Lest anyone think the natives using the autobahn operate without hiccups, a number of years ago there was a video shot by a traffic camera on an overpass looking down a very long autobahn straight at cars coming towards it. At the end of the straight the highway curved away to the left.
Two lanes (IIRC) of traffic with a fair number of cars in them were moving smoothly coming around the bend and down the long straight towards the camera. Suddenly, a P-car pops into view in a fashion that lets you know it's going dramatically faster than the other traffic. The driver fails to complete the turn...I'm working off fuzzy memory now...gets out of shape, hits the median barrier, gets up a bit off the surface...the memory is clearer here...and begins tumbling most of the way down the long straight in an exceptionally dramatic fashion.
He doesn't hit any of the other cars, nor do they hit him as they become aware of what's happening and take appropriate evasive action, none of which looks particularly remarkable from the camera's point of view. The other cars just move around a bit as he tumbles by!
The P-car ends up off the pavement, upside down, and it was startling to see the driver had survived as he crawled out of the car and climbed partway up an embankment that runs along the side of the highway. He then pulls his knees up and puts his head down on them. I think I remember the other cars honking at him as they drove by.
The driver must have been very grateful he wasn't in a lesser ride.
I wonder how the conversations with the police, court, licensing authorities, and his insurance company went!
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Here's another one...
Early one afternoon we'd gone to the Fürstenwalde train station east of Berlin to take the train into the city. Things run on time in Germany, right? Not that day. Not only did the train not leave the station on time, after 45 minutes sitting around the stationmaster still couldn't tell us what the problem was or when the train would depart. We gave up and found something else to do that day.
On that trip, we were staying near Fürstenwalde with a group of locals, two of whom were Berlin highway patrol sergeants. As we recounted our day over dinner, they said in unison "Oh, we can tell you why your train is
still sitting in Fürstenwalde!"
It turned out a P-car driver had made a turn to the right off the autobahn onto a flyover and couldn't complete the turn due to too much speed. The car got airborne and landed on the train tracks, which were a fair distance below. It took quite a few hours for the car to be separated from the tracks, as it had more or less welded itself to them.