Personally I see a big difference in the philosophy of lawmaking in the US vs Germany. Take driving, for instance. In the US, almost anyone who can physically c

Personally I see a big difference in the philosophy of lawmaking in the US vs Germany. Take driving, for instance. In the US, almost anyone who can physically climb behind the driver's seat of a car can get a drivers' license, and indeed having a drivers' license in the US is almost a fundamental right. Speed limits are then set, to first order, to accommodate the fact that you have marginal drivers behind the wheel. In addition, the police can - and do - selectively enforce driving laws. Ideally that power would be used to keep truly bad drivers off the roads, although the current civil unrest in America shows that that selective enforcement is, to put it mildly, abused. In Germany, the barrier to getting a drivers' license is much higher. More training, more stringent tests. But the effect of that is that drivers are (mostly) assumed to be able to adapt their driving to road conditions; as a consequence, you get unlimited legal driving speeds on part of the German road system. In good weather, traffic permitting. Of course, there are confounding facts: in my experience the average physical state of a car is much better in Germany than the US, and highways are better maintained. But still, the contrast is interesting. In the US, lifting speed limits on even straight roads through the desert would have poor outcomes.