The suggested speed on the Autobahn is still 130 km/h. If you're going significantly faster and cause an accident, your insurance will probably consider you at fault and only cover what they're (edit: legally) obligated to.
I drive in Germany sometimes and the roads are too busy to be going very fast, my average never got much higher than 150 km/h even if you only count the fastest portions. To be fair I haven't tried crossing the country starting on a Sunday at 3 AM, you can probably go as fast as is efficient to not waste time on extra refuelling because of the car's drag.
In my experience, travelling ~90km/h most of the time but adhering to local limits, stop signs, etc. drags you down to the average ~60km/h speed all throughout the route.
As for going 120km/h on the highway, you still effectively get around 80-100km/h average speed.
Depends. Common 4-lane setup tends to flow like130, 120, 100, 90, with trucks not allowed to leave the two slower lanes or exceed 100/110.
Also depends on the country, but people generally stick to the 130 limits with a few speeders pushing 140/150. Unrestricted zones still have speed limits to lanes so only the fastest lane is unlimited. Some countries the speed signs are just ignored because they're ridiculous. If you were to adhere to them, you'd put yourself at risk with the rest of the flow of traffic.
I'd say most of the time, cruising easy, and in usual traffic you're between 110-130. So 120 avg. or 75 mph is about right.
Going further south, to Red Rocks or even to Island Bay, makes the cape 14 hrs away. Basically the longest trip on "nice" roads in the North Island. Could make it 14 1/2 hrs if you take it to Cape Palliser; but that is basically the limit in NZ.
This is why Europeans don't grasp how big the U.S. is. It's a minimum of 33 hours driving from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Their entire country is a day trip from home.
You’d be surprised. So many Europeans (and Americans) think they can do little day trips in Australia to places multiple days of non-stop driving away.
Sure, but so often it's "Americans are complicit idiots since half the country doesn't simply protest in the same city" and "dumb car-brained Americans won't even build highspeed rail between LA and NYC" 🙄
Even smaller-scale things like the definition of rural are so drastically different from places like the UK that they just don't translate.
The distances and population density differences are huge but simultaneously subtle enough that reasonable-ish sounding yet wildly impractical takes are a common occurrence online.
"dumb car-brained Americans won't even build highspeed rail between LA and NYC"
I mean the rail system in the US could definitely be better. Like NYC to LA on Amtrak is scheduled for nearly 3 days of travel and since it's Amtrak you're probably going to be 4 hours late in Chicago and LA so closer to 4 days. For reference NYC to LA on Greyhound is scheduled at the same amount of time but you'd have to be an idiot to think Greyhound is getting you anywhere close to on time.
Even if you could solve the impossible land acquisition problem and build non-stop highspeed rail in a straight line between LA and NYC, it'd still be much faster to fly the ~2500 miles than to take a train. It's 6 hour flight vs a well over 12 hour train ride.
Passenger rail doesn't exist on that scale in the US because it's prohibitively expensive and, even if it were free, obsolete at that distance. It could be better for intrastate or travel on along the coast, but then you run into the land and cost issues. See: California working on this for nearly a decade.
Yeah high speed rail across the country is pretty infeasible but the current service is really bad and that's what I was addressing.
A train service should be faster than a bus on the same distance if for no other reason than the bus is going to have more frequent stops. Amtrak saying they can't do coast any faster than Greyhound should be embarrassing.
You do realise when you say stuff like this that Europe, by the conventional understanding of it extending to the Ural Mountains, is still bigger than the US by around 300.000 square kilometres right? Europeans do know how big it is.
„But tourists…“ people don’t have the capacity to comprehend scale in unfamiliar environments. The New Zealand subreddit gets all sorts of nationalities asking if they can do crazy shit like drive from Auckland to Queenstown in a day.
Most people dont have to drive from new york to los angeles or similar, thats 42 hours, but we have similar distances in europe as well. The longest ive driven was about 30 hours(dont even ask, thats too much even for me) but a friend of mine and their family had to drive down from åre to barcelona which google maps says is 37 hours. I think it took four days for them. Also from where i am right now, kiruna, a very northern city in sweden, is 18 hours away. The lomgest drive in sweden wothout going through another country is 22 hours so the us being larger isnt a very valid argument. If you look at the entirity of europe its larger than the us and the distances are longer but what actually matters is the population density. When comparing the contiguous us and the eu for example the population density is double in the eu while the whole of europe has a population density about 50% higher than the us.
58 Comments
db_null@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 85 pts · 12h
Istanbul is not a capital city. Capital of Turkey is Ankara. Obligatory: Erdogan is a fucking twat
daychilde@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 7h
btw, Constantinople¹ is also not the capital. Why they changed it, though, I can't say.
