For many years we have had belts to reduce speed, bumps, speed bumps… In fact, if you are old enough but your memory still doesn’t fail you, you may remember that in the ’80s some called them “tumbaos guards”, because in theory they helped reduce speed.
Then they evolved and grew, and these endless speed bumps that we found in the city and that some enlightened person even decided to put in the works of the Madrid M-40, also in delicate areas such as before reaching the roundabouts but in braking areas and not prior ones, they have been putting small bumps or making grooves in the road itself and all with the supposed intention of forcing people to reduce speed.
They reached the same conclusion on the road that connects Zella-Mehlis with Oberhof, in the south of Thuringia, Germany, where they settled in September 2025 after there were 19 accidents with 2 fatalities. So the authorities, in the seven points that they considered most delicate, placed orange bands of plastic material about two centimeters high.
That, here in Spain, we would consider a soundtrack that produces noise and vibrations and warns us to reduce speed. The problem in this specific case is that apparently they are not being able to solve things and, in addition, they are causing inconvenience to all those users who circulate properly.
The speed reduction strips have been taken as braking references.
What’s more, according to the German channel MDR, there are motorists who have begun to use these lines as a braking reference. This is another of the big errors associated with these road markings, which are always found in the final meters before danger and do not reduce speed in sufficient time.
To top off the absurdity, which is being documented in this specific area, there are users who, upon reaching it, brake suddenly and create dangerous situations. And to this we must add the continuous noises that disturb the neighbors and the reports of damage suffered by their vehicles.
Such is the general discontent that several representatives of the Oberhof City Council have been in favor of eliminating the strips, something that will be debated during the next month in the accident commission of the district of Schmalkalden-Meiningen.
What, for now, no one has put on the table after a year of using this measure is whether or not it is effective in reducing accidents, something that is expected to be made public shortly.
