"Rainbow" (rainbeaux)
02/23/2015 at 21:35 • Filed to: None
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"Rainbow" (rainbeaux)
02/23/2015 at 21:35 • Filed to: None | 0
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When I was in Germany a couple years ago, my host family was telling me that there was a "ghost driver" nearby. They (Germans as a whole, not just the family) use that term for people who drive the wrong way on the Autobahn. It's as creepy as it sounds; they basically accept that the driver can't be stopped until he/she is killed in a head-on crash.
At least that's what I was told. Don't blame me if I'm wrong.
davedave1111
> Rainbow
02/23/2015 at 22:06 |
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I have no idea how they deal with them in Germany, but people driving down the wrong side of major roads is definitely a thing. As far as I know, though, and amazing as it might seem, they usually get away with it without crashing into anything.
If there are police near enough, they can form a rolling roadblock and slow the oncoming traffic right down, which certainly helps. I'd guess there are other things they can try too, although obviously driving against the flow of traffic themselves isn't on the cards. I think I've seen footage of them stopping a (fairly slow-moving) wrong way driver with a series of glancing blows, too.
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Rainbow
> davedave1111
02/23/2015 at 22:09 |
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The problem is that the driver is usually keeping right, meaning they're in the fast lane. Of a road with no speed limit. The police will certainly attempt to respond, but there's rarely enough time.
ly2v8-Brian
> Rainbow
02/23/2015 at 22:22 |
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Often that is the goal of the Geisterfahrer is to die. IIRC they often drive without lights making them extremely dangerous.
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davedave1111
> Rainbow
02/23/2015 at 22:25 |
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Well, usually the driver's on the correct side of the road to start with... ;)
But most wrong-way drivers turn round almost immediately. A few panic and keep going in the wrong direction, but they tend not to use the innermost lane. Where there is one, even panicked drivers mostly use the hard shoulder.
Aside from that, mostly it doesn't happen when the roads are busy - I'd guess because there's a stream of traffic to follow when joining the motorway - so fortunately people seem to be more able to avoid the wrong-way drivers than you'd think.
As far as I know traffic on the autobahns generally doesn't travel much faster than traffic on our motorways at non-busy times, so I'd be surprised if the rate of fatalities is much higher. Bear in mind that the closing speed doesn't change greatly unless the oncoming traffic is going a lot faster, because you're starting from a high baseline - 70mph minimum, more realistically 90ish, plus whatever the wrong-way driver is doing, which is often about 30ish. Except for the rare few doing ludicrous-speed on the autobahn, you're talking about an extra 20% maybe. That's a lot less important than the number of lanes and how busy the road is.
Sadly, in a fairly small proportion of cases there is a head-on crash, and the results are as you'd expect. Fortunately, though, most of the time wrong-way driving doesn't end in a crash.