Written by / Windsor
Edited / Tu Yanping
Design / Zhao Haoran
"In Germany, no matter how fast you drive, there are always people who drive faster than you!" Tom Hanks once lamented on the talk show "David's Late Night Show", "When you are driving in Germany at the fastest speed allowed by physics, you will suddenly see a blurry thing speeding past the car, sometimes red, sometimes white." ”
According to the Federal Institute of Highway Research, Germany has more than 8,000 miles of highways, of which about 70% have no speed limit.
The speed-limit highway, known in German as the "ze Autobahn", is not only Germany's proud infrastructure, but also a cultural icon, spawning derivative works of art, albums, and merchandise around the world. Despite the controversy that has always accompanied it, Germany's characteristic unlimited speed highways are still envied by people around the world and are regarded as representatives of freedom and progress.
The exciting news is that in 2022, China's first "unlimited speed" super highway, the Hangzhou-Ningbo Expressway, will soon be opened to traffic. According to official information, the Hangyong Expressway starts from Weihai Road in Zhenhai District, Ningbo City, and ends at Xiasha Junction in Jianggan District, Hangzhou City, with a total length of 161 kilometers, based on the standard of unlimited kilometers of German highways.
The Hangzhou-Ningbo Expressway is not completely unlimited speed, and the top speed announced first is 150km/h, which is a major breakthrough compared with the general speed limit of 120km/h on expressways. This means that it will only take an hour to reach Hangzhou to Ningbo.
Not only that, Hangyong Expressway is also full of futuristic and scientific and technological sense, which can be called the road of the future. At the beginning of the construction in 2018, the head of the government said that the short-term goal of this highway is to provide charging services for electric vehicles through solar power generation and road photovoltaic power generation as a supplement to the power of plug-in charging piles; the long-term goal is to achieve mobile wireless charging, charging while driving.
In addition, Hangyong Expressway adopts a number of intelligent control systems, through the coordination of people, vehicles and roads, the future also supports autopilot driving; using free-flow charging mode, the cameras and sensors set on the highway can capture your vehicle in time and record the driving trajectory, that is, the owner drives a kilometer of road, and unconsciously will collect a kilometer of money.
It is foreseeable that the opening of the Hangzhou-Ningbo Expressway has great symbolic significance, and when Chinese auto products are at the forefront of the world in the field of intelligence, the Chinese government is also building a "driver's road". So, whether this landmark event will become the beginning of the unlimited speed of China's highways, Germany's "lessons from the past" can bring some reference significance.
Rashomon between speed and safety
Germany's speedless motorways, born after World War II, have faced various doubts since their birth, most recently in 2019.
Three years ago, Germany's Greens, which advocated high-speed speed limits, proposed to limit the top speed of all highways and other roads in the country to 130 km/h (80 mph), which drew a chorus of invective. In the end, the German Bundestag rejected the Green Party proposal with 498 votes against, 126 votes in favor and 7 abstentions, and the German high speed remained unlimited.
But the political incident has sparked a wave of discussions about whether high-speed speed limits are safe.
Andreas Scheuer, the former German transport minister, was the first to stand up at the time, calling high-speed speed limits "anti-human common sense" and that "German highways are the safest roads in the world" and that driving a car on German roads is guaranteed.
Schaeuil's assertion is supported by data. According to the German National Statistics, 2719 people died in road traffic accidents in Germany in 2020, of which 1592 died in national road accidents, accounting for 60% of all traffic accident deaths; the death rate in cities (including cyclists and pedestrians) was 28%, and the death rate on highways was 12%.
Data from the European Road Safety Commission in 2016 showed that the country with the highest number of deaths per 1,000 kilometers was Bulgaria, with 83.1 people, Ireland had the lowest mortality rate of 5.6 people, and Germany had a mortality rate of 30.2 people, higher than that of the United Kingdom, France and other countries, in the middle.
Differences in the number of deaths between countries do not have much to do with whether highways are speed limits, and other factors tend to have a greater impact, such as road conditions, traffic density, alcohol consumption and road characteristics.
But it cannot be said that speed has nothing to do with fatal accidents. German weekly Der Spiegel, citing federal and state statistics, showed that there were 0.95 fatal accidents per 1 billion kilometers on the speed-limiting Section of Germany's highways. When it comes to sections with no speed limit, that number starts at 1.67 – 75% higher than sections with speed limits.
The relationship between speed and safety has become a publicly justified Rashomon incident, and what is more interesting is that there are more car accidents due to the difference in speed caused by the speed of some vehicles.
A 1997 study called Parker selected 100 sites, slightly increased or lowered the speed limit, and calculated the impact of these changes on accident rates, showing that there were fewer accidents in areas where the speed limit was increased, and that there were actually more accidents in areas where the speed limit was lowered than before.
When drivers who do not want to "fly" drive on the Hangzhou-Ningbo Expressway, will it be another safety hazard? In Germany, motorways also have minimum speed requirements: vehicles must be able to maintain speeds of 60 km/h (37 mph) on flat terrain.
Transformation competition, Sino-German automobile who won?