¹ nople
InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 7h
Its nobodies business but the Turks.
daychilde@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 6h
Thank you :)
CheesyFox@lemmy.sdf.org · 1 pts · 1h
I mean,
even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Dagnet@lemmy.world · 38 pts · 12h
No german city pictured because infinite -10% is still infinite
libewa@feddit.org · 18 pts · 12h
The suggested speed on the Autobahn is still 130 km/h. If you're going significantly faster and cause an accident, your insurance will probably consider you at fault and only cover what they're (edit: legally) obligated to.
sketchyenchantment@sh.itjust.works · 14 pts · 12h
Why would any insurance company pay more than they are obligated to?
SouthEndSunset@piefed.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 12h
Cause a bro has always got a bros back.
daychilde@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 7h
I read a while back that more and more of the Autobahn has a speed limit these days.
vorpuni@tarte.nuage-libre.fr · 6 pts · 11h
I drive in Germany sometimes and the roads are too busy to be going very fast, my average never got much higher than 150 km/h even if you only count the fastest portions. To be fair I haven't tried crossing the country starting on a Sunday at 3 AM, you can probably go as fast as is efficient to not waste time on extra refuelling because of the car's drag.
witty_username@feddit.nl · 29 pts · 12h
Ah yes the Polish capital of Poland
jxk@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 5h
Would be cool if Warsaw was called Po though
PointlessLifePersonified@slrpnk.net · 17 pts · 12h
Do a lot of Europeans stay 10% under the speed limit? Because that sure as hell ain't the case in America.
AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip · 14 pts · 12h
I think its to calculate with the likely stops you are going to take during the journey
ddplf@szmer.info · 1 pts · 3h
In my experience, travelling ~90km/h most of the time but adhering to local limits, stop signs, etc. drags you down to the average ~60km/h speed all throughout the route.
As for going 120km/h on the highway, you still effectively get around 80-100km/h average speed.
10% down is extremely optimistic
Quazatron@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 12h
In Portugal speed limits are treated as suggestions.
Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz · 4 pts · 12h
People watch rally and F1. What do you think.
saltesc@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 11h
Depends. Common 4-lane setup tends to flow like130, 120, 100, 90, with trucks not allowed to leave the two slower lanes or exceed 100/110.
Also depends on the country, but people generally stick to the 130 limits with a few speeders pushing 140/150. Unrestricted zones still have speed limits to lanes so only the fastest lane is unlimited. Some countries the speed signs are just ignored because they're ridiculous. If you were to adhere to them, you'd put yourself at risk with the rest of the flow of traffic.
I'd say most of the time, cruising easy, and in usual traffic you're between 110-130. So 120 avg. or 75 mph is about right.
TheFriendlyDickhead@feddit.org · 1 pts · 12h
But to be fair trafic jams and stops are not included and those take time as well
lemmydividebyzero@reddthat.com · 10 pts · 4h
By the way: This "how far can I get from a specific point within time xy?" is called isochrones.
Very interesting when you move somewhere and want to know what's in range.
lyralycan@sh.itjust.works · 10 pts · 12h
Now do public transport (not @ OP, just stating a desire for a railway+bus+foot alternative
ooli3@sopuli.xyz · 4 pts · 12h
you wont believe it : https://sopuli.xyz/post/35479366
SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.social · 7 pts · 6h
West_of_West@piefed.social · 6 pts · 11h
Get in loser we are invading Belarus!
deadcream@sopuli.xyz · 3 pts · 6h
Making Poland great again?
Kolanaki@pawb.social · 4 pts · 12h
Isn't it nice that you can drive 8 hours and still not be in France?
morto@piefed.social · 3 pts · 6h
TIL about the channel tunnel!
AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 11h
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 12h
Man its easy to forget how fucking microscopic Europe is.
lukaro@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 12h
I live in Florida and could just about make it to Miami in 8 hours.
saltesc@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 11h
I drove from Cairns to Brisbane in one hit when I was in Australia. 21 hours of open highway. Only half the state covered.
absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz · 5 pts · 10h
I drove with a friend 13 hours across Oz to the coast; looked at map was a tiny little bit of the bottom part.....FFS Oz is huge.
Drive 13hrs in NZ and you would go from Wellington to somewhere in Northland; or the whole length of the South Island.
Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 8h
13 hours would get you from the Wellington CBD to Cape Reinga, which is as far north as you can get on public roads. 8 would get you past Auckland.
absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz · 2 pts · 8h
Indeed.
Going further south, to Red Rocks or even to Island Bay, makes the cape 14 hrs away. Basically the longest trip on "nice" roads in the North Island. Could make it 14 1/2 hrs if you take it to Cape Palliser; but that is basically the limit in NZ.
