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If you cross the street "near" a red traffic light, that costs you 5€ in Germany. If you admit that you did it intentionally, the ticket price doubles. Happened
by jcynix 3y ago
If you cross the street "near" a red traffic light, that costs you 5€ in Germany. If you admit that you did it intentionally, the ticket price doubles. Happened to my wife some years ago when walking to a bus stop on the other side of the street. How did the cop know that it was intentional? She remarked that there was no car in sight, neither left nor right, on a straight road in town.
Oh, and what's the definition of "near" you may ask? While in Germany almost everything is regulated in detail, the definition of "near" is up to the cop.
ObJoke: it's midnight somewhere in Europe and no car in sight, but some people are waiting for the traffic light to turn green? You can bet that these are Germans ;-0
- macleginn 3y agoAs many other aspects of the German ethos, this seems to be dying away. I live near Stuttgart, jaywalking is rampant, and nobody cares; in two years, I haven’t seen a traffic cop anywhere except for accident sites.
- watwut 3y agoIt was not near crossing, surely :) But like, German do not actually respect all the posted rules. Nec ver did.
- Detrytus 3y ago[flagged]
- thenewwazoo 3y agoIs this comment an assertion of the truth of Great Replacement theory, i.e. disgusting Nazi propaganda? Because that is how it reads.
- quantified 3y agoYes, you're downvoted but correct.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- eimrine 3y ago"I was not interested to look for any car in sight because I would like to save 5€ for the case of being caught"
- aurea 3y agoWhile I "jailwalk" pretty much all the time (in Europe), nighttime is when I am the most reluctant to do so. Poor visibility and higher chance of meeting a drunk driver.
- WinstonSmith84 3y agohm interesting.. I didn't know that it was illegal. I've been living many years in Germany and always jaywalked, or more precisely always looked at the car traffic typically ignoring the traffic lights (as it's common everywhere else in the world outside EU+US). And I've never been fined, while I'm sure it already happened the police had seen me. But I will admit that Germans are happily waiting while there is no car in sight - until they see people crossing by red, and then they join ...
- onetokeoverthe 3y ago[dead]
- dm319 3y agoThe law in the UK has just changed to explicitly give priority to pedestrians already crossing the road, particularly in the context of a car turning off a main road and finding pedestrians crossing the road.
- wongarsu 3y agoIn Germany pedestrians also always have priority over turning cars when crossing at an intersection, no matter if there is a pedestrian crossing or not.
- aidenn0 3y agoThis is also true in many parts of the US, including California.
- nthngtshr 3y agoGenuinely curious — is there some jurisdiction where the law is "if the pedestrian is in the wrong it's fine to go over them"?
- aidenn0 3y agoI was interpreting GP as talking about "who is supposed to go first" not "Can I run them over intentionally." The latter is not allowed anywhere in the US. However, I have seen cops giving a pedestrian a ticket for crossing right next to a giant "No Crossing" sign as they were being loaded into an ambulance. At that particular section of the street the assumption was that the driver did not intentionally hit the pedestrian as there was a blind corner. Also, I don't know if you saw the footage from a few years back of the self-driving-car hitting the pedestrian in Arizona while the safety driver was on their phone? Without the dash-cam, the driver likely would not have been found at fault, as the cops are likely to believe a driver that says they didn't see a pedestrian crossing in the dark at night until too late.
- 3y ago
- andix 3y agoI think Germany is the only country in the world that has fines as low as 5€. Also parking your car without paying the parking fee can be ridiculously cheap as 15€.
- Sebb767 3y ago> How did the cop know that it was intentional? She remarked that there was no car in sight, neither left nor right, on a straight road in town. Not to be nitpicky, but if that were the case, wouldn't she have seen the cop?
- hyperhopper 3y agoCops don't have to be in cars
- jcynix 3y agoNo, it was a motorcycle cop, parked besides some trees, standing sideways and not in the direction where she was headed.
- 3seashells 3y agoThere is value in a society that upholds norms even if you don't agree with them, even if nobody is watching. I will wait in a ghost city for a green light, ridicule away. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-trust_and_low-trust_societies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-trust_and_low-trust_socie...
- jcynix 3y agoWhile I too agree with norms in general, there is such a thing as common sense. And common sense might tell you that waiting at a lone traffic light in the outskirts of a town in the early morning, sun rising, no car in sight for some hundred meters in each direction, does not add value to society?
- 3seashells 3y agoIt adds reliability, unconscious adherence to rules, a reduction of friction. I don't want people to jdrive in pedestrian only zones, just because nobody is up and about. Chaos is a mental taxation, ditracting from endavour.
- geysersam 3y agoI'd say waiting for the traffic light to turn green when there is no traffic nearby adds friction rather than reduces it.
- Gud 3y agoThere is no chaos to jaywalking because jaywalking should be the default. Only in non-pedestrian cities is jaywalking taxing. I come from a city where people jaywalk(Stockholm). Jaywalking makes the city extremely walkable, and quite frankly I suspect it was designed with jaywalking in mind. It is obvious when someone is not from Stockholm - they wait for the signal. I don't get the ease of jaywalking in many other large cities I've been - Zürich comes close. In the UK, even crossing at a green light feels dangerous.
- julian_t 3y agoI've seen this at night in Finland as well, looking out of my hotel window at a snow covered street. Not a car in sight (or even tyre tracks in the snow) but still there were people waiting to cross.