Three years ago, the German Greens argued for speed limits because the transport sector is the third biggest contributor to the increase in greenhouse gases in Germany, and the faster you drive, the more gasoline you consume, and the more carbon dioxide emissions you emit.
Germany's total CO2 emissions in 2018 were just under 860 million tonnes, of which around 158 million tonnes were generated by road traffic. According to the German Federal Environment Agency, the adoption of speed limit measures will reduce Carbon Dioxide in Germany by 190 tons to 5.4 million tons per year.
At the time, Stefan Bratzel, director of the German Automotive Management Center, countered that the problem could resolve itself as more German drivers switched to electric vehicles. "Drivers of electric cars typically travel at speeds of 120 to 130 kilometers per hour, which is not faster, otherwise the battery range will be greatly reduced."
Germany, which dominated the world in the era of fuel vehicles, is accelerating the pace of transformation. In 2021, the sales volume of new energy vehicles in Germany exceeded 690,000 units, and the penetration rate of new energy was as high as 26.32%. In contrast, China sold 2.93 million new energy passenger cars last year, although the new energy penetration rate (13.77%) is only half that of Germany, and it is still a global transformation pioneer on the whole.
In addition to electrification, the intelligent race between China and Germany is also continuing. On 21 May 2021, the German Bundestag passed a draft Ofaring Act, which was then issued by the Federal President of Germany and published in the Bundestag for entry into force.
With the passage of the bill, Germany became the first country in the world to allow driverless vehicles on the road and participate in everyday traffic nationwide. Starting in 2022, Germany will allow "driverless/autonomous vehicles" (L4) to drive on designated routes on public roads.
At the end of 2021, the Mercedes-Benz L3 autonomous driving system was the first to be approved by the technical regulations of the German Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA). This is the first time in the history of human cars that a vehicle can take over driving tasks under certain conditions, and Mercedes-Benz announced that the L3 self-driving function will be the first to be installed on the S-Class sedan and the new EQS.
On December 17, 2021, the EQS was launched in China, and the new car has a total of four configuration models, and the price range is 1.0796 million to 1.5186 million yuan.
According to the information released, the Mercedes-Benz L3 level automatic driving assistance system is called The Drive Pilot system, equipped with 1 lidar, 4 surround view cameras, 12 ultrasonic sensors, 1 internal driver monitoring camera, 1 front-facing long-range radar, 4 millimeter wave radar, 1 dual current vision camera, high-precision GPS, and external humidity sensor.
In contrast, the Xiaopeng P7, which is priced from 229,900 to 349,900 yuan, has not fallen behind in the configuration at all, equipped with a 360° dual perception system, 14 cameras, 5 millimeter wave radar, 12 ultrasonic sensors, centimeter-level high-precision positioning, and decimeter-level high-precision maps.
During the century-old period of change in China's automotive industry, hovering at the crossroads of intelligence and electrification, Chinese cars are catching up with or even surpassing the birthplace of automobiles. Smart cars need smart roads, and while Chinese cars are running blindfolded, the Chinese government has begun a new attempt at infrastructure, and the unlimited speed has made many car fans excited, but what are we missing?
Get a German driver's license: I'm too hard!
It is said that a German driver's license is one of the hardest and most expensive in the world to obtain.
Obtaining a German driver's license requires both theoretical and practical parts, as well as passing an eye exam and first aid course before enrolling. The theory class is a unified 14 lessons, all of which are multiple choice questions, with 100 points and 90 points failing. There is no limit to the number of times you can practice on the road, but it is stipulated that you must open a certain number of class hours, including highway practice, night road practice, suburban national highway practice, etc.
City driving is the most difficult part of the actual driving test. During the test, the instructor was in the car, and the in-car assist function could not be used. If the coach intervenes in any way, the result is failure. After a series of requirements, the pass rate of German driver's licenses is quite low, and a set of registration, testing and learning costs 1500 to 2000 euros, which invisibly raises the threshold.
The result of the high cost and rigorous examination process is an increase in safety awareness, coupled with the inherent rigor of the German nation, and the german driver maintains good driving standards and lane discipline.
It is said that on the unlimited speed highway in Germany, only cars that drive fast enough will drive in the leftmost fast lane, and once they find that the rear car is faster than you, they will generally take the initiative to change to the right lane and give up the fast lane to the faster car, so as to ensure that all cars overtake are on the left side of the overtaken vehicle.
There are many more "unspoken rules" of driving like this without itinerary regulations, and safety can only be guaranteed when driving awareness is increased. Growing up with new cars and new roads should be a new generation of drivers.
In addition, the quality and performance of automotive products also need to undergo new tests. In Germany, automakers have largely adhered to the Gentleman's Agreement, limiting the design speed of cars to about 255 km/h (155 mph). The tuning of the car on sale also closely follows the driving habits, the steering wheel is almost empty, the suspension is very tight, the body is responsive to the direction, the tire wear resistance and grip are stronger, and so on.
If the opening of the high-speed highway is not a beginning, then what is related to it is not when China's high-speed is fully opened, but a series of chain reactions such as automobile quality, automobile tuning, automobile testing, driver's license examination, driving awareness, etc. Chinese cars still have a long way to go.