Germany’s national highway system — commonly known as the Autobahn — looks like many other highway systems in the world, except for its most famous feature: long stretches where you are legally permitted, at your own risk, to drive your car as fast as you want.
This characteristic has given it a kind of mythical reputation among car enthusiasts the world over. If you love cars, chances are driving the Autobahn as fast as you can is one of the things you want to do before you die.
“The Autobahn in many people’s minds is a bucket list item,” said David Tracy, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Autopian, an automotive news outlet. “Car enthusiasts love the idea of an unrestricted roadway. Being able to actually put your vehicle to the test and really show its full potential is the ultimate.”
Top speeds on these freeways have surged above 250 miles per hour. Tracy himself once drove a BMW Alpina B7 — a specially tuned sport sedan — 170 miles per hour.
But Tracy, who was born in Germany, spent the first several years of his life there and makes frequent trips back to visit his parents, said the Autobahn is not quite what many imagine it to be.
It’s under construction in many places, as a freeway that allows for such high speeds needs to be maintained. Because Germany is in the center of Europe, it is also a major thoroughfare for international commerce. Since commercial vehicles are subject to speed limits, those trucks are likely traveling far more slowly than the garden variety Porsche 911 owner.
And then there is the traffic. Across Germany, there were about 516,000 traffic jams just last year, and the number of hours Germans spend in traffic has been rising. Several highways had traffic jams that were longer than 40 miles in 2024.
There are many places across the Autobahn where ordinary cars have to follow speed limits, as well.
The Autobahn owes a lot to Germany’s unique and difficult history. The first big buildout of the system was essentially a Nazi propaganda project, designed to portray the country as a futuristic, forward-looking society, said Thomas Zeller, a professor of history at the University of Maryland who has studied the topic and wrote a book on Autobahn’s early history called “Driving Germany.”
During the Nazi era, there were speed limits. The government did away with speed limits on every road in 1952, as a way for the liberal, free West Germany to distinguish itself from the communist East.
“There’s this, kind of bizarre from our perspective, Cold War moment when German lawmakers argue that being a free citizen, somebody who is not living in a totalitarian dictatorship, has to be able to drive as fast as they want,” Zeller said.
It might sound relatable to many freedom-loving Americans, but Germany’s driving culture and laws have traits that help explain why the Autobahn is unlike the highway systems in every other industrialized country.
