“It’s a very emotional topic,” confided Stefan Gerwens, the head of transport and mobility at ADAC, an automobile club with 20 million members, which is opposed to any speed limit. Germany is woefully behind on meeting its 2020 climate goals, so the government appointed a group of experts to find ways to lower emissions in the transport sector. A highway speed limit of 120 kilometers an hour, or 75 miles per hour, could cover a fifth of the gap to reach the 2020 goals for the transport sector, environmental experts say. The number of deadly accidents on stretches of autobahn that have a speed limit are 26 percent lower than on those without. About half of Germans remain opposed to autobahn speed limits, a proportion that has not budged in the last decade, according to Michael Kunert, the director of the polling company Infratest Dimap.

Source: New York Times February 03, 2019 16:18 UTC