How fast do you drive on the expressway?

[Tender Branson]

There's usually a speed limit of either 80 km/h (50 mph) or 100 km/h (62 mph) on non-autobahns here (in many parts of Tyrol, there's also a 60 km/h speed limit on rural roads (37 mph), which is annoying).

So, despite there being 50-62 mph speed limits on rural main roads, I usually want to drive faster than that (about 10-20 mph faster).

But you simpy can't.

Why ?

Because of all the traffic during the day. Between 6 and 9am, there's the morning traffic. People are still half asleep and drive slowly, which piles up all the cars. You cannot overtake because the traffic is too heavy on the other side as well.

Then during the day, it's not much different because of all the lorries which are driving really slowly and pile up the cars behind them.

And then, between 5pm and 8pm there's the evening traffic.

And during tourism seasons (June to Septemer, December to April) it's the worst: Loads of slow-driving Germans, Dutch, Eastern-Europeans, Arabs etc. clogging the rural streets and driving like snails because the German Olaf tells his wife "Oh, honey look how wonderful the landscape here is, let's drive only 10 mph on a 62 mph road and look at all the nice landscape !".

The only sane months in rural western-Austria to drive are May, October and November, when all the friggin tourists are gone. And at night. Then you can drive also above the speed limit for a few miles, without bumping into some snail on the road.

[Tender Branson]

Is the German Olaf a widespread stereotype? I would like to hear more about him.

I just picked some name out of the hat ...