The suggested speed on the Autobahn is still 130 km/h. If you're going significantly faster and cause an accident, your insurance will probably consider you at fault and only cover what they're (edit: legally) obligated to.
I drive in Germany sometimes and the roads are too busy to be going very fast, my average never got much higher than 150 km/h even if you only count the fastest portions. To be fair I haven't tried crossing the country starting on a Sunday at 3 AM, you can probably go as fast as is efficient to not waste time on extra refuelling because of the car's drag.
In my experience, travelling ~90km/h most of the time but adhering to local limits, stop signs, etc. drags you down to the average ~60km/h speed all throughout the route.
As for going 120km/h on the highway, you still effectively get around 80-100km/h average speed.
Depends. Common 4-lane setup tends to flow like130, 120, 100, 90, with trucks not allowed to leave the two slower lanes or exceed 100/110.
Also depends on the country, but people generally stick to the 130 limits with a few speeders pushing 140/150. Unrestricted zones still have speed limits to lanes so only the fastest lane is unlimited. Some countries the speed signs are just ignored because they're ridiculous. If you were to adhere to them, you'd put yourself at risk with the rest of the flow of traffic.
I'd say most of the time, cruising easy, and in usual traffic you're between 110-130. So 120 avg. or 75 mph is about right.
A lot more direct routes are on the brink of popping up in Europe, EU launched a very ambitious 2035 and 2040 plan.
We've already seen a few routes like Copenhagen - Prague pop up, due to expected new infrastructure (Femern Tunnel) landing soon.
Once EU legitimately builds high speed rails connecting all European capitals, I bet ya we're going to be able to cross the continent with 3 layovers. As long as we stick to larger cities, add 2-3 stops for local connections if you want to go to smaller areas and 2-3 stops if you start in a smaller area.
I didn't catch that. Spain is twice as big as the UK, for example, and about 30% larger than Germany or 40% larger than Poland, or 12.5 times larger than Denmark, which looks like a 1/4 or 1/5 the size.
Yeah, I remember flying off to Europe from Sydney. First leg was like 14 hours or something, stopping in Qatar, but the first 7 or so was just clearing Oz, going NW. You see the plane finally exit the west coastline to the Indian Ocean and you realise you're halfway to the middle east. It's huge and such a tiny population.
Going further south, to Red Rocks or even to Island Bay, makes the cape 14 hrs away. Basically the longest trip on "nice" roads in the North Island. Could make it 14 1/2 hrs if you take it to Cape Palliser; but that is basically the limit in NZ.
Does your daughter have a lead foot? 2000 miles is way over 24 hours of driving and that assumes no extended breaks or heavy traffic. Simple math says to drive 2000 miles in 24 hours you need to average over 83 miles an hour?
I would guess that a more likely average speed for a drive that long, assuming multiple drivers trading off and not stopping for more than fuel and bathroom breaks, would be about 60mph average. That would take a bit over 33 hours.
Does your daughter have a lead foot? 2000 miles is way over 24 hours of driving
As I said, it is over 24 hours of driving. I did not realize I needed to specify exactly how long the trip took her, or how much non-driving time was spent.
According to my map app it is 27 hours of driving, that is over 24 hours of driving as my original post stated.
This is why Europeans don't grasp how big the U.S. is. It's a minimum of 33 hours driving from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Their entire country is a day trip from home.
You’d be surprised. So many Europeans (and Americans) think they can do little day trips in Australia to places multiple days of non-stop driving away.
Sure, but so often it's "Americans are complicit idiots since half the country doesn't simply protest in the same city" and "dumb car-brained Americans won't even build highspeed rail between LA and NYC" 🙄
Even smaller-scale things like the definition of rural are so drastically different from places like the UK that they just don't translate.
The distances and population density differences are huge but simultaneously subtle enough that reasonable-ish sounding yet wildly impractical takes are a common occurrence online.
"dumb car-brained Americans won't even build highspeed rail between LA and NYC"
I mean the rail system in the US could definitely be better. Like NYC to LA on Amtrak is scheduled for nearly 3 days of travel and since it's Amtrak you're probably going to be 4 hours late in Chicago and LA so closer to 4 days. For reference NYC to LA on Greyhound is scheduled at the same amount of time but you'd have to be an idiot to think Greyhound is getting you anywhere close to on time.
