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Motoring in Austria
If you are driving through or around Austria, there are a number of peculiarities of the system worth knowing about (some of which don't seem to be explained anywhere I could find)..
 | You must have a Vignette to drive on Austrian motorways! You can buy one at most petrol stations, and certainly as you approach Austria from Bavaria you can get them at service stations near the border. You can get them for a variety of periods, 3 days, 2months, whole (calendar) year. Random checks are performed on motorway exits. |
| General speed restrictions in Austria (2010, my best recollection): motorways 130 km/h, other roads 100 km/h, towns 50km/h. But here's the thing, when you enter a town or village you see the town sign (rectangle) and usually no speed sign but you must slow down to 50. What is very odd is that sometimes you do get a speed sign of some sort, but it doesn't seem to matter. The most confusing one is an end of speed restriction sign (white circle with diagonal black line) which in the UK would make you think that you could go at 60mph doesn't mean that; you must still slow down to 50kmh unless a specific higher number is shown. Sometimes you get an end of 80kmh sign; again you must slow to 50. (Send a message to me at jthomas1 at staffmail.ed.ac.uk if you understand this better!) |
| Traffic lights: you often get a flashing green light before it turns amber; I think this is a great idea. You still have a decent amount of time to get through if you are close to the traffic light. That's the good news. The bad news is that turning right at a traffic light, and sometimes left I think, is tricky as pedestrians might have right of way. But there seems to be nothing to alert you to this (in Spain I recall you get a flashing light) as far as I can see. You can look at the pedestrian sign and if it is green you know they can cross, but it tricky to look for this at the same time as watching the traffic. (Send a message to me at jthomas1 at staffmail.ed.ac.uk. if you understand this better!) |
| Roundabouts: like many European countries Austria has taken to the UK style big time (20 years ago I recall very few). But the norms seem slightly different. You only indicate as you are leaving the roundabout. (So indicating left as you approach one intending to leave at the last exit would make an Austrian think that you are going to go round it the wrong way.) |
| Falschfahrer: if you listen to the traffic news you often hear about cars driving the wrong way up motorways (true also in Germany). Why you never hear about this in the UK but always do in Austria is a mystery to me. They even quoted annual numbers - which have gone down - on the news last week, such is the interest. |