I'll say it again, FFS Oz is huge.
nocturne@slrpnk.net · 5 pts · 9h
My daughter just came to visit me in New Mexico from Maryland. 2,000 miles / 3218 km, it is over 24 hours of driving.
morto@piefed.social · 3 pts · 6h
The new map projection from the UN is like a memento mori for it
ddplf@szmer.info · 2 pts · 2h
That, and the crazy good infrastructure. Travelling 1000km in Poland is a completely different story than travelling the same distance in the Balkans
NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone · 1 pts · 1h
You can drive for 8 hours in North America and still have no healthcare.
kingofras@lemmy.world · -5 pts · 5h
Racist garbage. This joke of Spaniards having really long siestas is overdone.
DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world · -11 pts · 13h
This is why Europeans don't grasp how big the U.S. is. It's a minimum of 33 hours driving from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Their entire country is a day trip from home.
Bobbysaurus@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 13h
We do understand that, don’t you worry.
crandall@lemmy.today · 7 pts · 12h
Europeans in America are always like "The Grand Canyon is beautiful! Now let's drive over to see the Statue of Liberty!"
Just teasing, I love you Europeans
CobraCommander@quokk.au · 6 pts · 12h
You’d be surprised. So many Europeans (and Americans) think they can do little day trips in Australia to places multiple days of non-stop driving away.
chisel@piefed.social · 0 pts · 12h
Sure, but so often it's "Americans are complicit idiots since half the country doesn't simply protest in the same city" and "dumb car-brained Americans won't even build highspeed rail between LA and NYC" 🙄
Even smaller-scale things like the definition of rural are so drastically different from places like the UK that they just don't translate.
The distances and population density differences are huge but simultaneously subtle enough that reasonable-ish sounding yet wildly impractical takes are a common occurrence online.
evidences@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 6h
I mean the rail system in the US could definitely be better. Like NYC to LA on Amtrak is scheduled for nearly 3 days of travel and since it's Amtrak you're probably going to be 4 hours late in Chicago and LA so closer to 4 days. For reference NYC to LA on Greyhound is scheduled at the same amount of time but you'd have to be an idiot to think Greyhound is getting you anywhere close to on time.
chisel@piefed.social · 0 pts · 5h
Even if you could solve the impossible land acquisition problem and build non-stop highspeed rail in a straight line between LA and NYC, it'd still be much faster to fly the ~2500 miles than to take a train. It's 6 hour flight vs a well over 12 hour train ride.
Passenger rail doesn't exist on that scale in the US because it's prohibitively expensive and, even if it were free, obsolete at that distance. It could be better for intrastate or travel on along the coast, but then you run into the land and cost issues. See: California working on this for nearly a decade.
evidences@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 4h
Yeah high speed rail across the country is pretty infeasible but the current service is really bad and that's what I was addressing.
A train service should be faster than a bus on the same distance if for no other reason than the bus is going to have more frequent stops. Amtrak saying they can't do coast any faster than Greyhound should be embarrassing.
nightlily@leminal.space · 13 pts · 9h
You do realise when you say stuff like this that Europe, by the conventional understanding of it extending to the Ural Mountains, is still bigger than the US by around 300.000 square kilometres right? Europeans do know how big it is.
„But tourists…“ people don’t have the capacity to comprehend scale in unfamiliar environments. The New Zealand subreddit gets all sorts of nationalities asking if they can do crazy shit like drive from Auckland to Queenstown in a day.
Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 8h
Which is amazing, because you can check that on Google maps in seconds.
yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de · 9 pts · 12h
Lisbon to Helsinki takes 47 hours of driving btw.
And you haven't even reached far North yet, there's still 1000+ km of Finland remaining.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 3 pts · 12h
Yeah but nobody would even consider driving from Lisbon to Helsinki if the goal is just to get from A to B; you'd make that trip by plane.
yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de · 8 pts · 10h
Yup, but hardly anyone in the US decides to do Atlantic to Pacific road trips either.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 10h
Plenty of people in the US do this.
antianarchist@sopuli.xyz · 4 pts · 10h
Only because gas was probably cheaper than water, but that changed recently.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 9h
Yep. And because people in the US have a weird sense that their time has no value.
EntheoNaut@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 9h
As a teenager/college student to have the experience, yes.
And then there’s families who do this, again for the experience. It's an American Right of Passage without question.
But on the regular, LA to NY, ya gonna fly.
Quazatron@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 12h
Europeans think 200km is a long distance. Americans think 200 years is a long time. /jk
AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip · 8 pts · 11h
Most people dont have to drive from new york to los angeles or similar, thats 42 hours, but we have similar distances in europe as well. The longest ive driven was about 30 hours(dont even ask, thats too much even for me) but a friend of mine and their family had to drive down from åre to barcelona which google maps says is 37 hours. I think it took four days for them. Also from where i am right now, kiruna, a very northern city in sweden, is 18 hours away. The lomgest drive in sweden wothout going through another country is 22 hours so the us being larger isnt a very valid argument. If you look at the entirity of europe its larger than the us and the distances are longer but what actually matters is the population density. When comparing the contiguous us and the eu for example the population density is double in the eu while the whole of europe has a population density about 50% higher than the us.