Even if you could solve the impossible land acquisition problem and build non-stop highspeed rail in a straight line between LA and NYC, it'd still be much faster to fly the ~2500 miles than to take a train. It's 6 hour flight vs a well over 12 hour train ride.
Passenger rail doesn't exist on that scale in the US because it's prohibitively expensive and, even if it were free, obsolete at that distance. It could be better for intrastate or travel on along the coast, but then you run into the land and cost issues. See: California working on this for nearly a decade.
Yeah high speed rail across the country is pretty infeasible but the current service is really bad and that's what I was addressing.
A train service should be faster than a bus on the same distance if for no other reason than the bus is going to have more frequent stops. Amtrak saying they can't do coast any faster than Greyhound should be embarrassing.
You do realise when you say stuff like this that Europe, by the conventional understanding of it extending to the Ural Mountains, is still bigger than the US by around 300.000 square kilometres right? Europeans do know how big it is.
„But tourists…“ people don’t have the capacity to comprehend scale in unfamiliar environments. The New Zealand subreddit gets all sorts of nationalities asking if they can do crazy shit like drive from Auckland to Queenstown in a day.
Most people dont have to drive from new york to los angeles or similar, thats 42 hours, but we have similar distances in europe as well. The longest ive driven was about 30 hours(dont even ask, thats too much even for me) but a friend of mine and their family had to drive down from åre to barcelona which google maps says is 37 hours. I think it took four days for them. Also from where i am right now, kiruna, a very northern city in sweden, is 18 hours away. The lomgest drive in sweden wothout going through another country is 22 hours so the us being larger isnt a very valid argument. If you look at the entirity of europe its larger than the us and the distances are longer but what actually matters is the population density. When comparing the contiguous us and the eu for example the population density is double in the eu while the whole of europe has a population density about 50% higher than the us.
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Istanbul is not a capital city. Capital of Turkey is Ankara. Obligatory: Erdogan is a fucking twat
btw, Constantinople¹ is also not the capital. Why they changed it, though, I can't say.
¹ nople
Its nobodies business but the Turks.
I mean,
even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Thank you :)
No german city pictured because infinite -10% is still infinite
The suggested speed on the Autobahn is still 130 km/h. If you're going significantly faster and cause an accident, your insurance will probably consider you at fault and only cover what they're (edit: legally) obligated to.
Why would any insurance company pay more than they are obligated to?
Cause a bro has always got a bros back.
I read a while back that more and more of the Autobahn has a speed limit these days.
I drive in Germany sometimes and the roads are too busy to be going very fast, my average never got much higher than 150 km/h even if you only count the fastest portions. To be fair I haven't tried crossing the country starting on a Sunday at 3 AM, you can probably go as fast as is efficient to not waste time on extra refuelling because of the car's drag.
Much of the Autobahn does have limits though :)
Most of it is under construction and has like a 50Km/h limit.
Usually 80. Goes to 60 if lanes are too narrow
i mean there's still a limit to how fast your car will physically go, can't imagine many cars are happy pulling 200km/h
At least they got it correct with the Vatican City being the capital of Italy
Would be cool if Warsaw was called Po though
Po is a river in Italy.
And the german word for Butt. It's short for the latin word Podex, meaning "farter".
Do a lot of Europeans stay 10% under the speed limit? Because that sure as hell ain't the case in America.
I think its to calculate with the likely stops you are going to take during the journey
In my experience, travelling ~90km/h most of the time but adhering to local limits, stop signs, etc. drags you down to the average ~60km/h speed all throughout the route.
As for going 120km/h on the highway, you still effectively get around 80-100km/h average speed.
10% down is extremely optimistic
In Portugal speed limits are treated as suggestions.
Depends. Common 4-lane setup tends to flow like130, 120, 100, 90, with trucks not allowed to leave the two slower lanes or exceed 100/110.
Also depends on the country, but people generally stick to the 130 limits with a few speeders pushing 140/150. Unrestricted zones still have speed limits to lanes so only the fastest lane is unlimited. Some countries the speed signs are just ignored because they're ridiculous. If you were to adhere to them, you'd put yourself at risk with the rest of the flow of traffic.
I'd say most of the time, cruising easy, and in usual traffic you're between 110-130. So 120 avg. or 75 mph is about right.
People watch rally and F1. What do you think.
But to be fair trafic jams and stops are not included and those take time as well
Now let’s see one by train from those same cities.
https://www.chronotrains.com/en
That’s surprisingly specific.
