259 car pile-up

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Mon 20 Jul 2009 21:40
259 car pile-up - Statistical outlier
The downside to no speed limits I guess!?

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8159290.stm
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Mon 20 Jul 2009 22:01
259 car pile-up - Altea Ego
If that happened in the uk, can you imagine how long the old bill would have the road closed for?
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Mon 20 Jul 2009 22:08
259 car pile-up - midlifecrisis
Not as long as it would have taken to do the paperwork!
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Mon 20 Jul 2009 22:16
259 car pile-up - Lud
I've seen the aftermath of one of those, what looked like a couple of miles of steaming twisted metal, starting with HGVs on top of cars and so on and slowly mutating into broken-headlight/bent-boot floor nose-to-tailers for the last mile.

Being on my way back across Germany for the second time in a fortnight, I had a fairly shrewd idea of the sort of thing that might have caused it too. About fifteen per cent of German motorway drivers are absolute nutters, really good at what they do, but they shouldn't. And there are obstructive mimsing British-style bad motorway drivers in the mix as well as the occasional relly really fast rich person.

Scary at times. I'm no shrinking violet on the road, and I had been looking forward to campaigning the Estelle on unrestricted Autobahnen too. I was OK, but I couldn't help worrying about some of my fellow road users.
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Mon 20 Jul 2009 22:10
259 car pile-up - Red Baron
>>The downside to no speed limits I guess!?<<

There is no evidence for this.

I've been in situations that prelude this on the Autobahn. One group of people keep driving at their 'normal' speed and the other group slows down rapidly to 40mph.

Sounds very similar to what happens in the UK.

It doesn't take many rapid brakeing events before someone goes pileing into the back of the rolling roadblock.
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Mon 20 Jul 2009 22:49
259 car pile-up - b308
Combined with the tailgating they do as well... I enjoyed my two weeks over there earlier in the month, but they do tend to drive closer than even we do...
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Mon 20 Jul 2009 22:51
259 car pile-up - Pugugly
Going that way next week by car..:-( Better leave my mod key somewhere safe !
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Mon 20 Jul 2009 23:09
259 car pile-up - MikeTorque
According to the report :
Police said the pile-up was believed to have been caused by a combination of heavy
rain and excessive speed.


They mean drivers were using excessive speed and driving too close for the weather conditions at the time and didn't have enough braking distance in front of them.
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Mon 20 Jul 2009 23:10
259 car pile-up - Bagpuss
I know that section of autobahn, it is a notorious accident blackspot. There are speed limits between 80 and 120 km/h along the whole of that section of the A2.

A bit of a perfect storm involved as well. Start of the school holidays in that part of Germany meaning lots of holiday traffic, combined with one of the worst downpours seen for years.

Oh, and it was a series of accidents over a section of 50km or so rather than a 259 car pile up, but that doesn't make such good reading.
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Wed 22 Jul 2009 09:48
259 car pile-up - pda
No HGV's involved either but that never makes good news.

Pat
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Wed 22 Jul 2009 10:11
259 car pile-up - b308
Not surprised, Pat, it was on a Sunday... there are very few HGVs driving around on the autobahns at weekends when compared with weekdays, and most seem to be foreign, those that are tend to stay on the inside lane. Rather confirms the point made by that programme on the M42 pileup, take the HGVs off at busy times and if there is an accident casualties are less.
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Wed 22 Jul 2009 10:41
259 car pile-up - Collos25
You cannot drive an HGV from 23.00 saturday to 24.00 sunday unless you have a special dispensation to carry fresh produce. This section of the A2 in fact all the A2 is the nearest you will get to a public race track you really need to be doing 170km to think about moving into the outside lane and especially sundays when you get all sorts of inexperienced drivers out for a drive.I think the days of the unrestriced sections are coming to an end but in the restriced sections it is rare to see people speeding because of the number of hidden movable cameras and unmarked police cars I think it should have made the point of people going to fast for the conditions because I very much doubt they were breaking the speed limit.

Edited by Andy Bairsto on 22/07/2009 at 10:42

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