Austria to ‘Super-Speeders’: We’re Taking Your Car
A new law in Austria allows authorities to confiscate the vehicles of those who exceed posted speed limits by large margins, even after a single offense.
Pay attention to those speed limits when driving in Austria.
Photographer: Angelika Warmuth/dpa via Getty Images
A few months ago, Austria started to enforce an eye-catching tactic to curb reckless driving: Those who exceed the speed limit by 60 kilometers per hour (37 miles per hour) or more could see their vehicle confiscated and sold by the government.
The new policy has been big news in the Alpine nation, where road fatalities, which totaled 402 deaths in 2023, have been rising over the last four years. (That said, even after the recent uptick, an Austrian is only a third as likely to die in a crash as an American.)