Snow and ice in Germany caused hundreds of accidents, lengthy traffic jams and dozens of flight delays on Monday, as meteorologists forecast frigid temperatures and a possible storm surge along the coast.
The motorways of North Rhine-Westphalia ground to a halt on Tuesday as traffic jams totalling a length of 310 kilometres filled the state's roads, yet experts and officials remain puzzled as to just what caused the gridlock.
German drivers will be forced to make sure they have proper tyres for driving in mud and snow this winter after Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer announced a safety crackdown on Wednesday.
Every summer it’s the same messy mating ritual: Millions of mayflies hatch, have sex and die in the Bavarian county of Schwandorf, endangering motorists with their slippery corpses left on roads.
Over the last six years a man in Germany's Harz region earned the dislike of his fellow residents by tattling to authorities about some 15,000 parking violations – but this week “parking ticket Horst” had to answer for a citation of his own.
Berlin police have impounded an “ancient” Latvian tour bus they found creaking along the streets of the capital with a whopping 1.8 million kilometres on the odometer, they announced Wednesday.
A public bus driver was fired from his job on Tuesday and is under investigation by police in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia after he tied a rambunctious nine-year-old boy to a bus seat last week.
The Federal Environment Agency is backing a nationwide road toll that would charge motorists depending on how far they drive, a media report said Thursday.
Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer announced this week that he would put an end to the nationwide update of traffic signs, saving already broke cities and municipalities hundreds of millions of euros.
Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer said Friday he wants to clean up traffic jams on German motorways, recommending that states institute a ban on passing for trucks on the autobahn.
Patrick Döring, transportation expert for Germany's Free Democrats, said Thursday that nationwide changes to traffic signs put through the last government should be stopped because they are too expensive and some traffic violations can no longer be fined.
After more than five weeks of snowy weather, German municipalities are precariously close to running out of road salt, spurring the Free Democrats on Thursday to propose building a national salt reserve for extreme winters.
Parts of Germany on Tuesday experienced the coldest temperatures of the winter so far, with overnight lows dipping to -21 degrees Celsius. But meteorologists are predicting even chillier weather and heavy snowstorms for the coming days.
A young boy in the state of Saxony was hit and killed by a schoolbus while waiting at a stop on Monday morning. Police are now investigating whether he was pushed in front of the vehicle by fellow students.
The biting cold that has blanketed Germany in snow and ice caused chaos on the roads at the beginning of the weekend, killing at least two people and causing thousands of accidents, particularly in the west of the country.
A computer malfunction at a railway control centre in Hannover caused chaos for commuters on Thursday morning as trains were delayed and cancelled across the region.
Bavarian holiday makers heading south via Austria are being warned to be prepared for enormous traffic jams, as a 35-kilometre build-up formed in front of the Tauern tunnel on Saturday.
The numbers of traffic fatalities in Germany fell to its lowest rate in 55 years for the year 2008, new figures from the Federal Statistics Office (Destatis) revealed on Wednesday.
An American tourist caused an accident near Karlsfeld over the weekend, banging up some €45,000 in damages when he followed an outdated navigation system prompt in the wrong direction, daily <i>TZ</i> reported on Monday.
A “monster pig” broke out of its pen in the middle of the night and blocked traffic near Alsfeld because drivers were too frightened to get out of their cars and move the sow, police in the state of Hesse said on Wednesday.
A Porsche test driver lost control of a secret prototype car and died in an accident on the A5 motorway near Darmstadt early on Friday morning, police in the German state of Hesse said.
