One-day police crackdown on speeding

Ok, so, i was driving in this morning and heard on the radio that the Police have decided to join in the spirit of trick or treat on Halloween and decided that they are going for an allout blitz, ( pun intended ), on speeding from first thing tomorrow until midnight.

Seemingly 500 people have died or been injured in ' raser ' incidents and thus the crackdown has been ordered with extra blitz points, fixed and mobile, unmarked cars etc etc

So, a word to the wise, let's be careful out there !

Don't shave and drive

"Yes, Sir, Sergeant Esterhaus!!"

*cue Hill Street Blues theme*

I was already blitzed 2 days back in a 30 zone. The lady has parked the car on the side and eating sandwich, the camera is coolly taking the pictures from the back mirror.

So any car parked in the direction of your drive not directly into the parking lot, or the last one on a lane parking can catch you.

So be careful

Damn, I better not drive for a few days then.

You better not Tom17, its exactly in your area near the petuelring. Actually I was quite surprised as I have not seen a normal car with such equipment (generally they use 9 seater vans, or some dodgy looking vehicles or a police setup), and you can from a distance recognize something is going on, but with such a setup, I hardly even after the flash could believe it was a blitzer.

The following points are what I observed,

1) Its very hard to detect if there is a blitzer
2) They are hiring freelancer types with a normal car and setting it up, so I saw a middle aged woman eating a sandwich while, the blitzer was in action
3) And the position is not permanent at least for a day or so, but highly mobile. So by the time some one sees and announcement comes in a radio, the same car might be parked somewhere else

So my dear fast fahrers, you better check your speed.

regards

There was some sort of action going on between schwabing and lerchenau this morning - cops pulling cars over like crazy - I was on my return trip so either they had just started or I was driving the right speed (which I'm not alwas certain what it is)

I am not quite sure where you got your number there from, bd. According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung the cops are looking at catching up to 400 to 500 speeding, non-belted or talking on the cellphone without a hands-free set drivers in the course of this massive presence. 17 people died in the first six months of this year in Munich in traffic accidents, not necessarily just speed-related, as opposed to five (yep, all of 5!) in the same period last year. No numbers regarding injured victims, sorry.

Take a look-see at this clever little map:

The yellow crosses are accident hot-spots while the red crosses mark the cops' favorite blitzer positions. Any streetwise observer will immediately note: The red crosses coincide with either decreased speed limits (e.g. 80kph to 50kph at Ständlerstrasse in the east) or a stretch just before an increased speed limit (e.g. 50kph to 80kph at Ingolstädter Strasse in the north), while the accident hot-spots are heavy traffic zones where you can't even speed if you tried to.

Cops, do us a favor and crack down on tail-gaters, red-light offenders and motorcycles going straight on turning lanes. Thank you.
Signed a defensive driver, 0 accidents in 22 years of driving in Munich

How do I do this? Is it the one next to the "keep this needle as high as you can for max power" dial?

Bloody hell, talk about tempting fate.

Couldn't care less really. Too many people out there driving around unnecessarily. Me, I only drive when I need to. Otherwise I walk, cycle or U-Bahn it. Ban all one-person-occupied cars inside the Mittlerer Ring I say (unless they've disablity passes of course)! I'm fed of watching the likes of X5's, Touaregs, etc. cruising around trying to park as nearest to Marienplatz as possible. Ban em!

For those coming into Munich from the Garmischer Autobahn, there was a plain car with police lights pulling speeders over on the A95 into Munich - located at the end of the curve where the speed goes down to 80km/h.

So what happens if you live inside the Mittlerer Ring and you need to drive your car to get it serviced? Would that be illegal unless you pointlessly take an extra passenger along for the ride?

Thanks for the warning, I probably would have likely been ticketed without it. Now at least I'll try to watch my speed

Now that I think about it that might explain the two Polizei vans right as you enter Munich on A995, one in each direction. The inbound Polizei had a small truck pulled over to the side while the outbound Polizei were just sitting there. Guess I'll put my coffee down, turn my cell phone off and wait til I get home to read my book.

