Читать книгу Ze Germans - fadi gaziri - Страница 16

1.14 Driving a car in Germany

Driving a car in Germany can be extremely satisfying, fun even. Indeed, virtually no other place in the world has motorways with no speed limit (except maybe the Isle of Man, my editor tells me). In Germany, famously, the motorway is known as the Autobahn, an invention that is often erroneously credited to an infamous Austrian bloke, who went by the first name of Adolf, but that’s beside the point. Driving in a German city is a whole different kettle of fish. Depending on where you live, some cities can be really chaotic and particularly difficult to navigate in a car, but we’ll get to that in a bit. If you got your driving license in any country other than Germany, you need to be aware of the different driving rules here, or rather the difference in their interpretation. Let’s take a look at some of the more unusual German driving quirks.

Honking the horn: It still drives me insane every time a car honks at me, particularly at a traffic light. The thing you need to understand is that Germans are used to people honking at them, and they will do the same unto others. There are several reasons Germans turn to honking their horns. Below I’ve listed some of the most common ones:

• If someone waits one nanosecond too long after the light has turned green.

• If another car has just barged in front of them, from another lane.

• If a car on the left won’t let them into their lane, as per the German merging rule.4

• If a pedestrian runs across the road.

• If someone is driving at 49kmph in a 50 zone.

Blocking the inside lane: This one applies to cities in particular. Be it delivery vans, trucks, postal vans, or even normal cars, nobody will so much as blink an eye if a car suddenly decides to stop, put its hazard lights on, and do whatever they like at the side of the road.

_______________________________________________

4 German merging rule goes by the principle of one in one out, i.e. if suddenly two lanes turn into one, a car in the ‘closed’ lane has the right to barge into your lane without your acknowledgement. If you ignore the rule and don’t let them in, be prepared to get an angry honk from them.