London to Dublin, Ireland in 7 hrs??
There's a ferry
Here's a rough equivalent of the OPs image, but with trains
By the way: This "how far can I get from a specific point within time xy?" is called isochrones.
Very interesting when you move somewhere and want to know what's in range.
Now do public transport (not @ OP, just stating a desire for a railway+bus+foot alternative
you wont believe it : https://sopuli.xyz/post/35479366
that isn't including time; I understand that layovers make it hard, but they are important for comparing cars to public transit
A lot more direct routes are on the brink of popping up in Europe, EU launched a very ambitious 2035 and 2040 plan.
We've already seen a few routes like Copenhagen - Prague pop up, due to expected new infrastructure (Femern Tunnel) landing soon.
Once EU legitimately builds high speed rails connecting all European capitals, I bet ya we're going to be able to cross the continent with 3 layovers. As long as we stick to larger cities, add 2-3 stops for local connections if you want to go to smaller areas and 2-3 stops if you start in a smaller area.
Sources for the EU high level plan:
https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/connecting-europe-through-high-speed-rail-2025-11-05_en
https://transport.ec.europa.eu/transport-modes/rail/high-speed-rail-plan_en
Is being able to have it all part of one itinerary part of the plan?
The US rail system is really sparse, huh
Do that in Australia and you're possibly in the next state
Get in loser we are invading Belarus!
Making Poland great again?
What's with this Mercator projection? GB is giant.
I didn't catch that. Spain is twice as big as the UK, for example, and about 30% larger than Germany or 40% larger than Poland, or 12.5 times larger than Denmark, which looks like a 1/4 or 1/5 the size.
TIL about the channel tunnel!
yeah it's neat but you don't technically drive through it. You get the car on a train. Still cool though.
Isn't it nice that you can drive 8 hours and still not be in France?
Istanbul is not a capital...someone already said it.It seems about right, I've done the trip from Barcelona to Madrid, it took six hours.
İstanbul as the capital on a map community in the big 26 🥀
Man its easy to forget how fucking microscopic Europe is.
You can drive for 8 hours in North America and still have no healthcare.
Depends on how close you are to the Mexican border.
I live in Florida and could just about make it to Miami in 8 hours.
I drove from Cairns to Brisbane in one hit when I was in Australia. 21 hours of open highway. Only half the state covered.
I drove with a friend 13 hours across Oz to the coast; looked at map was a tiny little bit of the bottom part.....FFS Oz is huge.
Drive 13hrs in NZ and you would go from Wellington to somewhere in Northland; or the whole length of the South Island.
Yeah, I remember flying off to Europe from Sydney. First leg was like 14 hours or something, stopping in Qatar, but the first 7 or so was just clearing Oz, going NW. You see the plane finally exit the west coastline to the Indian Ocean and you realise you're halfway to the middle east. It's huge and such a tiny population.
13 hours would get you from the Wellington CBD to Cape Reinga, which is as far north as you can get on public roads. 8 would get you past Auckland.
Indeed.
Going further south, to Red Rocks or even to Island Bay, makes the cape 14 hrs away. Basically the longest trip on "nice" roads in the North Island. Could make it 14 1/2 hrs if you take it to Cape Palliser; but that is basically the limit in NZ.
I'll say it again, FFS Oz is huge.
My daughter just came to visit me in New Mexico from Maryland. 2,000 miles / 3218 km, it is over 24 hours of driving.
Does your daughter have a lead foot? 2000 miles is way over 24 hours of driving and that assumes no extended breaks or heavy traffic. Simple math says to drive 2000 miles in 24 hours you need to average over 83 miles an hour?
I would guess that a more likely average speed for a drive that long, assuming multiple drivers trading off and not stopping for more than fuel and bathroom breaks, would be about 60mph average. That would take a bit over 33 hours.
As I said, it is over 24 hours of driving. I did not realize I needed to specify exactly how long the trip took her, or how much non-driving time was spent.
According to my map app it is 27 hours of driving, that is over 24 hours of driving as my original post stated.
The new map projection from the UN is like a memento mori for it
Yeah, it means we can get anything we want in just a half hour drive.
That, and the crazy good infrastructure. Travelling 1000km in Poland is a completely different story than travelling the same distance in the Balkans
I mean not really? It's actually really big for a peninsula. I'm not sure why you'd expect it to be bigger.
