Or there is a sane explanation - People drive cars -> People push their politicians to improve road infrastructure -> less money for other infrastructure -> trains are underfunded -> trains and tracks are having maintenance issues a reliability starts to fall apart -> people drive cars even more.

While I agree that fundamentally the issue is that Germans spend more on cars than any other European population (but nowhere near as much as Americans), there is also the detail that a large share of VWAG is owned by a German state.

if you judge driving cars as 'sane', sure; I don't