Question about passing on the right on the Autobahn

[J N Winkler]

So it is--German Wikipedia has more detail (English Wikipedia's account is highly abbreviated).  The mover behind the Cologne-Bonn Kraftwagenbahn was not any of the motorway groups, but rather the Rhine Province government.

Anyway, words are otiose, while pictures are concise.  These two photos featuring the Kraftwagenbahn are from an issue of the Journal of the Indian Concrete Industry in (I think) 1938.





This picture comes from the same source but shows the typical Reichsautobahn cross-section, with Portland cement concrete used for the running lanes (as was the case for, if memory serves, well over 90% of the Autobahn mileage constructed between 1933 and 1939).  Nazi propagandists liked to claim that the warning sign shown was the only kind required anywhere on the Autobahn network.  (Yes, the sign used button reflectors, but sadly I don't think I have any pictures showing how it looked after dark.)



Edit:  This one is from 1925 (Puricelli, Autostrade):

[Chris]

When construction of the Reichsautobahnen ended in 1942-1943, the network was an impressive 3,900 kilometers of what we currently see as motorways/freeways. I'm not sure how far Italy progressed by that time (France didn't have any motorways before WW II), but the German Reichsautobahn system was the largest system in the world at that time. Currently, it comes 4th or 5th (tied with France, after Spain, China and the U.S.)

Only a few countries constructed high-speed roads before World War II, most notably Germany, United States, Italy and the Netherlands. Countries like France or Spain didn't began to pick up on motorway mileage until the 1970's. China didn't have an inch of Expressway before 1989.

[J N Winkler]

Are you sure there wasn't any mileage in Belgium built to freeway standards before the war?  The Belgians definitely had a published motorway plan by the 1930's.  Plus, French Wikipedia gives 1941 as the opening date of what is now part of the A13 near St. Cloud, so autoroutes were built during the Third Republic--albeit to a very small cumulative mileage.  The Périphérique is not formally an autoroute but small parts of it were built during the 1930's as well.

As to Italy, the total Italian autostrada mileage built between 1923 (start of construction on the Milan-Lakes autostrade) and 1935 (completion and opening to traffic of the trucks-only Autocamionale between Genoa and Serravalle Scrivia) was 488 km.  This includes the Autocamionale with a length of 50 km, and I question whether it is properly described as a fast road--for starters, it had curve radii down to 100 m.  In any event, all of Italy's pre-World War II autostrada mileage was built to essentially the same standards as the Milan-Lakes autostrade, i.e. single carriageways capable of comfortably accommodating just three vehicles abreast at their widest.  The Milan-Lakes autostrade were not dualled until the mid-1960's.

The Italians had plans for a much bigger motorway network before the war.  Giuseppe Pini, who was director of the AASS for a while in the 1930's, chaired a commission which came up with a plan to build over 6000 km of new motorway.  But this was a complete pipe-dream plan--if memory serves, by the time it was published, Italy had already invaded Ethiopia, which attracted sanctions from the League of Nations and also committed Italy to building long lengths of high-type road in both Cyrenaica (now part of Libya) and Ethiopia.  I also suspect, but have not yet succeeded in proving, that the Italians (perhaps unintentionally) destroyed capacity in their road construction sector by insisting on the system of "quindecennial delegations" to finance improvements to 20,000 km of principal road.  This system in effect required contractors to front the entire cost of road improvements, and accept payment for them over the next 15 years.

Aside from the autostrade which were already in operation by 1935 (all of which are still open to traffic in some form), the modern Italian autostrada network is based on a multiyear plan developed in the mid-1950's, with the Autostrada del Sole as the backbone.  The total mileage is nowhere near that envisioned by the Pini plan.

Spain is an interesting story.  During Primo de Rivera's dictatorship in the 1920's, the Spanish were very interested in building autopistas on the Italian model to complement the system of principal roads considered suitable for freight haulage (Circuito Nacional de Firmes Especiales).  A lot of organizations came up with schemes of varying degrees of financial viability, and eventually in 1928 the government promulgated a decree which conditionally granted concessions for three motorway corridors and also set up a mechanism for other motorway schemes to be reviewed and, if judged financially viable, approved.  The original three concessions were never, as far as I know, exercised.  Various other schemes failed to survive review by Fomento.  I think (but am not sure) that the original three concessions were cancelled under the Second Republic.  Proyectos for the original three schemes and a small book of notes explaining why the others were rejected are available at the Archivo General de la Administración in Alcalá de Henares.

