Author: switzerlandtimes.ch

A prototype electric car built by a team of students at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich and the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences has broken the world acceleration record. This week the team announced that their “mythen” car had accelerated from 0 to 100 km/h in 0.956 seconds in a space of 12.3 metres at a military airfield in Dübendorf near Zurich. The car was designed outside of course time by students coming together under the umbrella of the Academic Motorsport Association Zurich (AMZ). 0.956 seconds comfortably beats the previous world record of 1.461 seconds set by…

The A1 motorway, which run between Geneva in the west and St Gallen in the east suffers badly from congestion. On 11 September 2023, Switzerland’s parliament voted in favour of adding an extra lane in each direction along the full length of the key route, reported RTS. The vote was in response to a motion put forward by Erich Hess from the Swiss People’s Party (UDC/SVP). According to Hess, the route, which currently has two lanes in each direction along most of its length and passes by Lausanne and Bern, was designed for a national population of 6 million, a…

During peak times when there is a lot of traffic the maximum speed on Swiss motorways will soon be reduced to 80km/h on some stretches so that trucks and cars travel at the same speed. The lower speed limit aims to reduce traffic jams and improve flow, reported SRF. On Swiss motorways speeds of 80 km/h could be introduced across the board during rush hour traffic within the next two years, wrote the newspaper Tages-Anzeiger. Thomas Rohrbach, a spokesperson for the Federal Roads Office (FEDRO) said that the new 80 km/h limit would be used flexibly. If traffic begins to…

Laws in France require drivers to fit winter tyres or carry chains from 1 November until 31 March in certain mountainous regions of the country. However, Switzerland has different laws on the subject. In Switzerland, there is no legal requirement to fit winter tyres. However, the Swiss Road Traffic Act (Art. 29) requires all vehicles on Swiss roads to be roadworthy, something for which drivers are responsible. Essentially, if you have an accident and the wrong tyres made your car unroadworthy then you could be held responsible for the accident. Switzerland has long considered introducing rules on winter tyres. The…

It will soon be illegal to cover faces in public in Switzerland after the federal parliament voted in favour of a ban, reported RTS. With 151 versus 29 votes, parliament accepted new laws drafted in response to a successful vote known as the anti-burka referendum. On 7 March 2021, a vote to ban face covering was accepted by 51.2% of Swiss voters.  The legal changes have now been approved by both parliament and Switzerland’s upper house. Fines up to a maximum CHF 1,000 will be possible once the law is brought into force. A number of exceptions are allowed under the new rules, in…

In a recent interview, Guy Parmelin, a Swiss Federal Councillor and former president, said that at some point the population will say stop, referring to immigration, reported SRF. In the interview, Parmelin, a Federal Councillor and member of the Swiss People’s Party (SVP/UDC) was unusually blunt regarding Switzerland’s politics of immigration, something his party has strong views on. Immigration can hardly continue like this, he said. Half of the housing shortage is due to immigration. You can now see the difficulties. On the one hand the economy needs immigration. But on the other the population is resisting the construction of…

During September 2023, 3,966 asylum requests were made in Switzerland, a month on month rise of 32%, reported RTS. According to the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) the rise is partly due to secondary applications. Typically, applying for asylum is a one shot game. However, the situation in Afghanistan has been degrading so quickly that applicants are being given a second chance to apply. Around 700 (18%) of the 3,966 applications in September were second ones placed by Afghans. Most of those involved in these applications were women and children. In September, 1,486 (37%) applications were from Afghans. The next…

A survey run by gfs.bern that asked more than 57,000 people what makes someone Swiss was published by RTS this week. One of the takeaways from the survey is that a person’s behaviour is more important than their origin. 54% said that origin was of secondary importance when establishing Swissness. The most important behaviour for being Swiss was respecting Swiss institutions and laws. 96% of those surveyed said this was very (74%) ot fairly (22%) important. In second place was speaking a national language, considered by 95% to be very (72%) or fairly (23%) important. Next in line was respecting…

To reduce the pressure on an overloaded asylum system Switzerland has started a pilot system to processes certain asylum requests within 24 hours, reported RTS. The fast-track asylum process will be tested on groups of asylum seekers with low rates of success, in particular those arriving from the North African nations of Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia. According to Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) less than 2% of asylum applications made by citizens of these nations are accepted. If these low probability applications could be dealt with quickly then there would be fewer people held in suspense in the…

Switzerland, where only 36% of the population own their homes, is sometimes referred to as a nation of renters. So when rents rise, as they have recently, the subject becomes political. On Wednesday, Switzerland’s Federal Council announced that it was looking for ways to temper short term rent increases. Across Switzerland, 64% of the population was renting their homes in 2020. The percentage of people renting ranged from 85% in Basel-City to 42% in the canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden. In Geneva the rate was 82% and in Zurich it was 63%. Since 2008, Switzerland has had a mechanism, included in many lease…