Autobahn

Nothing to do with the autobahn but I was driving back from lunch today and I noticed that the person driving behind me looked like he had long womanly manicured nails. On top of that their hands were practically gilden with jewelery, thinking back on it I think I might have actually caught sight of the elusive midwestern suburbanite guido. I say elusive because when I think of guidos I think of the east coast/Jersey and we're quite a bit further than a stones throw from Guido-land, err I mean New Jersey. Funny thing about New Jersey, it has the motto "The Green Garden State" however it has 611 superfund sites which is almost the highest in the union, strange though that California has more.

As usual my education these days is done via the History channel and mainly via "Modern Marvels". The autobahn was originally planed out around 1913 and was considered in the 30's when the Nazi's came to power. It however wasn't until Hitler appeared on the politcial front that it was seriously worked considered. Hitler being Hitler felt that this was just another opportunity where Germany could do something to show off the greatness and superiority of Germany. What is vaguely amusing was that initially the Nazi party was against the concept of the autobahn as they felt it was a huge expenditure for something that only the very wealthy could enjoy (Have to own a car to enjoy it, duh), but as I said this was one of Hitlers little projects and well Hitler was crazy. When it was finally built the autobahn averaged one car per minute or if you would prefer another unit of measure 1,440 cars per day. I threw that car per day measurement in because I found a statistic that said the autobahn today handles around 46,700 vehicles per day.

To change this Hitler went and talked to Ferdinand Porsche to see if he could produce a car that could hold five people go 62mph and cost around 1000 Reich Marks. He went to Porsche because Porsche had been previously working on a small car prototype however he couldn't find anyone interested in helping him make them. With Hitler wanting these cars Porsche started to work on a more and more advanced version of his car however by the time he had a model ready to produce WWII broke out and they had to make amphibous (Schwimmwagen) and reglar jeep vehicles. The pictures I saw of these "jeeps" look a lot like VW things, which is interesting because I was always curious why the VW thing looked so well not german. Interestingly the final version of the car was to be called the KdF ("Kraft durch Freude" which meant "Strength through Joy.") Wagon which Porsche did not like as he was A. not a Nazi, and B. did not approve of Hitler. After the WWII England took over the Volkswagon factory, renamed it "Wolfsburg" (still named that today) and started pumping out the Kdf Wagon. By 1949 the English were done and wanted to turn the factory over to someone however the only people interested turned out to be the German government (Ford actually had a shot at running/owning it but thought it a money losing opportunity).

What does that have to do with the autobahn, well nothing so shut up. The initial specs of the autobahn are equally interesting, it's 27" thick compared to American highways of 12". The maximum grade (The elevation change of the road over 100 feet) on the autobahn is 4% (No more than 4 feet of elevation change over a 100 foot stretch) and was done so that you could more easily keep a constant speed even while going up hill. What else... well the concept of on and off ramps was invented for the autobahn, along with grass medians between oncoming traffic lanes oh and a land speed record was made in the mid 30's which topped out at 268mph!

The Germans for lack of a better term have quite Nazi like traffic laws. It is illegal to change lanes and pass on the right, it is illegal to make profane gestures (minimum of $500 ticket) and whether or not charges are pressed is determined by the receiver of the gesture. It is illegal to run out of gas, stop, tailgate on the autobahn and all cars in Germany are required to pass a test to make sure that the are working correctly. The best thing about all these laws is that the cost of your ticket is directly proportional to how much money you have, so someone wealthy might get a $20,000 tailgating ticket while someone with less money may walk away with only a $100 ticket.