[lancebeet]

Hm, it's only something like 10% of German traffic fatalities that occur on the autobahn. And according to wikipedia, Germany doesn't rank high in terms of traffic fatalities, even by European standards. France has a similar number of highway deaths. I'm personally not a fan of the autobahn and especially not the unrestricted speed. It seems obvious that it should cause lots of fatalities, but the evidence for it just doesn't seem to be there.

[gsnedders]

https://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/tempolimit-koennte-jaehr... claims a 75% higher fatality rate on unrestricted autobahn v. autobahn with speed limits.

But in general: freeways/motorways (whatever you want to call them) almost never account for the majority of fatalities anywhere — there’s a lot that makes them safer than the average rural road even given comparable speeds, and there’s fewer vulnerable road users around.

[AlecSchueler]

> It seems obvious that it should cause lots of fatalities

That's not obvious at all to me, what would the reasoning be?

[lancebeet]

Maybe I expressed myself poorly. Generally, higher speed is associated with higher fatality rates, all else being equal. So, one would assume a highway without speed limits would cause lots of fatalities. Most people would probably be surprised to learn that this is not the case.

[watwut]

If there is anything remotely potentially dangerous, unlimited speed ends and the road gets well defined and enforced speed limit. If the traffic on that segment of the road gets high, they put in speed limit sign too.

Moreover, there is a question of liability for the insurance purpose. If you go above 130, you are assumed to be caused of the accident. So, most Germans go roughly 130 in those segments anyway.