A fatal and avoidable lorry accident with four car occupants killed on Shrove Monday 2018 prompted the founding of the Hellwach mit 80 km/h e.V. association.

Read about how such a tragic accident at the end of a traffic jam can affect the lives of so many people, but can also be a wake-up call to do more for road safety and get closer to Vision Zero.

The book shows how this can be achieved with the Max Eighty idea.

It can be used as an accompanying work within the framework of the training and further training content prescribed by law for drivers and trainers in Annex 1, sections 1.2, 1.3a and 3.1 of the german Professional Driver Qualification Ordinance (BKrFQV). The regulations now apply across Europe.



The maxim is both an appeal and a motivation:



It's time for change - time to stay alive!



Dieter Schäfer spent 16 years of his 26 years of management responsibility at Mannheim Police Headquarters as head of the traffic police and developed a number of sustainable prevention initiatives.



His last one is still with him today. He is cofounder of the "Hellwach mit 80 km/h e.V." initiative and works tirelessly on expanding a network of supporters of the Max Eighty idea. An idea of using simple means and minor behavioural changes to bring behaviour in road traffic to get closer to Vision Zero and counteract accidental death.



The initiative was one of the first members of the Pact for Road Safety of the german Federal Ministry for Digitalisation and Transport.



In the field of freight transport and logistics, the association is working on an international network to initiate a movement for more anticipatory and considerate driving.



Dieter Schäfer, Max Achtzig - 40 tonnes of responsibility



It's about (avoidable) traffic accidents at the end of traffic jams. The author's premise is succinct: "Death at the end of a traffic jam is not inevitable." One would like to add "... and it has many causes."



The author could not have begun his book more strikingly and forcefully than with the vivid description of a road accident in which three members of a 15-year-old teenager's family were killed and for whom his world collapsed on the day of the accident. This account is authentic not least due to the fact that the author knows how to involve his readers in an accident and its consequences both factually and emotionally. This brings his readers closer to the content of the book.



The author unquestionably has the technical expertise to describe the content of his book. Before his retirement, he was the head of the largest traffic police department in Baden Württemberg for many years - a traffic police officer who learnt his trade from the bottom up and increasingly deepened his specialist knowledge over the many years of his professional career.



The author takes a look at the subject of many other road accidents from an accident analysis, technical aspect and preventive approach. The book is not aimed at a specialist audience, but its core message is aimed at professional drivers, from whose circles the perpetrators of accidents originate. The author wants to reach them with his safety messages and appeals and encourage them to rethink their behaviour by bundling comprehensibly presented information.



Due to the intended middle-class readership, the author deliberately uses technical quotations sparingly and restricts himself to links to websites that are easily accessible for his readers and are all thematically helpful. The book makes numerous interdisciplinary suggestions for making the transport system safer. The author offers answers based on precisely formulated questions that are intended to make his readers think. The two main causes are clearly identified as "distraction" and "microsleep" and they correspond to the findings of accident research by the Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) and the Accident Research of German Insurers (UDV).



The author deals with an unresolved special problem under the special topic of an "imported alcohol hazard". By this he means the group of mostly Eastern European lorry drivers, some of whom have extremely high alcohol levels. They are often found by the traffic police on motorway service areas on Sundays and blow very high breath alcohol levels.

One thing is clear: without these preventive police checks, the drivers would have driven their 40-tonne vehicles on the motorway in an inebriated state. From the point of view of driving aptitude law, in all these cases there is a justified suspicion of inadequate fitness to drive due to alcohol abuse or even alcohol addiction. But the crux of the matter is that a provisional withdrawal of the driving licence only exists in criminal traffic law and not in the law on averting danger.



What remains to combat this and the other safety problems mentioned? Prevention, specifically among the problem group and generally among all road users, whom the author sees not only as his task but rather as a personal mission to sensitise. It is precisely for this reason that he and like-minded people founded an association called "Hellwach mit 80 km/h e.V.", which aims to bundle and channel the various prevention activities. The association also serves to disseminate traffic policy demands to reform the current law in the interests of improved road safety.



Prof Dr Dieter Müller, Bad Dürrenberg (excerpt, original at www.hellwach-mit-80-kmh.de)