Can Lane Discipline Decrease the Sensitivity of Freeway Fatality Rates to Increases in Speed Limits?
While research in the United States has consistently shown that freeway fatality rates increase with higher speed limits, freeway fatality rates in Germany with no general speed limit on the autobahns are about the same as they are in the United States. The paper explores different contributing factors which might explain this mystery and which lessons of interest to US freeway operations might be learned. It surmises that a very strict separation of traffic by speed (lane discipline) in Germany as opposed to the US might be the main explanatory factor for the low sensitivity of fatality rates to changes in speed limits in Germany versus a very high sensitivity in the United States.