Getting a service inside the Mittlerer Ring? No one asked you to - but you should then be required to pay a fat toll for the privilege! Plenty of possibilities of servicing your car outside the Mittlerer Ring I'd think... Ban em all! Too many Starnberger tractors clogging up the Altstadt's streets! Some folk consider themselves too good for a bike or public transport...

75% of car journeys are under 7 kms. It's not just a Mittlerring thing. I would reccon a fair few percent are under 2 kms. Its just for most people more convineient to drive two kilometres (and waste 10 minutes trying to get a parking space as close to the door as possible) as just quickly hop on a bike and pedel there in quicker time.

Read his post again. He said what if you LIVE inside the Mittlerer Ring and need to get your car serviced? I'm all up for trying to get cars out of the inner city, but your suggestion is stupid.

I mean getting a service outside the Mittlerer Ring (or anywhere, doesn't matter) if you live inside. You will need to drive inside the Mittlerer Ring to get outside the Mittlerer Ring.

What if I was doing a car-share trip to the mountains, picking up more people on the way. How do I get from my place inside the Mittlerer Ring to outside the Mittlerer Ring without driving illegally?

There are loads of scenarios where that kind of rule would not be feasible.

My thread title has been modded.

I quite liked the " Munich Blitz " punchline, kinda naughty but nice if ya know what i mean.

The single-occupancy rule could work at specific hours of the day, i.e. during rush hours, but obviously wouldn't be practical 24/7.

The issue that concerns me here is the the police actually announce that they will be doing a crackdown. This is a warning that other law-breakers do not enjoy: drug dealers don't get a tip-off that they're going to be raided the next morning. It's the same in the UK – speed cameras have to be coloured bright yellow and have signs warning drivers that there are cameras. The really incredible aspect is that some people are still stupid enough to get flashed.

Announcing a crackdown means that everybody slows down, whether they see a speed trap or not, or even if there is one there or not. It's like the signs they put up with Radar Kontolle written on them, are you going to risk that they're bluffing?

It is also the same in NZ. I think in NZ's case it was because people would be speeding, see the cameras at the last second, hit the picks so hard that they caused accidents, so these signs went up to make sure people had fair warning, as well as hidden cameras being outlawed at the same time

A life of undetected crime eh? (You just have to be a solicitor to get away with that)

Actually that only applies for fixed cameras in the UK.They still have mobile hand held ones and many patrol cars have video units that record your speed, ever seen those police chase programmes that they use as fillers on sat tv?

...for one day. It doesn't really seem a long-term solution.

Except that they put the signs up as a deterrent without actually putting cameras up sometimes. The result is that you ignore the signs and just keep a look out for the cameras as before.

I think it's quite dangerous personally. It would be much safer if I could use all my awareness to look out for pedestrians/cyclists/other cars etc rather than having to focus to near infinity studying the bushes and the side of the road looking for bloody cameras.

Try legal assistant Nah, just a damned careful driver who leaves enough room between herself and the next car. Not a white-knuckler, no way. But I know that all the others out there except for a chosen few are nutters who turn their brains off when the ignition goes on.

I use cruise control in speed limited areas as it stops me exceeding the limit and allows me to cover the brake whilst concentrating on road activity.

They are normally "Top Gear" fans with not one jot of experience in the "car world" but hey, "I read that in...top gear...etc, etc"

I do this as well, works great.

Have to say that cruise control is useless on the Autobahn unless travelling at night.

Years ago, I was in an "Alpina" from Sytner on cruise control at a tadge over 165mph. It was from the Belgian border to Koblenz and about 3am so nothing on the road. Great fun but at that speed you have to concentrate and actually "drive". The cruise control is excellent when you have been doing those sort of speeds and then have to come down to 40 or 50mph as it eliminates the adrenalin and the "heavy right foot", plus it allows you to concentrate on what is going on around you whilst covering the brake.

