Multi-car pile up in Germany

[Hugo a Gogo]

..on Friday evening

http://www.rp-online.de/panorama/mehrere-tote-und-...

3 dead, 30 injured, 52 vehicles involved

driving too fast and too close in fog

lots of people were suggesting this was very a British thing after the M5 crash, clearly not

the 31 autobahn is dead straight and flat, and mostly unrestricted

mostly cars, rather than trucks in the crash, going from the pics

[Zod]

There's a lot of talk on here about German driving discipline. There's some jutification for it, but in my experience, many drive like lunatics in fog. There are no cats' eyes, so even seeing lane dividing lines is tough in thick fog, but you still get big saloons piling along at speeds over 160 km/h.

Edited by Zod on Monday 21st November 10:40

[marcosgt]

Doesn't surprise me at all.

When I lived there in the 90s, it was a common occurence.

"Germans don't have many accidents, but when they do, they're huge" was a common remark from locals and ex-pats (of all nationalites) alike.

Germans LOVE to tailgate and so when they hit a bank of fog, a cloudburst or a crash, they tend to pile into one another big time!

M.

[Hugo a Gogo]

of course, there will have been a few Dutch cars involved, so we can blame them

[Baked_bean]

Looks horrible, if you look at some of the cars in the pictures you can guess at which ones where the fatalities.

Sobering.

[surveyor]

Also not surprised.

Was being driven around various military bases a few years ago by a sales manager. Very heavy rain standing water, we were doing 100 mph and being tailgated, far too close to the car in front for my comfort.

Police Car came flying by, would have been my sign to be a bit more cautious. Not a bit. Amazed that there were not more crashes when we eventually caught up to the queue caused by the first...

[Caulkhead]

Most of the cars in the pictures have relatively light damage - it can't have been a very high speed incident by the looks of it.

[hostyle]

Hugo a Gogo said:

of course, there will have been a few Dutch cars involved, so we can blame them

There were Dutch cars involved. Bring the blame

[hostyle]

Caulkhead said:

Most of the cars in the pictures have relatively light damage - it can't have been a very high speed incident by the looks of it.

Take a look at picture 4. In the bottom right of the pic you see a car t-boned by a van. That doesn't look to good. So did some of the vans in the pile-up.

[VR6 Turbo]

terrible, my thoughts go out to the family's

the figures don't stack up. unrestricted autobahn, 52 cars, 35 injury's, 3 deaths.

M5, 70mph limit, 34 cars, 51 injured and 7 deaths.

surly speed kill's dies with this.

Again terrible a terrible time for the family's.

VR

[croyde]

There's a pic of the back of an MPV crushed by the car behind. It has always scared me that car designers think it's OK to put passengers in the crumple zone.

[Caulkhead]

hostyle said:

Caulkhead said:

Most of the cars in the pictures have relatively light damage - it can't have been a very high speed incident by the looks of it.

Take a look at picture 4. In the bottom right of the pic you see a car t-boned by a van. That doesn't look to good. So did some of the vans in the pile-up.

Hence my use of the word 'most' rather than the word 'all'.

[Baked_bean]

VR6 Turbo said:

terrible, my thoughts go out to the family's

the figures don't stack up. unrestricted autobahn, 52 cars, 35 injury's, 3 deaths.

M5, 70mph limit, 34 cars, 51 injured and 7 deaths.

surly speed kill's dies with this.

Again terrible a terrible time for the family's.

VR

I don't think the lorries and fire would have helped in the case of the M5 accident. There doesn't seem to be anything bigger than a vw transporter in the autobahn incident.

[Bluebarge]

croyde said:

There's a pic of the back of an MPV crushed by the car behind. It has always scared me that car designers think it's OK to put passengers in the crumple zone.

They don't - most 3rd row passengers in MPVs sit above the rear axle - exactly where they sit in a fiesta-size hatchback. And if you hit a vehicle hard enough - the whole thing becomes a crumple zone.

[Monkeylegend]

VR6 Turbo said:

surly speed kills dies with this.



VR

Without being privy to the cause of either accidents how can you justify a sweeping statement like this?

Unless of course you were involved intimately in both accidents.

Maybe you would care to enlighten us further.

[marcosgt]

Monkeylegend said:

VR6 Turbo said:

surly speed kills dies with this.

VR

Without being privy to the cause of either accidents how can you justify a sweeping statement like this?

Unless of course you were involved intimately in both accidents.

Maybe you would care to enlighten us further.

He was just being surely

M.

[FreiWild]

Baked_bean said:

I don't think the lorries and fire would have helped in the case of the M5 accident. There doesn't seem to be anything bigger than a vw transporter in the autobahn incident.

It was reported that 2 lorries could stop barely meters from the pile up, would have been a lot more messy had they plowed through there.

The tragic thing is, 2 of the three killed, were hit by cars while they tried to make their way to the roadside.

[aka_kerrly]

Blimey, that is a nasty accident but yet again the simple explanation is tailgating and not driving to the conditions. Two things which ought to be very simple to explain to people and that if we had more traffic police could easily be dealt with.

It winds me up that we can have 50mph average speed camera zones on our motorways, we can now have systems that monitor up to 4 lanes at a time to trap speeding motorists, well why not set these cameras to target those who leave insufficient space between them and other motorists or maybe a system that can detect when cars pass that don't have headlights on after the light drops below a certain level. I strongly believe these measures will have more of a positive impact.

dave

[nottyash]

From what I have read into the M5 crash it doesnt seem speed or even fog was the key factor.
Witness reports reasonably slow moving traffic and a clear stretch of road.
There is some truth in the firework display causing the smoke/ and fog in a ceratin place so what do we do now? Ban bonfire night? Keep people indoors?
Despite the pathetic health and safety ball bags on TV before knowing any facts blaming speed and saying this has come at a time the government wants to put the speed limit up to 80mph, which really boils my piss.
It was a tragic accident, probably the result of more than one contributing factor. What about human error? People driving too fast to suit the conditions.
A blanket speed limit cant prevent an accident on its own. If it is foggy, doing a speed limit of 70mph will still kill you if you hit something.
Even if you stop in time, that lorry behind you might not.

[Gixer]

VR6 Turbo said:

terrible, my thoughts go out to the family's

the figures don't stack up. unrestricted autobahn, 52 cars, 35 injury's, 3 deaths.

M5, 70mph limit, 34 cars, 51 injured and 7 deaths.

surly speed kill's dies with this.

Again terrible a terrible time for the family's.

VR

Deristricted autobahns are not always derestricted. If the weather was bad the gantry signs would have had a speed limit posted, similar to our gantry signs.

From my experiance of driving in Germany, as fast as they like to drive, most do slow when a limit is posted. Maybe that's just because of the cameras on some of the gantries.

They do tailgate though which is why they have cameras to nick tailgaters

I'd still rather be on an autobahn rather than a numpty infested Motorway