A new Arizona highway proposal is drawing comparisons to Germany's Autobahn

State lawmakers this year may debate making Arizona the only state without speed limits on some highways. A proposal from Republican Rep. Nick Kupper would, among other things, set up a pilot project on a stretch of Interstate 8 between Casa Grande and Yuma as a “derestricted speed zone” for at least a year.

If that proved to be successful, Arizona Department of Transportation could then do away with speed limits on other stretches of rural highways in the state.

This has led to some comparisons to Germany’s Autobahn — one of the only roadways on earth that does not have a speed limit. The highway system is famous for its high speeds.

Tom Zeller is a professor at the University of Maryland and has published books on the history of transportation in the U.S. and Germany. He says it’s not for him to have an opinion on the bill in Arizona’s Legislature. But he does say it’s worth thinking about its potential outcomes, and what public health and safety engineers think about it. He joined The Show to talk more about all of this.

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: And Tom, am I right first off, that you have driven on the Autobahn?

TOM ZELLER: I've driven on it many times. First as a kid when I grew up there in Germany, it was very often a frightening experience to be passed by all these cars that were bigger and faster than my parents' car. Then I got a driver's license, would drive there myself on the Autobahn, moved to the U.S. 27 years ago.

And so I do visit pretty often and do not relish the experience of getting off the plane in Frankfurt or Munich and being jet lagged and going to the car rental counter and getting my car and then being out there with all the other people who want to go really fast.

BRODIE: Well, yeah. So what is it like to maybe not right when you're jet lagged, but like when you're sort of at full strength. Like what is it like to drive and know that it doesn't really matter? Like no one's going to tell you you're going too fast.

ZELLER: I mean, comparing the two driving styles, I would say that in Germany, and especially on the Autobahn, my drivers tend to be much more alert. They have a different expectations of driving skills, the other person and, and it's a more, it's a more really a more tense kind of experience, right.

Because you're in, you want to pass a slow truck that's in the right lane, you're moving over to the left lane. Sometimes there's just two or maybe three lanes on the interstate highways. And you know, while you're accelerating, right. There could be a big Porsche or BMW or Mercedes behind you that's going 20, 30, 40 miles faster than you do, and then, you know, has to slow down because of you. And so that it creates a different kind of environment than, you know, driving in the U.S. where the idea at least is a steady flow and most people going at the same speed.

BRODIE: Is it too simplistic to say that going at a particular speed or not having a speed limit is safer or more dangerous than the other?

ZELLER: There's been a lot of research on these issues. I think what most researchers have agreed on is that when most drivers are going at approximately the same speed, the risk of accidents, of injuries, of fatalities is lower. Having said that, if you look at the statistics in and of itself, the Autobahn is one of the safer spaces to be on in terms of the statistics of being involved, the chances of being involved in an accident.

But that has a lot to do with the fact that you're only surrounded by other automobiles and trucks. Whereas, you know, if you're in a city, there's pedestrians, there's people on bicycles. It's a much more diverse environment in terms of, like, who's participating in traffic.

BRODIE: Do you find that when you're driving on the Autobahn that you are going faster than maybe you would otherwise, or maybe even then you feel comfortable with, in an effort to keep up with the drivers around you?

ZELLER: I think that happens quite a lot, right. You want to go with the flow, and the flow tends to be. It tends to happen at a much higher rate than it does in the U.S. I should also add that there's no general speed limit on the Autobahn, but if you drive in the vicinity of big cities, and especially during rush hour, they have what they call variable speed limits.

So you have these giant overhead sites over the freeway that tell you how far you can go. And so during rush hour, sometimes you can only. You're only allowed to go at 40 or 50 miles an hour just to make sure that traffic is still flowing at least a bit.

BRODIE: Yeah. How did it come to be that there's this highway in Germany that essentially does not have a speed limit?

ZELLER: Right. So Germany is the only place in the developed world that does not have a general speed limit on its interstate highway. So it's a peculiarity, right. It's odd in the context of other countries. And what I've found in my research is that the lack of a speed limit on the Autobahn is really an artifact of the Cold War.

So in the 1950s, right, when West Germany became part of the Western bloc, became an ally of the United States, right. In NATO, there was a debate over speed limits on roads and regulation in general. And it took on an almost philosophical kind of quality and dimension in that legislators compared West Germany both to East Germany, the communist part of Germany and to the Nazi regime.

Both of these countries had imposed or did impose speed limits on roads. And so West German politicians thought that if Germany, if West Germany wants to be part of the western world, of the world of freedom and individual liberty, they should abolish speed limits on all roads, which they did for the first half of the 1950s.

And the results were horrendous, right. So many people got killed so that they had to reintroduce a speed limit in cities on general highways. And the Autobahn was exempt from that and then has stayed exempted. There have been many, many efforts over the last 70 years to introduce speed limits on the Autobahn, but they've never gone anywhere.

And a lot of observers, sort of comparing the U.S. And Germany, have noted that driving faster on the Autobahn is almost the equivalent of gun rights in the United States, right. So it's an issue that's very popular among many people, but it's also very controversial.

BRODIE: Well, it's interesting, and you just referenced it, the fact that so many folks in Germany see it as a freedom issue, as opposed to a transportation issue or a safety issue or a fuel efficiency issue or any other kind of issue that a lot of folks might see speed limits as representing.

ZELLER: That's exactly right. So over the years. Right. There have been many safety experts who pushed for speed limits on the Autobahn. In the 1970s, when gasoline became very expensive, very suddenly there was a speed limit that was introduced for a little bit that was not popular at all. In the 1980s, there was a major debate over air quality and air pollution.

And again, there were efforts to introduce a speed limit, and again, that went nowhere. Just a few years ago, there were some rumblings among politicians about introducing a speed limit, but up to this day, it really hasn't happened yet.

BRODIE: Do you get the sense that Americans also look at speed limits to some extent as a freedom issue?

ZELLER: I mean, what I've seen, looking at the 1970s and the 1980s, the rhetoric very much echoed what you had in Germany. Seat belts and speed limits were usually controversial issues. The federal government in the early '70s introduced a 55 mph speed limit to conserve fuel, right, during the oil price crisis. That did not sit well with voters.

And of all the modes of transportation, right, if you compare driving to being on a train or being on a plane. It's the only motorized individual form of transportation. And people feel that they're in control, even though the accident that they might end up in is caused by others or by road conditions or any number of reasons. And psychologists have been doing research on that, right, so that sense of control feels very important to a lot of drivers.