Comments by "Helmuth Schultes" (@helmuthschultes9243) on "American Reacts to 5 Things in Germany That Confuse Americans.." video.

  1. Critical driving in Germany, and as far as I am aware in other European countries, it is VERY important that on country roads a higher speed limit reverses to slower city limit speed at and as of the town/village name sign. NO EXTRA speed limit signs are there. You pass say from a 80 kph road, the name sign to the village, you are now in a 50 kph limit area. Quite possibly only a short distance and an additional sign might even drop limit to 30 kph, but that will have a sign. Worse for inattentive drivers is that quite commonly only 10s of meters past the name sign may also be a speed camera, so drop to the lower limit BEFORE passing the name sign, NOT start to slow on passing. On Autobahn if you do find yourself in the left most lane, say having passed another vehicle, note trucks are NEVER allowed in the fastest lanes, do move back soon. If not you may find a car coming up quickly, flashing its high beams, warning that it expects to come through fast. On one test drive we were in a Mercedes doing 265 kph, and flashing cars a very large distance ahead they had just enough time to move right for us to zoom past. We were NOT the fastest car travelling there either. Another aspect to catch out foreign drivers, while it may seem known that passing on the right is illegal, even where there is a separated lane, say at an exit ramp or turn off to another highway stretch, you must still not be faster than the cars to your left not actually on your separated lane. I have experienced a case where the speed limit of the main highway reduced, while the exiting lane was continued at speed going to change to another Autobahn stretch. It was still necessary to slow to matching speed of left side traffic, until well away from the main highway just exited. In Australia we have legal requirement to keep LEFT on multilane roads note our normal traffic flow is UK standard left side, or right hand drive cars. It is illegal to cruise in our right, fast lanes, unless overtaking. Not that our Dash cam videos do not show lots of right lane roadhogs. They may get fined however. In principle it applies where more than two lanes exist, but many highways two lanes are also sign posted with " Keep Left" . On issue of speeding, passing on such keep left conditions, will NOT permit speeding above limit, just to pass another vehicle also travelling at speed limit, since already at limit there is no need to pass, just follow at safe separation. On speed limit and getting booked for speeding, in the now distant past, the police had about 10% tolerance actually same as the legal speedometer tolerance of cars. Note the speedo tolerance is a positive, no under indication is legal for vehicles so in theory must indicate correct or at least over indicate, no excuse you were on right speed by the speedometer of the car. Under inflation ofctyres also over indicates speed, and as by design most vehicle speedometers are by design on over indication, for production tolerance reason, even moderate over inflation of tyres should not be a problem in far largest cases. HOWEVER quite a few years ago the police dropped that tolerance, and while never actually stating any margin, you will certainly be fined fir as little as 3 kph over. And no assurance even 1 kph will prevent getting fined. In fact recently a number of NZ drivers are being fined for 1 kph over limit, by their claims. It is very chancy to go over the limit or hog right lanes on highways. Speed camera abound, fixed and mobile cameras plus a new feature on highways is the longer distance tracking average vehicle speeds to be under limit. No longer possible to slow for known camera locations, and speed in between. Now anything from 10km to over 100km distances, your average speed can be used to issue fines for speeding based on your average speed. Around city/towns there are plenty of RED light cameras that combine speed and Red light, so also catch speeding through the intersection even on Green. No speedup to avoid a Red light. Another driver trap is regular "Booze and Drug" testing mobile monitoring. All or large blocks of vehicles get pulled aside, where a group of police will perform breath tests and saliva swab for drugs. Fail that breath detection you get to park your car, you then get in the mobile testing bus for formal breath test on known calibrated equipment. Fail that and you get to leave the car, get a big fine, and if not marginally over taken to lock up, at low levels you find alternative means to get home. Drugs are similarly severely fined and limit driving. Both can lead to longer term loss of driver license. Trying to avoid the testing stop, by diverting down side streets or turning around is likely to get you pulled over by patrol car or motorbike police, tested and/ escorted to testing location.
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