Never used it in the snow though, no matter how clear the road

Let's see - I buy furniture at XXXLutz and go pick it up. Based on the above idea I can't do that.

Or what about after I drop off the wife at work then take the 2 kids to school. Now I'm alone in the car inside the Mittlerer Ring.

Hell, just ban all cars.

I sense a little "large car envy"

I’d rather see the police crack down on the cars that block the intersection - resulting in neither direction being able to turn left but the cars keep stacking up, then the light changes and now everyone is stuck in the intersection with cross traffic coming.

I personally don't have large car envy; I hate all sizes. But no doubt there are good reasons why your family can't use public transport like everybody else, and why your children can't benefit from the social and personal benefits of not being chaperoned to school in a metal cage, or why the furniture store can't deliver the items to you (how often do you buy furniture?!).

The problem at the moment is that cars are relatively expensive to buy and relatively cheap to use. This means that once someone has purchased a car, they are less likely to spend additional money using public transportation (although this is frequently because they aren't accurately considering the per-mile cost of using a car, never mind the social, health and environmental costs). The thing to do is to give everybody a car free of charge, and then charge them €10 per kilometre to use it. Then people will actually only use their car when they genuinely need to, not just because they want to. The congestion charge in London is a small step in this direction.

€10 per kilometre? That's gonna be one damn expensive skiing day trip to that resort with unusable public transport connections.

Good, so now stop speeding in neighborhoods.


It would be much safer if you (and everybody else) just went the speed limit.

There are quite a lot of kids in my neighborhood trick or treating and we constantly have idiots racing around the neighborhood. I even stopped a cop car two years ago and told them to slow it down as they were driving on my spiel-strasse and doing more than 5X the limit. They looked fucking embarrassed they did.

He would absolutely love me to bits then.

Most of the anti-Suv (big car) envy is really "class" or "money" envy. Nothing to do with the environment as most of this type of person think nothing of hopping on a plane to journey to foreign fields for, well, just the to say they have been somewhere.

The last person who crossed me on this subject had to eat humble pie and he still hunts me trying to (unsuccessfully) exact his revenge. Anyway I will cease having a sly dig at one of our colonials whose visa is running out by the hour and get back on topic.

I think that 50kmh is too high in many built up areas and on schoolways etc and it should be cut to 30kmh during peak times. The road outside the college and universities is 30kmh during peak hours and I, personally, think that 30kmh is a sensible speed during those times.

STB. Cars are the cheapest they have been to buy (relative to ones income) as they have ever been which is why so many people have them. You are getting that relativity mixed up with what most people want to buy and can actually afford to buy.

"social and personal benefits of not being chaperoned to school in a metal cage" - Maybe because I got tired of people more concerned about how they were being inconvenienced by my stroller on the train then the fact that they just pushed my 5 year old and stepped on my 2 year old in the stroller. So to alleviate the stress from all concerned I switched to the car. FYI - when the weather is good enough I pull them on my bike with the trailer to school. Good exercise and good for the environment. We also used the U-bahn to go downtown shopping this past Saturday. Just wanted to point out that I don't drive all the time.

My point was that in creating a rule that no single seat driver cars inside the city would also create a nightmare to enforce. I just gave two examples, I'm sure there are hundreds more.

Sorry, but everyone else does not use the public transportation system. That is why we have the traffic congestion.

Imagine the trains in rush hour if no one drove? Does the city have the capacity to handle that many additional riders? I don’t know.

I don't know the figures for Munich, but in central London less than 10% of rush-hour commuters travel by car, even before the congestion charge was implemented. Cars take up an absolutely enormous amount of space (and create an enormous number of problems) for the number of people they are actually transporting, so these people could be relatively easily accommodated on public transport. I accept that Munich is slightly different because offices aren't as centrally located as in London, but nonetheless precious few of the people driving around Munich actually need to be. They tolerate the stress and the aggravation and the delays in order to justify the money they spent purchasing their car.

