons, traffic jams on Autobahn are quite common).

So in short: you can't average faster than the advisory speed of 130 kmh on long-distance anyway, at least if you're not ignoring any speed limits.
However, there's the German car industry imposing political pressure on any governing parties ("speed limits do put jobs at risk"), so there won't be an official speed limit for Autobahn that soon.

Compared to other european countries, speeding is quite cheap in Germany. To compensate any measurement tolerances to your favor, your measured speed is reduced by another 3kmh or 3% - whatever is higher and so in your favor. You don't risk temporarily having your driving license suspended as long as you're less than about 30 kmh above any speed limits (see http://www.howtogermany.com/pages/traffic-violations.html). Unless being chased by a horde of police cars, license suspension usually also includes a court appeal, and often the driver may even choose WHEN during the next year or so they'd like to have their driving license suspended.

According to my own experience, such regulations also do result in a very aggressive driving style on Autobahn, at least on the left-most (overtaking) lane, where drivers "only" exceeding existing speed limits by 20 kmh are constantly being tailgated at extremely low distances by other drivers. The middle lane is crowded by drivers who don't want to be tailgated, but still want to drive faster than those 80 kmh all trucks are limited to (who so do occupy the right-most lane). If you're trying to make use of some free track between trucks on the right lane: getting back into the crowded middle lane may take some time.

(b) It was kept around for safety, because there was a drop in highway deaths after the limit was lowered. Correlation not causation, perhaps, but that was the rationale.

I disagree with point d - while the UK has a very low level of road fatalities, Germany's rate is higher than that of the US, and France's is 50% higher, on a deaths per km driven basis, according to the good people at the German Bundesanstalt for Strassenwesen, and their International Road Traffic and Accident Database.

One of the few data points that really exists on this is the US state of Montana, which eliminated speed limits on its interstates during the daytime (went to "safe and prudent") at the end of 1995. In 1995, fatalities were 2.28 per 100 million vehicle miles travelled. In 2001, they were 2.28 per 100 million vehicle miles travelled. There were fewer accidents on the interstates, but the higher overall speeds meant that a larger portion of those accidents resulted in fatalities. So, data seems to say: number of accidents is positively correlated with speed variance, liklihood of fatality from a given accident is positively correlated with absolute speed levels.

Sounds like a great idea, if a little worrying at first.

I think the article gives slightly the wrong impression; implying that the car takes control if it detects a crash is likely to happen - a good trick if a piece of hardware can predict a crash before a human can ;)

In fact the system seems to detect the liklehood of a crash and warn the driver, tightening seatbelts and readying brakes, and if the driver agrees that a crash is possible and applies the brakes, the system helps this process.

Some good info on the Honda site (good graphics too), here's a snippet:

"This system determines the likelihood of a collision based on driving conditions, distance to the vehicle ahead, and relative speeds, and uses visual and audio warnings to prompt the driver to take preventative action. " ... and I suspect that radar is not the only component.

Seems like this is part of a long term drive in Japan to make safer cars: remember the device that sprayed the driver with lemon scented water if it sensed him/her getting drowsy? Or the breath-alcohol test device that prevented drunk drivers from starting their vehicles?

Apparently, part of the CMS system will also keep the driver in their lane too.

Not sure why such systems are not more available in the West, maybe Japan's drivers are more ready to accept such restrictions on their driving freedom. Whatever the reason they seem to have reasonably safe roads even by Nordic standards

Road accident statistics are pretty interesting too.

Comparison between Germany and the US:

Killed per 100.000 population in 2000:
Germany: 9.1
US: 15.2

Injured per 100.000 population in 2000:
Germany: 466
US: 766

Note: I'm not german, just pointing out that despite germany having higher speed limits injury and mortality rates in car accidents are much lower there.

Must be all those SUV's...