The German Autobahn has at least 50% an enforced speed limit. The remaining roads (non-Autobahn) have limits and Germans would complain for a variety of reasons if these limits would be taken away.

Speeding IMHO is almost never the issue, it’s careless or reckless driving, failure to obey traffic laws, and distracted driving. The idea of taking a single arbitrary driving test as a teen and never again is insane.

Speeding goes against the legal and socially agreed upon limit. That, in and of itself, is reckless as it increases the difference in speed between someone operating "legally" and yourself.

Now I must decide whether I care more about my life or the law. It's not a great position to be placed in because you need to arrive at your destination 30 seconds faster.

The socially agreed upon limit, is the speed of traffic. That is after all, the speed society is driving.

The legal limit often has no relation to it and no basis in science or common sense. Not to mention a failure to account for progress in vehicle development, tire technology, etc.

There are various streets where the social limit is higher than the legal one. In Rome there is a place where the speed limit is 50km/h but everyone (literally) drives at 90 km/h. When someone drives at 50 on thay street it endangers the whole traffic.

That would only be true if the whole of society was driving and we took an average.

The socially agreed upon limit is the legal limit.

As another response mentioned, the "socially agreed upon limit" is the speed of traffic. I must have missed the meeting where we all got together and discussed what the speed limit ought to be.

The speed limit is often arbitrary and that's part of the problem. We become immune to posted limits because the ones posted on highways and major roads are obviously inappropriate and not updated as technology and zoning changes. Then, many drivers ignore them when they do matter e.g. neighborhoods, school zones, curves.

You're almost never going to be affected by someone simply speeding - it's drivers who speed _recklessly_. I'm fortunate enough to have never gotten into an accident even though I've driven all around the world. The person that's going to cause an accident is the one speeding AND weaving between cars or tailgating.

Either way, it's irrelevant. The point of the thread is that speeding tickets are little more than a financial instrument for local, and sometimes state, governments.

In southern Germany along Lake Constance I once drove through a series of towns on a main road. Each of them had a camera enforced 30 km/h (about 19 mph) speed limit. On a billboard it was explained this was because of traffic noise.

I was surprised when I spotted the first camouflage colored camera and stood on the brakes. Luckily I didn't get a letter.

None of the towns had a sign indicating the end of the low speed regime. In a biergarten I asked someone when the low speed usually ends and he told me that at the end of the town there's a sign on which the town's name is striked through. This is also the end of the low speed regime! Then I continued and I arrived at a larger town. There I seem to have missed the end of the low speed area because people started to overtake me.

I thought it's their own fault because it's the people in these towns who have asked for the low speed on their roads.

Speed Limits in Germany are generally valid until End of Town or the next (major) intersection (not every road intersecting with the lane you're on counts as such, the sidewalk has to be interrupted). There are exceptions; Speed Limit Zones (Zones, not simple Limits, usually 30KPH) do not end at intersections and there are special Walking Speed Zones (Beruhigte Zone, usually around Schools or dense Community Areas) where the max speed is 10kph where you get much more severe fines than in other zones (especially around schools).

Thanks a lot. I wouldn't have expected Switzerland and Germany to have such different traffic laws.

So it’s somehow not your fault that you don’t know German law and so didn’t realize that the explicit speed limit ended with signage for „end of this city“? (And an most likely another speed limit begun depending on the number of lanes)

That was at the last town which was a bit larger. I was still inside the town and thought I had to keep the low speed till I encountered the end of town sign as the biergarten guy told me. Additionally I thought the signage less than optimal: rather small signs behind bushes and so on. Once or twice I saw the speed cameras before the sign. So that's why I felt it's their own fault.