War in Ukraine: German Autobahn webcams no longer transmit images

All German Autobahn webcams are currently no longer transmitting images. The federal Autobahn GmbH, which operates the webcams and also provides their live images in the Autobahn app, told the newspaper “Hannoversche Allgemeine” that there are currently no live images of German trunk roads. The Lower Saxony traffic management center has switched off its webcams. The Austrian newspaper “Der Standard” adds that the Federal Ministry of Transport has declared that the webcams will no longer be available “due to the current security policy developments in Europe”.

Autobahn app without pictures

If you open the Autobahn app and tap on “Webcams” under “Service”, you get to read: “No entries for webcams found.

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This is what the corresponding section looks like in the app.

Russian scouts

The suspicion arises that this is intended to make it more difficult for Russian authorities to observe and spy on transports on German trunk roads. After all, NATO is also transferring troops from Germany to the eastern NATO member states, and Germany is also supplying Ukraine with weapons, among other things.

The camera images should be available again soon, as “Der Standard” reports, citing the Federal Ministry of Transport. The cameras were neither dismantled nor switched off, they just no longer transmit images to the Internet and the Autobahn app.

Austria: Still webcam images of motorways

The images from the webcams along the Austrian motorways, on the other hand, can still be accessed via this link. However, the website of ASFINAG (Autobahn- und Schnellstrassen-Finanzierungs-Aktiengesellschaft) also contains this information: “Webcams of the German cooperation partners are offline. Against the background of the security policy situation, the German cooperation partners Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg will stop providing webcam images to ASFINAG until further notice!”

The federal highway app is here: webcam live view, route check, traffic situation