Comment: my first Autobahn

With a gladsome song in my heart and an eager right fist at the end of my arm I sailed into my first ever autobahn experience.

I was in Bavaria, the fun part of Germany. The sun was hotly shining upon my endeavours and I was astride a pearly white Victory Magnum packed and stacked for a 3000km-long foray through Europe, so there was a bit of a Star Trek feel about the whole thing. You know, going boldly where no man had gone before, which was Hungary.

Anyway, to get to Hungary, I first had to go through Germany, and then Austria. And while I had no intention of autobahning my way through Europe, I also had no idea of where I was going other than east, and so I ended up on my first autobahn.

What a brutally humbling revelation that turned out to be.

I knew, from watching TV that the far right lane was for slow-moving trucks. The two middle lanes were for cars, and the far left lane was for very fast cars.

No biggie. I had a motorcycle that could happily sit on 180 all day. That being the case, I felt that my right and proper place was in the far left lane where the fast stuff lived. It was while I was making my way across to that far left lane that the first sub-sonic German funeral convoy slammed past me.

Some hate-black Merc thing, being tailgated by some hate-black Audi thing, being followed by some hate-black Beemer thing, which was in turn being trailed by some hate-black squatty thing I guessed was a Porsche, flew past me like missiles.

Two observations were immediately observed: the Germans like their cars black, and the Germans drive very fast.

I was doing 160. This lot went past me at least 100km/h faster than that. The wind blast rocked me and assured me I was indeed in the bosom of some very fun-loving Germans.

Be damned if I wasn’t having me some of this, I figured. I opened the throttle all the way and moved into the fast lane. This gave me 190 indicated and this lasted all of maybe 2km whereupon the next sub-sonic funeral cortege filled my mirrors with flashing LEDs demanding I get out of the way immediately.

I drifted mournfully back to the right and more dark German saloons shot past, followed by some red screaming thing made in Italy which was doing another level of piss-off speed altogether.

Oh dear, I thought. I am no longer the apex road predator. The Germans have funned themselves up to such a degree with their gigantic rocket-powered lounge-rooms, that even if I was on a litre sportsbike I would’ve struggled to sit on 250-plus for more than 10 minutes.

Yeah, sure, an S 1000 RR could maybe show them a clean pair of heels for a few klicks, but then the sheer physical and mental difficulty of riding at that speed for protracted periods of time would force the RR back into the right lanes where it could hum along at 180 and stay out of the way.

There’s clearly a reason the Germans sell beer in their petrol stations. Short of heroin-laced whisky, it’s as good a way to calm one’s nerves and salve one’s wounded self-image as I can think of. So I pulled into a servo and sipped an icy 500ml of something brewed by monks in a 600-year-old nearby monastery.

I told myself I was not in Kansas anymore. I told myself that German autobahns were designed to move Germans, now in in high-powered cars, but previously in tanks, efficiently from one end of their wonderful country to the other.

They are certainly not the kind of place you want to be on a motorcycle or with a mindset that is not capable of sustaining 250-plus for an hour or so.

Besides, all that speeding stuff kills people, doesn’t it? Every kilometre over the limit murders someone somewhere in Australia all the time, right? Well, according to the numbers, road deaths per 100,000 are 5.1 in Australia. They are 4.1 in Germany.

What’s going on here? Surely, if the Germans are belting around at more than twice our national speed limit, the country would be strewn with corpses and awash with the tears of widows? It would certainly not be serving magnificent beers in its servos, would it? I mean, if that paradigm (speed and beer) was even remotely safe or contributing to the reduction of our road toll as we proudly sail into what our state governments call Vision Zero (a zero road toll), surely we would be doing the same here?

But we’re not. Do you know why we’re not? No, it’s not because their autobahns are somehow better than our freeways. They’re not. Ride the Hume from Sydney to Melbourne and tell me you can’t do 200-plus the whole way with absolute confidence.

It’s because we’re actually really kinda shit at this driving and riding caper. The Germans are much better at it. They take it seriously. They pay big money for their licences, and they are re-tested regularly. They know that if they are drunk and have an accident, they will be damned and jailed and shot and neutered and flayed and scourged with barbed whips. So they tend not to do that.

Above all else, they take their responsibilities as a road user with great weightiness. This means that when they are on the road they are courteous and skilled. Even when they are driving at 280km/h, they are well-mannered about it, and they pretty much know what they’re doing.
And what they’re doing is driving.

They’re not texting. They’re not sleeping. They’re not yelling at the kids or fooling with their stereos. They’re just driving fast and well. And maybe having a beer every now and then. Like civilised people. Speed is not killing them, it seems.

Guess we’re special, huh?