Sunday, December 30, 2012

Ghost riders in the sky - ghost drivers on the freeway

Passenger: How fast are we going?
Driver: 110 km.
Passenger: What's the speed limit?
Driver: 130.

At this very moment, a hearse passes in the left lane.

Driver: Don't you dare say that even dead guys go faster than me.

That embodiment of the freeway concept, the German autobahn, is as multifaceted as the country itself.

Getting on the autobahn requires you to observe the Yield sign on  the on ramp. US drivers are used to the folks zooming along in the right lane letting them in -- not so here.

Some drivers will move over or slow down but not many. That Yield sign is enforced by the momentum and the stubborn driving of those already on ye autobahn. You will see many cars at a dead stop at the end of the merge strip.

One day, you will drive one of them.

Once you are on the freeway, you do as the locals, you drive fast, and you pass others.

Weekday driving is a lot more fun to people like me than weekend drives. That is because the hundreds or thousands of trucks in the right lane make it so that even the craziest lead foot does restrain himself a little.

Weekends with just a few trucks can be nerve wrecking. That's when the left lane headlight flashing, bumper hugging crowd is out.

That mix of old guys, stressed families, and adrenaline junkies.

The faster, more sporty or just bigger the car, the more rights come with it. The "in-built right of way" they call it here, just another accessory, yours for a few extra grand.

Be as relaxed as you can. You will find yourself on a three lane stretch passing a truck with the guy behind you flashing headlights: get out of my way!

Instead of him moving over into the empty third lane.

You cannot safely stay in the left lane and drive the equivalent of Dalles to Houston without use of the right lane. It'll get you killed.

There are thousands of blog posts and comments on driving related web sites about how long you are legally allowed to be in the left lane before moving back over.
Even with almost no traffic on a three lane road, don't even think of driving in the center lane all the way.

You really need to be born and raised German, I would say, to applaud stretches of freeway without any speed limit in a country as densely populated and as small as Germany. But heck...

One thing I do like about autobahns is the term the Germans have for people who drive on the wrong side of the freeway: Geisterfahrer -- ghost drivers.

The term "Falschfahrer" (wrong lane driver) is generally used as the more official, more neutral term but I vastly prefer the ghost driver.

It blends the apocalyptic Ghost Riders In The Sky imagery of an American mind with the generic image of the ghost as the restless soul ripped violently out of life. Sometimes I think of the autobahns as corridors of lost souls, my kitschy self loves it.

The English word rubbernecking for the drivers who slow down to get a good look at an accident in the opposite lanes is more vivid than the German "Gaffer" (gawker).

Rubbernecking expresses the cartoonish nature of the activity so nicely, doesn't it?

Before we go, one dig at the band Kraftwerk whose smash Autobahn hit added another layer to the autobahn mystique.

Just like that driver who not only uses the engine power but gets an extra push from knowing the force of the law behind him, Kraftwerk took another artist to court because that artist had been using all of two (2) seconds of music from a Kraftwerk song without permission.

On the autobahn and in the music business, every second counts.

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