Change of traffic rules in Austria : emergency corridor on the highway

This is a heads-up for everyone driving to Austria. After 1.1.2012 there is a change in austrian traffic rules.

In principle it says, that if you are on a highway and see, that a traffic jam will come, you have to create an emergency corridor (Rettungsgasse) for rescue cars immediately.

Until now, the corridor was in the parking/emergency lane, but this was often jammed through cars with failure or around arrival/departure lanes. This is the main reason for the change.

The fines for not respecting this are pretty high, from 726€ up.

There is a multilanguage document [pdf, 2.5MB] explaining the new rule. Download it here.

The picture and video below explaining the system :