Re: IML: Driving an Imperial in Europe

["bill parker" <hemirr@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

This experience is from 30 years ago, station in the Netherlands for nearly 
2 years in the service, so may have changed, but if anything I suspect it 
has changed to be even more restrictive.  Basically, it is an intriguing 
myth that there are no speed limits in Europe.  In addition to the 
Netherlands and England, I travelled in Belgium, Germany, France, 
Switzerland, and Luxembourg, wasn't able to squeeze more leave time in to 
visit Italy and Spain which I wanted to do. I had bought a '67 Fairlane from 
a departing GI, basically that is how cars changed hands among us lower 
enlisted types who weren't entitled to have the Army ship our cars back and 
forth.  I had a lot of fun with that car, eventually my wife joined me, then 
we had our first kid (in a Dutch hospital, the nearest military hospital was 
over 100 miles away), and we three travelled around whenever possible.  My 
detachment worked on a schedule of eight 12-hour days on, then 4 days off, 
to maximize the stretch of time off and allow travel.

There were SOME provinces in Germany that had no speed limit on the 
Autobahn.  Everywhere else we travelled had a speed limit; on the 
interstate-style highways that often was either 100K (62 MPH), or 110K (68 
or so).  In those provinces in Germany with no speed limit, I generally just 
sedately went along in the right lane at about 65 or so.  I was told that GI 
cars with USArmy-Europe green plates had a speed limit in Germany which 
could be enforced by US MPs riding with the German MPs,  but I don't know if 
that's true, because where I was stationed, we weren't issued those plates, 
but were issued standard Dutch plates with a prefix denoting the posting, 
and cops in Germany really didn't pick up on that.  The only thing showing 
it was GI's driving was (usually) the make of car, and of course the post 
entrance sticker.

If you pulled out to pass in one of those no-limit areas, you'd better get 
it done, because you'd be headlight-flashed right away by fast cars coming 
up at 100MPH or better.  Otherwise, the only problem driving a big American 
car was the smallness of facilities like parking, etc, but it could be 
handled.  The gasoline was very expensive (more than double the price at 
home at the time) but the Army had coupons available which you could buy, 
then use at gas stations all over Europe, which brought the price down to 
more or less what it was at home (about 44 cents per gallon at the time I 
left on my deployment).

Otherwise, there were speed limits, which you'd better comply with.  The 
West German highway patrol used,among other things, open-top Porsches and 
wore orange slickers and goggles to keep the wind away, and they would fly 
to catch up to someone.  The Dutch highway patrol were real sticklers, and 
you could be hauled in for having an alcohol BAC of as little as .03%, I 
know because as an MP part of my duties was to go "rescue" soldiers who had 
been so arrested, to bring them back to post where they would get a heavy 
dose of military discipline also.  In some places they also had the speed 
cameras, and if you went over a grid at too fast a speed, you would note a 
flash in your rear view mirror, that was a camera embedded in the pavement 
grid which just took a flash pic of the license plate so you could be 
tracked down.  Happened to a guy I was riding with once.

The only place I felt a bit leary of driving my Furd with standard drum 
brakes was in the streets of Paris, where I witnessed foot cops on the 
corners right on the Champs Elyses stepping aside to allow cars to take to 
the sidewalks to pass other cars, and there were no lane markings, and at 
the roundabouts they had the idiotic rule that entering traffic had the 
right of way over traffic already in the roundabout, unlike everywhere else. 
  Of course they had their own way of doing other things too, like having 
pee-stations along the sidewalk where you stepped up behind a screen and let 
fly through a grate into the sewer. As far as making room for the bigger car 
downtown, I just learned to drive at least as aggressively as the locals, 
which resulted in me making a path and having a tail behind me of dozens of 
Citroens and other stuff snaking along in my wake.  The parking garages were 
tight though.

Bill & Kathi Parker, South Central Indiana
'56 Chrysler Windsor; '60 Chrysler Saratoga; '62 Plymouth Max Wedge; '64 
Dart convertible; '65 Barracuda \6; '65 Imperial; '68 Barracuda FB 340-S; 
'69 Barracuda FB now 360; '70 Challenger; '72 Cuda '340




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