BERLIN – An EU official called on Germany to give up the famous freedom of its highways and impose speed limits on the autobahn to fight global warming – a demand that drew angry responses Sunday in a country that cherishes what it calls “free driving for free citizens.”
Many stretches of German autobahn lack speed limits – traditionally a cherished freedom in a rule-bound country. However, the growing concern over carbon dioxide emissions is putting that tradition under renewed scrutiny.
“There are so many areas in which we waste energy in a completely senseless way and burden the climate,” EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
“A simple measure in Germany could be a general speed limit on highways,” he added, according to the newspaper. “Speed limits make a lot of sense for many reasons and are completely normal in most EU states, as in the U.S.A. – only in Germany, strangely, is it controversial.”
The commissioner did not suggest a specific speed limit for Germany but in most European countries the highway speed limit is either 75 or 80 mph. Britain, Latvia and Sweden have the strictest speed limit, 70 mph, according to an official EU Web site.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has brushed aside previous suggestions – most recently last month – that a general speed limit on the autobahn would help fight climate change.
Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said Sunday that he has “nothing against (a limit) for reasons of traffic safety” but argued that the restriction would not encourage manufacturers to produce more environment-friendly engines.
“This is a secondary front and a trivialization of the climate problem,” he said.
The German Association of the Automotive Industry said Germany needed “no coaching” from Brussels on how to protect the climate – “above all when the proposals are only symbolic.”
A spokesman for the Transport Ministry, Dirk Inger, said a study by a federal agency had found that an overall autobahn limit of 100 kilometers per hour – or 62 mph – would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by only 0.6 percent.
Each 5 mph a car drives over 60 mph reduces fuel economy by 10 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
Germans may be becoming receptive to the idea, however. Last month, a survey by the Forsa institute for Stern magazine found that 60 percent would favor autobahn speed limits to cut emissions, while 38 percent would oppose them.
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