The €90 Gap
You can be sober, precisely on the speed limit and still receive a letter from Lower Austria for the empty space you failed to leave in front of you.
For one of our readers — we’ll call her Anna — the envelope arrived like a bucket of Alpine water to the face.
She had been driving exactly as millions of people drive every day: dense traffic, motorway rhythm, ordinary life. She was not speeding. She was not drunk. She was simply…
Too close.
This will surprise many drivers because we have been trained to fear speed cameras. We look for the grey box, glance at the speedometer and wait for the flash.
But distance enforcement is quieter. You may be travelling at precisely the legal speed, perfectly sober and with both hands arranged obediently on the wheel. If your gap is too small for you to stop when the car ahead suddenly brakes, Austrian law has already found a problem.
Austria’s message is simple:“Forget your confidence. The system measures time.”
There need not be a flash
Anna discovered this the unpleasant way. Her notice says the offence was established by video measurement. Systems used for this purpose observe vehicles over a measured section of road, determine speed and relative position, and identify the vehicle. There is no requirement for the little roadside theatre drivers associate with a conventional speed camera.
The result printed on Anna’s letter was 0.71 seconds. That was the verdict.
The arithmetic is not sentimental
The authorities’ reasoning is simple, clean and sterile, like an operating theatre: chain collisions.
At 130 km/h, a car travels roughly 36 metres every second. A gap of 0.71 seconds is therefore about 26 metres. By the time a distracted human has understood that the car ahead is braking, much of that space may already have disappeared.
Your Brembo brakes, semi-slick tyres and the fact that you once displayed fighter-pilot reflexes while catching a falling glass in the kitchen are not variables in the equation. The legal test is whether the distance was sufficient to stop if the vehicle in front suddenly braked.
The thresholds people confuse
Here is the important distinction: 0.4 seconds is not a universal “legal until here” boundary. An inadequate gap can be punished above it, as Anna’s 0.71-second letter demonstrates. The 0.4 and 0.2-second figures mark much more serious legal consequences.
Ordinary distance offence under § 18(1) StVO, assessed on the facts of the case.
A record in the Austrian demerit system, plus a fine of up to €726.
€36–€2,180, at least six months without a licence, and retraining.
How not to buy the same envelope
Forget metres while you are driving. Use a fixed point: a bridge, a shadow, a sign or a roadside marker. When the vehicle ahead passes it, count two seconds. If you reach the same point before you finish, increase the gap.
This is a practical two-second safety rule, not a promise that every two-second gap is sufficient in rain, fog, ice or other difficult conditions. The law requires enough distance to stop; the worse the conditions, the more space that demands.
And do it everywhere, not merely when a bridge comes into view. Enforcement equipment can be easy to miss. Physics is present even when the police are not.
So keep your distance. On an Austrian motorway, solitude is now cheaper than company.
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