I don’t have a license or car. A friend of mine posted a story on IG driving at 300 km/h on the highway. I know it’s fast, but just how fast in terms of driving?
Ridiculously fast. More than double than what most people will drive on a highway. Illegal on a highway anywhere but Germany. And even there it would be quite unsafe and thus illegal in most driving conditions.
Technically legal on the Isle of Man too, but see the TT and how several people die on it every year for how bad an idea that is
We traveled to Germany years ago, rented a car and drove on the autobahn with no speed limit. We were on a long down hill in a brand new audi a6 … beautiful car and I floored it in the passing lane to 260 kmh … I was scared shitless because I knew that all I needed was a rock on the road or a little bump and we’d both be dead. I looked in my rear view mirror and a guy was flashing me from behind. He wanted me to move over and he passed us just seemingly floating right past us in a luxury Mercedes.
That was the fastest I’ve ever driven anything and it was scary. The car was fine, it’s just knowing that if any small thing came in our way at that speed, the car would fly, crash, crush us to death, rip apart and blow up in a blaze of glory. You can survive a crash at 140 kmh … it would be a miracle to have your body remain in one piece in a crash at 300 kmh
That’s 186 mph. In the US, the highest posted speed limit anywhere is 85 mph, on some stretches of highway in remote rural Texas. So you’re looking at more than 2x the speed limit of the highest posted speed limit in the country. A lot of cars come preprogrammed with some speed governor in them. They usually top out at an already absurd speed of 125-155 mph.
So 300 km/hr is absolutely insane. That’s enough to get jail time in most states.
That’s ridiculously fast even for car enthusiasts.
The percentage of consumer cars that can even do that is infinitesimally small.
300 kph is 186 mph, which is well beyond the posted speed limit of any jurisdiction I can think of. For reference, here in California, a conviction for driving over 160 kph (100 mph) is punishable as a felony, meaning at least one year in state prison. The highest speed limit in California is 113 kph (70 mph).
In metric units, a triple digit speed (eg 100 kph) is the domain of motorways (aka freeways or expressways). And even arrow-straight motorways have a maximum posted speed limit of some 140 kph. In Germany, the motorway can sometimes have no limit, but the recommended speed – equivalent to the yellow speed signs in the USA – for German autobahns is 130 kph, with some speedy cars occasionally doing 200 kph, I’ve heard.
For further reference, the fastest speed achieved during an F1 motor race is 372 kph. Also, Japanese bullet trains heading west from Tokyo on the Tokaido Shinkansen route run at 285 kph.
300 kph on a public road is grossly irresponsible, since even with no one around, the road is not designed for that speed. Compare race tracks with freeways, and it becomes clear that surface quality, drainage, sight lines, clear space, and other requirements for 200+ kph just aren’t present on public roads, with the notable exception of very special public roads like the Nürburgring.
It’s about 3 times the speed limit for most highways in most places. Give or take.
The stopping distance at those speeds is 500+ meters.
Even with the best tires, brakes and driver that’s several football fields end to end before that car comes to a stop. If anything happens at those speeds it is unlikely the driver will be able to do anything about it in time.
There was a woman that worked for a car magazine that was doing a video on the Autobahn and someone pulled out in front of her around those speeds she instantly killed everyone on the vehicle she hit and she was left permanently injured and barely able to walk. She wasn’t even at fault in that situation either. It’s the job of the people pulling into the fast lane to check for fast moving cars and for whatever reason they didn’t.
You friend is playing a dangerous game with more than their own life.
If you go faster than 130 km/h you are always allotted a certain percentage of fault in Germany. You don’t have the right to speed if you are endangering others.
That is simply not true. 130kph is the recommended speed. For certain marked stretches of the Autobahn there is no speed limit and it is understood that you do not pull into the left lane without checking for fast moving cars behind you. If they find that you still would have crashed if you had been going 130kph you are unlikely to be held responsible.
She was filming a video at the time and when she woke up in the hospital days later the German police told her what had happened and she was not found to be at fault at all. The deceased person who had pulled into the left lane without checking was entirely at fault. She flew home as soon as the German doctors had done the major surgery to her legs and spine.
My mom’s entire side of the family is German and many of them still live in Germany. Talks about the Autobahn have come up at family gatherings on multiple occasions.