I think the Spanish passed their access-control law under Franco, in the 1950's, and got started building autopistas with the trans-Guadarrama route (involving a long tunnel along what is now the A-6) in the early 1960's.

[Chris]

Are you sure there wasn't any mileage in Belgium built to freeway standards before the war?  The Belgians definitely had a published motorway plan by the 1930's.

28 km of E40 (Jabbeke - Aalter) in the west of Belgium opened in 1940. That was the only section opened before 1950.

I think the Spanish passed their access-control law under Franco, in the 1950's, and got started building autopistas with the trans-Guadarrama route (involving a long tunnel along what is now the A-6) in the early 1960's.

I believe the first Autopista constructed was current C-32 or AP-7 in the vicinity of Barcelona, but I'm not sure about that.

[agentsteel53]

Many people drive better specifically to pass the test and then revert to their normal driving habits.

the essential worthlessness of the human condition.  "many people perform better when necessary to impress their bosses, then revert to mediocrity."

eliminate this conditional level of effort, and eliminate about 99.965% of man's problems.

and good luck with that ... if you want to start over, better develop a new race - our species is shit.  98.5% identical DNA to the feces-flinging monkey; we don't exactly have an evolutionary advantage, so why bother improving ourselves when we remain just barely good enough?

[agentsteel53]

Both the 80 MPH and 100 MPH cars would be using the left-hand lane to pass a 64 MPH car in the right-hand lane.  So the question becomes:  who gets to pass the 64 MPH car first?

and is there a circumstance in which the situation is made more effectively passable when the 64mph car is in the left lane, instead of the right?  I believe not, so I defer the questions on the passing of the 64mph car to a secondary role compared to the teaching of all 64mph cars to keep to the right.

Coping with that sort of discourteous behavior is a big part of defensive driving.

I note your point, but I still see a problem, in the abstract and philosophical sense.  "Dealing with assholes is the primary way to stay alive."  Well, yes (and believe me I've seen assholes of so many stripes in my drive through Chicago today) - but eliminating that sort of discourteous behavior should be a motivation of driving courses.  Look, just ... don't honk at me because I am not from around here and therefore did not anticipate the green light by three seconds, and therefore did not floor it through the intersection in a time frame appropriate to your sensibilities.  

People that need to be at their destination 2.6 seconds ahead of the average driver - that is the problem.  Seriously.  I once "raced" someone - they were passing people left and right, flooring it whenever they saw fit, from Salt Lake City to Reno - and I was maintaining a decent pattern of courteous behavior.  I did 100 out in the sticks, but when I came to towns, I slowed to below the posted limit; never once forced a curve beyond its point of danger and zero vision just to pass someone - when it was double-yellow time I kept in my own lane, and this person ignored the legalities and passed anyway.

Well, guess how much faster they were than me, over about 400 miles: 41 seconds.  That's it.  41 seconds to do 400 miles.  That's all you get for risking life and limb and sanity and decency, and passing people over narrow two-lane roads and blazing through towns at 80mph when the speed limit dropped to 30 - well, congratulations, you got to Point B 41 seconds before I did.  Good job.

(The full legend in German:  "Nur für Kraftfahrzeuge — Rechts fahren — Links überholen — Nicht auf der Fahrbahn wenden — Fahrkurse nicht gestattet.")

no matter how delicately translated, such a thing would not fly in contemporary America ... but it certainly should.  Unless you want to pass, stay the Hell out of the left lane.

authority seems to be on weak moral ground.  

hmm, I maintain that there is a distinct difference, in manner and not just degree, between "authority" and "decent behavior".  I always advocate driving fast, because driving fast is the most harmless of traditionally "reckless" behaviors.  I'd rather have everybody doing 95 down the freeway and maintaining lane discipline, than people doing 45 or 65 or 85 and not having any idea which lane they should be in.  

I think this is unlikely to happen, or at any rate to happen on a sufficiently large scale that it would socialize drivers to pay less attention to their speed and more attention to not causing unreasonable inconvenience to other road users.

yep, welcome to America, where we destroy people for speeding ... but if you want to be a jackass doing four over when ten under would be patently unsafe, why don't you just go ahead and do that?  And if you want to pass on the right, blow through red lights, treat four-way stop signs as some kind of display of modern art, cut in front of me with inches to spare, use your turn signals so sparingly that the outside observer would assume they are made of iridium, and of course honk at me because I did not meet your standards of acceleration... so go ahead, be a jackass, just don't speed after the 25th of the month, otherwise all antisocial behaviors are condoned; congratulations, welcome to planet asshole.