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Their general speed limit is 100 km/h and they usually have no emergency lane so they are difficult to thumb. To get a ride either try petrol stations or choose a place where have a lot of space to see you and stop or where they are going slower, e.g. town exits. Police might consider it illegal to thumb in sites where cars cannot stop without putting the traffic in danger.
[[File:Zeichen 331.1 - Kraftfahrstraße, StVO 2013.svg|thumb|right|150px|A fraffic sign indicating the beginning of a ''Kraftfahrstraße'']]To make it more complicated some of the ''Bundesstraßen'' are a so called ''Kraftfahrstraße''. For them most of the ''Autobahn''-rules apply (e.g. no pedestrians and bikes allowed). You can recognise a ''Kraftfahrstraße'' by the sign of a white car in front of a blue backround.
=== Smaller federal ''Landstraße'' roads ===
== Legal stuff ==
Hitchhiking in general is legal in Germany. It is only forbidden to hitchhike on the Autobahn itself, meaning you standing on the autobahn or its emergency lane. It is also forbidden to walk on a ''Kraftfahrstraße''. You are perfectly fine stopping at service stations and asking the people but keep in mind that service stations are private property / leases. It occasionally happened that owners try to get rid of hichthikers at "their" service station. If that happens, just move to the parking space and hitchhike there.
If you want to start hitching at the on-ramps, make sure you stand before the rectangular blue sign indicating the start of the autobahn.
On a longer journey with several route options, [https://www.diercke.de/content/deutschland-stra%C3%9Fenverkehr-978-3-14-100800-5-64-1-1 this map] showing the traffic volume of the different highways might help you deciding which could be faster due to more traffic.
For those using mobile app MAPS.ME, you may download a .kml file with all the service plazas for viewing on your map offline. Considering Germany is extremely well mapped on [https://openstreetmap.org OpenStreetMap], these locations can be assumed to be very accurate and up-to-date. You can view the [https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/MGq data extract here] and click Export > Download as KML and then open the .kml file on your phone to be loaded in MAPS.ME
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