Three Portraits Life on the Autobahn

For many people, the Autobahn is an important part of their everyday life. A lorry driver, a road patrol driver, and an environmental activist talk about their lives with, near, and on the Autobahn.

• Sascha, Lorry driver
• Kathleen Andersohn, Road patrol driver
• Jonas Korn, Environmental activist

It’s a Friday afternoon in April. The Irschenberg Süd service station is a busy place. Lines of lorries sunbathe in the large car park; Sascha walks between them and checks his vehicle before continuing on his way. He has already completed most of his journey today. Sascha is a lorry driver and has been driving across Europe for more than ten years. In his home country of Serbia, he initially drove vans on the roads for his first job. He moved on from vans to smaller lorries; today he drives the big 40-tonne trucks. When I ask him how he came to this work, he smiles. “It wasn’t ever my dream, but the economic situation in Serbia got me into it.”

The phenomenon of the driver’s cab

He enjoyed driving and the lifestyle as a lorry driver from the very beginning, which is one reason why he’s still on the road today. “Maybe it’s a psychological phenomenon, but when you drive a truck, you feel like the boss on the motorway.” Sascha’s driver’s cab is often a place where he can think and sing out loud as the kilometres pass by. At some point, he gave up his passion for biker clubs in Serbia and later also in Munich: his job takes up too much time. Sascha has now been living in Germany for three years. He lives with his wife and child in Allershausen, a municipality in the Upper Bavarian district of Freising. Since moving here, he has only driven shorter Autobahn routes within Germany. “I come home after work every evening,” he notes, “that’s how it should be.”

But for his first six months in Germany, Sascha was constantly on the Autobahn. At night, he slept in the driver’s cab; at weekends, he often stayed in hostels. “If you have to sleep in your driver’s cab for nights on end, you only have your curtains to give you peace and quiet,” he remembers. “When you close them, everything around you stops.” The necessary isolation also reveals a downside to the job, because while the first few nights feel like a camping trip, it often gets lonely for lorry drivers over longer periods of time. Sascha says that he struggled with depression during this six-month period. “You also get nervous quickly and feel under pressure.”

40 tonnes of responsibility

According to Sascha, the biggest problem for lorry drivers is the lack of sufficient parking spaces at Autobahn service areas. He often sees other truckers parking on the hard shoulder of the Autobahn to sleep and keep to their break times. In Germany in particular, the motorway service areas are overcrowded and traffic is congested. The truck driver no longer associates the motorway with a feeling of freedom. Many of his days are stressful; he has to be alert, careful, and fast every second at the wheel. “I drive 40 tonnes through the countryside. That’s a big responsibility.” At the same time, Sascha also associates many wonderful experiences with his time on the asphalt. Many of the places he travels through remind him of the friendly encounters he’s had. “In the truck, every day is an adventure.” Kathleen also knows the Autobahn well. She has been an ADAC road patrol driver for the Berlin/Brandenburg region, close to the Autobahn, for eleven years. This week in April, her work is different than usual: she is giving her colleagues non-technical training at the ADAC base. Otherwise, she spends around 80 per cent of her working time in her car on the roads. “It’s my mobile workshop,” says Kathleen. She can’t imagine a nine-to-five job in a traditional workshop – that would mean too little contact with customers. Every working day is different for Kathleen. “When I start the workday, I don’t know what to expect: What people will I meet? What breakdown awaits me? What place awaits me?” says the road patrol driver. There are between five and thirteen breakdowns a day, many of them on the Autobahn. The most common cause is a faulty car battery; sometimes extensive troubleshooting is also necessary. “That makes us road patrol drivers happy: when the fault isn’t immediately obvious, it offers us some variety.”

