Every day, millions of drivers merge onto highways without a second thought.

They navigate lanes and pass other vehicles– to reach their destinations.

But what if I told you that not all highways are created equal?

Europe's highways are among the safest in the world—despite many having significantly higher speed limits.

On Germany's autobahn, drivers are allowed to cruise at speeds that would land Americans in jail.

But here's the strange part.

Despite these speeds, the EU's road fatality rate is just 4.9 deaths per 100,000 people—less than half of America's 11.4.

So how is that possible? And what makes European highways so uniquely safe?

To answer that, we need to look at where it all started.

Unlike America's Interstate system,

Medieval trade routes became village roads that eventually connected towns and cities.

These ancient pathways, some dating back to Roman times, were narrow, winding, and dangerously unpredictable.

And they wen't designed for modern vehicles.

Before modernization, European highways formed a deadly patchwork of incompatible systems stretching across the continent.

In the 1970s, over 100,000 people died annually on European roads.

Eastern European countries suffered worst, with fatality rates three times higher than their Western neighbors.

The problem lied in fundamental design chaos.

Each nation developed roads independently, with lane widths changed at borders without warning.

Or signs meant different things in different countries.

While America built straight highways across open land, Europe's roads followed ancient trade routes.