I am willing to admit my data might be out of date, but from a quick Google it appears to still be the same rules.
TL;DR: “sorry, you are right, I over-simplified”and “don’t be a dick on the Autobahn”
Ok, you are technically correct, which is - as we all know - the best version of correct. 😎
I admit to gross over-simplification on my part. This is the internet after all.
My point was to not underestimate the weight of the advisory speed limit. Living over here at a stretch of Autobahn with no posted speed limit I have seen my fair share of reckless speeding and felt compelled to make a point as the image projected by many ‘influencers’ is that anything goes on the Autobahn.
Some more details for the three people still reading this:
Courts over here in good ol’ Germany are pretty clear that paragraph 1 of the German highway code lays out the guiding principle of traffic and has to be followed at all times:
[…]
- Participation in road traffic requires constant caution and mutual consideration. (2) Anyone taking part in traffic must behave in such a way that no one else is harmed, endangered or hindered or inconvenienced more than is unavoidable under the circumstances. […] (Translated by myself using deepl.com)
To the advisory speed of 130 km/h:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advisory_speed_limit
[…]While travelling above the advisory speed limit is not illegal per se, it may be negligence per se and liability for any collisions that occur as a result of traveling above the limit can be placed partially or entirely on the person exceeding the advisory speed limit.[…]
That is very fast. So fast in fact that at in only 1 hour you will travel 300km.
~83m/s
For the Americans here, 83m is ~0.83 football fields
It’s more than 3 times the common speed limits on roads, and more than 2 times faster than any speed limit on a motorway in the world (Autobahn doesn’t have limit)
Let’s imagine your car could pull 6g while decelerating, which is the upper limit what non-trained person is able to take. This would mean that from hitting the brake pedal, your car would move for another 1.4 seconds, in which time it had moved 116 metres. Realistically it’d be A LOT longer but should give a some kind of idea
Edit: shit math I’m too high to realize your speed is decreasing when you decelerate. Half that breaking distance and you’re closer
Math’s off. You would move 116 m at 83 m/s, but since you are decelerating (accelerating in the opposite direction of your velocity really) it would be half of that, wouldn’t it (honest question I’m already in bed and quite sleepy so my math can be off too)?
Ah yeah you’re actually right, and I’m way too medicated to think straight today
That is the kind of speed it takes to get a 747 into the air on takeoff.
Say you rolled down a back window of a car and stuck your head out (not recommended) you would feel wind so strong it would max out typhoon and hurricane scales, similar to an EF4 Tornado. The skin of your face flaps like fabric and seeing and breathing is very difficult, as seen here
186 miles per hour. It’s fast, really fast, Depending on country likely really illegal
Faster than I’d trust a goverment built road is flat.
If you have a grasp on distance rather than speed, you could figure out how quickly that speed would get you across that distance, assuming straight-line travel.
Let’s say I live 10km from a relative (about 6 miles) and I know it takes them about 20 minutes to get here when the road’s clear, that means I know they’re doing about 30km/h (18.6mph) on average to get here. Pretty standard for urban driving. At an average speed of 300km/h that journey would take 2 minutes.
Equivalently, a 2 minute journey now takes 12 seconds. This ignores the fact that there’d have to be one heck of an acceleration and deceleration at either end to get that average, but nonetheless, 300km/h is scary speed.
Or to put it another way, one accidental twitch of the steering wheel at that sort of speed and even the best downforce in the world isn’t going to stop you turning into a break-neck, sideways, tumbling disaster.
You could watch car disaster videos online if that helps. Or if you don’t like the idea of potentially watching people die, seek out people playing sandbox games like BeamNG where they set up horrifying scenarios, but no-one gets hurt.
3 times as fast as 100? I don’t know what you’re expecting here. It’s 83.3 metres per second, if that helps. Your friend must have a nice car, there’s not many that can go that fast, and even fewer that can do it and still handle predictably.
Almost two times faster that is safish to drive.
This is something that’s hard to describe with words
This video has someone going that speed, they also talk through some of the considerations on how to do that safely
4K HDR POV: How to drive 300+ kmh on German Autobahn in a McLaren
There’s also this video with a motorcycle doing something similar