Kathleen smiles when asked about her most bizarre mission on the Autobahn. “I stopped on the hard shoulder. A family was waiting for me there, sitting on camping chairs behind and in front of the crash barrier, leisurely drinking their coffee. It was a Dutch family who had broken down in their campervan.” In the end, everything turned out well and Kathleen was able to take them safely to an exit. But sometimes it gets very dangerous, “because it often gets so narrow on the hard shoulder.” Kathleen prefers to service breakdowns on country roads. “Personally, I feel a bit freer there and don’t feel like I’m in someone’s way and in a confined space,” reflects the road patrol driver. Kathleen finds her Autobahn missions confining. “Motorway breakdowns are very different from others,” she explains, “The cars speeding past put your life in danger.” The Autobahn therefore often triggers only one thought in Kathleen: get away as quickly as possible. The rising adrenaline helps her to act quickly. “You quickly change your tone and get louder, not just because you’re on the noisy Autobahn, but because you want to get everyone to safety quickly.” When Kathleen thinks about the future of the Autobahn, the first thing that comes to mind is the high volume of traffic. “The narrower it gets on our motorways, the more dangerous it becomes.”

The road patrol driver finds it frightening that the Autobahn used to only have two lanes and is now already at full capacity with three lanes. Added to this is the lack of a speed limit. “Serious accidents will certainly always to happen,” she says. Especially on the Autobahn, the road patrol driver is required to always keep her eyes open and help people. “That’s why we’re called road patrols.” I meet Jonas in front of the Sonja-Barthel-Haus in Lüneburg. He parks his bike diagonally opposite in a small park, which is greened by the freshly sprouting April leaves. Various photos and posters adorn the large windows of the Sonja-Barthel-Haus, one of them a bicycle demonstration poster against the A39 Autobahn. Jonas’ first memory of the Autobahn is travel sickness, which he often got on long car journeys as a child. But that’s not all. “I tended to have negative experiences, partly because I always perceived the traffic as loud, annoying, and dangerous,” he recalls. Today, Jonas is an environmental activist, focusing primarily on the transport transition and climate justice. “I want to campaign for structures that enable our society to live a mobile life, even without cars and newly built motorways.”

Jonas doesn’t own a car. “There are lots of reasons why people don’t have cars. Only part of society is able to travel by car at all,” he explains. Jonas lives in Lüneburg, where he also studied sustainability science. After many years of campaigning for climate protection and volunteering on the board of the German Traffic Club (VCD) for the Lüneburg, Uelzen, and Harburg region, the transport transition has been his focus since 2019. “I joined the KlimaKollektiv in Lüneburg. At the time, the Autobahn issue was just emerging,” he says. “Due to the local connection to the A39 Autobahn, it became our main topic.”

On the Autobahn by bike

Jonas organises at least one bicycle demonstration a year with the collective against the construction of new motorways, especially the A39. This Autobahn is to be extended from Wolfsburg to Lüneburg and serve to close a gap. “Closing this gap would mean over 100 kilometres of newly built Autobahn. Many people would lose their homes; natural landscapes would be destroyed. But other infrastructure already exists there, such as the Elbe Lateral Canal and railways,” he says. In a few days, Jonas and hundreds of other people from Lüneburg will be riding onto the Autobahn on their bicycles. At least that’s the plan for the No A39 Autobahn bike demonstration. “Up to now, we’ve always been banned from riding on the section of the A39 shortly beforehand, even though we already won at the administrative court,” Jonas notes critically. As a result, he and the other demonstrators have always driven on the dual carriageway as far as the Autobahn. Jonas hopes that they will be more successful this time and be allowed to drive the entire route.

The future and cut-up places

“In view of the climate crisis, a car-centred society cannot be our future,” Jonas is convinced. Together with other environmental activists, he will not stop fighting for a rethink of car-centred transport policy. “For me, the Autobahn cuts places up,” he says. For the future, he would like to see liveable cities in which people can conveniently and safely cycle, use public transport, and walk. I ask Jonas whether he separates his volunteer work from his free time. He says, “No,” explaining, “I’ve decided to do what I think is important in my life. There is no separation.”