The last largely unexplored continent is the head of mobile man. According to the latest in kitchen psychology, there seems to be a stressed hemisphere and a relaxed hemisphere. With the former we get through everyday life rather badly than right. The other is reserved for bridging days, long weekends and annual vacation. If you need empirical proof of this personality split, you will always find something new on the subject of speed limits.
A magazine poll mirror has just shown again that a majority rejects the expansion of 30 km/h zones on German roads. Almost 400 municipalities have now joined the initiative “Cities worth living through reasonable speeds”. Recently, a 30 km/h speed limit has been introduced everywhere in residential areas, and now the municipalities are demanding the right to impose this speed limit on main roads as well – “exactly what the local people need and want,” according to the initiators.
But the Federal Transport Minister puts his veto, after all, his party wants to be re-elected. According to mirror 57 percent answered the question of whether a 30 km/h speed limit should apply on more city streets than before with no (42 percent with “No, definitely not”). The nice thing about opinion research is that you get the right result if you ask the right question. So it’s about which of the above-mentioned hemispheres you hit or want to hit.
Of course everyone wants to introduce a speed limit of 30 in their own residential area
People who speak out against speed limits in this country accept as a matter of course that Mediterranean countries, for example, are closing their city centers to cars and dimming the speed everywhere. No problem if you’re in vacation mode and not being whipped through the streets by the madness of everyday life. The same applies here: in their own residential area, of course, everyone wants to introduce a 30 km/h speed limit, but behind the wheel as a commuter traveling through, the demands of the residents seem strangely inappropriate. One hemisphere, other hemisphere.
As I said: The rational human being is the last white spot on the map. Nevertheless, the physicist Michael Schreckenberg dares to try an interpretation: “Drivers are often not cooperative because they quickly feel cheated,” explains the Duisburg traffic jam researcher. An American study has shown that when driving in a convoy, you always have the feeling of being overtaken by twice as many cars as you have overtaken yourself.
So it’s like at the supermarket checkout: the mobile person all too often thinks he’s on the losing side. That’s why he’s constantly changing lanes, reluctantly or not at all letting others merge in at a bottleneck, and he’s against “freedom-depriving” speed limits of all kinds could, as studies show? Free! Maybe next time we’ll think about it again.
Joachim Becker finds his job as a journalist hectic enough – an audio book in the car helps to slow down.
(Photo: Bernd Schifferdecker (Illustration))