Canaryman, yes you're right, the cost of driving as a proportion of income has dropped significantly over the years, while using public transport has become more and more expensive. What I meant with "relatively" is that purchasing a €10,000 or €20,000 car is relatively expensive compared to an annual travelcard or a bicycle, and so once you've made that investment you don't really want to spend money on alternatives, whatever the benefits that they may offer.

Ok, ok, calm down, calm down! Of course people inside the Mittlerer Ring would be exempt from from a city toll with a sticker on their car indicating that they're a resident or their reg. plate being stored in a system or whatever. The idea is to stop people from driving downtown, be it in an X5 or a Fiesta. I'm not big-car envy - I want to see all sizes banned - not just the small cars - as that would free up the streets for the big cars, etc. But if someone considers themselves too good for the u-bahn or a bike, then they should be hit hard for the privilege of clogging up the streets in their guzzler. Driving is a privilege - not a right. So whether you're a Fiesta or 7-Series driver (the city toll would be calculated in relation to engine size) - one arse doesn't need all that metal to cart it around - get out and walk, take the u-bahn or hop on a bike - just get out of my way! If you can afford to cruise up and down Maximilanstrasse a few times in your Cayenne before you find a parking spot, then you should pay for the privilege! The streets are too crowded as it is. I couldn't care less how deep into your pocket you have to dip...

Well, once inside the Mittlerer Ring you'd have to pay for the privilege of driving there. Your choice! No one asked you to shop at XXXLutz. As regards "large car envy"? Not just large cars - make em all pay to enter inside the Mittlerer Ring. The toll should be in proportion to the size of the engine. The bigger the engine, the more you'd have to pay for the privilege!

Ingolstädter Strasse (heading north): There is a silver station wagon on the grass verge next to the McDonald's, sort of hiding behind the bus shelter. The cops at the next corner looked rather bored still, the station wagon cop was still setting up the camera at 8:15am. Stick to 50kph there (as if you didn't always ...).

Lots of coppers around but thankfully i didn't get stopped.

Alte Ofen tea from last night would probably have melted their machine.

I always use that road and never seen a single car passing that point below 80.

There is sooo little going on at the speed limit that my alertness drops right off. I'm much less likely to notice a pedestrian while I am going at the speed limit.

So you're saying it's safer to drive faster? Just want to clarify.


There isn't a single ski resort in the whole of Europe without good public transport options, and of course in this Utopian world of mine the increased number of people using public transport would mean that the service is improved further still.

gotta agree with Tom on that one. Not only in town, but on the highway, especially in the US or Canada, I think I am safer when I drive faster (within reason), because my brain is not numbed by the lack of any dynamic action.

Now lets get real with the public transport to ski resorts. If I wanted to get to a certain austrian ski resort from here, it would take close to 5 hrs. With a car (going the speed limit, (yawn)), only about 2. Yes, we could all take the BOB to Bayerzell or wherever its called, or we could just watch a ski movie on TV. that would save even more energy...

Bullshit and bullshit again. If your brain can't handle driving, then fucking take a bus before you kill someone while driving "safer". That is about as stupid as saying you can drive better while being drunk.

Gotta agree with eurovol there. If you cannot drive at the speed limit and keep your attention on the road at the same time you may have some sort of (psychological) issue that needs to be solved (obviously not by driving faster).
And if you just stuck to the speed limit you would not have to waste your attention on looking out for cameras... what ridiculous reasoning!

Not only ridiculous reasoning but, speaking as a cyclist and pedestrian, exceptionally scary reasoning. Regardless of how well you are concentrating, there remains the minor issue of your stopping distance; when travelling at 30mph it is double that at 20mph.

Where are the common temporary radar traps?

I see the cops outside the entrance to the Großmarkthalle catching people who come in from the ring above the Brudermühlertunel along Shäftlarnstrasse.
They tend to be there every 3-5 weeks.

Others?

Rosenheimerstr on way out of town towards the Salzburg autobahn, on the right opposite the Zar Bar.