Racist garbage. This joke of Spaniards having really long siestas is overdone.
You sure you're in the right place?
The sarcasm went unnoticed.
Uh... can you explain the joke? I'm not sure what it's supposed to be even now.
Compared to Warsaw the map makes it look like people from Madrid can barely get out of their country in 8hr time.
Don’t worry it deserved all the downvotes it got (:
This is why Europeans don't grasp how big the U.S. is. It's a minimum of 33 hours driving from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Their entire country is a day trip from home.
We do understand that, don’t you worry.
You’d be surprised. So many Europeans (and Americans) think they can do little day trips in Australia to places multiple days of non-stop driving away.
Europeans in America are always like "The Grand Canyon is beautiful! Now let's drive over to see the Statue of Liberty!"
Just teasing, I love you Europeans
It is cause there is nothing to do in-between.
It is all empty.
Our brain can't wrap around that.
Sure, but so often it's "Americans are complicit idiots since half the country doesn't simply protest in the same city" and "dumb car-brained Americans won't even build highspeed rail between LA and NYC" 🙄
Even smaller-scale things like the definition of rural are so drastically different from places like the UK that they just don't translate.
The distances and population density differences are huge but simultaneously subtle enough that reasonable-ish sounding yet wildly impractical takes are a common occurrence online.
I mean the rail system in the US could definitely be better. Like NYC to LA on Amtrak is scheduled for nearly 3 days of travel and since it's Amtrak you're probably going to be 4 hours late in Chicago and LA so closer to 4 days. For reference NYC to LA on Greyhound is scheduled at the same amount of time but you'd have to be an idiot to think Greyhound is getting you anywhere close to on time.
Even if you could solve the impossible land acquisition problem and build non-stop highspeed rail in a straight line between LA and NYC, it'd still be much faster to fly the ~2500 miles than to take a train. It's 6 hour flight vs a well over 12 hour train ride.
Passenger rail doesn't exist on that scale in the US because it's prohibitively expensive and, even if it were free, obsolete at that distance. It could be better for intrastate or travel on along the coast, but then you run into the land and cost issues. See: California working on this for nearly a decade.
Yeah high speed rail across the country is pretty infeasible but the current service is really bad and that's what I was addressing.
A train service should be faster than a bus on the same distance if for no other reason than the bus is going to have more frequent stops. Amtrak saying they can't do coast any faster than Greyhound should be embarrassing.
You do realise when you say stuff like this that Europe, by the conventional understanding of it extending to the Ural Mountains, is still bigger than the US by around 300.000 square kilometres right? Europeans do know how big it is.
„But tourists…“ people don’t have the capacity to comprehend scale in unfamiliar environments. The New Zealand subreddit gets all sorts of nationalities asking if they can do crazy shit like drive from Auckland to Queenstown in a day.
Which is amazing, because you can check that on Google maps in seconds.
Lisbon to Helsinki takes 47 hours of driving btw.
And you haven't even reached far North yet, there's still 1000+ km of Finland remaining.
Yeah but nobody would even consider driving from Lisbon to Helsinki if the goal is just to get from A to B; you'd make that trip by plane.
Yup, but hardly anyone in the US decides to do Atlantic to Pacific road trips either.
Plenty of people in the US do this.
As a teenager/college student to have the experience, yes.
And then there’s families who do this, again for the experience. It's an American Rite of Passage without question.
But on the regular, LA to NY, ya gonna fly.
Only because gas was probably cheaper than water, but that changed recently.
Yep. And because people in the US have a weird sense that their time has no value.
Europeans think 200km is a long distance. Americans think 200 years is a long time. /jk
Most people dont have to drive from new york to los angeles or similar, thats 42 hours, but we have similar distances in europe as well. The longest ive driven was about 30 hours(dont even ask, thats too much even for me) but a friend of mine and their family had to drive down from åre to barcelona which google maps says is 37 hours. I think it took four days for them. Also from where i am right now, kiruna, a very northern city in sweden, is 18 hours away. The lomgest drive in sweden wothout going through another country is 22 hours so the us being larger isnt a very valid argument. If you look at the entirity of europe its larger than the us and the distances are longer but what actually matters is the population density. When comparing the contiguous us and the eu for example the population density is double in the eu while the whole of europe has a population density about 50% higher than the us.