German scrapping scheme

Hundreds of emergency workers were called in, and the Autobahn was closed off until the following day. This mass pile-up is proof that little progress has been made where car and road safety is concerned. A quick look at the reports reveals who were blamed for the accident: the rain and the setting sun. Strange… I never even knew they could drive.

But you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out the real cause, which was of course the combination of excessive speeds and not keeping a safe distance. I myself often take that route, and need to exercise significant self-control not to go any faster than 130 km/h on the perfect asphalt and seamless concrete. If it rains I slow down to 80-100, but most cars (especially those displaying kidney grills, stars or rings, with the Passat and Golf series in their wake) continue to shoot past me at supersonic speeds – that’s the way things work on the Autobahn. And that is the real cause of this mega pile-up. 130 is the minimum speed for most would-be Formula-1 drivers, even during rain or in slippery conditions. They trust in their ABS and their own reflexes. Nobody expects to be involved in an accident; that only happens to Polish people in their old Golfs, right?

'Safety novelties bestow a sense of immortality upon drivers'
But no – most of the crumpled vehicles were of solid German make, rather new, with powerful turbo or direct injection, plus ABS and other safety novelties that bestow a sense of immortality upon drivers. According to Murphy’s law, the combination of rain, slippery conditions and a low sun (and possibly filthy windows?) plus all the superfluous horsepower, safety gizmos and ineradicable (yet politically correct) ' speedaholism' meant that this premature scrapping spree was practically a certainty.

The lesson to be learned here is that all of these safety devices do not improve drivers’ behaviour (if anything, the opposite is true) and that this type of large-scale, speed-related accident is difficult to prevent using technology only, and will therefore continue to occur in the future. Anybody who still believes that the solution lies in 'car trains', with computer-controlled guidance of all vehicles, is a victim of wishful thinking. Due implementation of a GPS-controlled kilometre charge (scheduled in the Netherlands since 1986!) by 2012 is about to fail, and even modern commercial aircraft regularly drop out of the sky (like the Turkish Boeing 737-800 in Feb. 2009 at Schiphol). With so much inconsistency between (engine) technologies, components, drivers and infrastructure, I simply cannot see the car concatenation ever becoming a reality. This is despite the fact that I took a hands-free ride in a radar-controlled car in the early 90’s, on an empty test stretch of road run by the Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management…

'Freude am Fahren remains higher priority than human lives'
The biggest obstacle facing automatic vehicle guidance will be the drivers themselves, who refuse to let go of the steering wheel. Motorists want to maintain the right to control their own steering, route and speed (i.e. the right to 'auto suicide') at any price, because Freude am Fahren (the joy of driving) remains a higher priority than human lives, climate or the environment.