And another in Dresden: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQUpQZAeA3w https://www.diesachsen.de/en/politics/a-zebra-crossing-in-dr... "In the summer of 2025, unknown individuals painted a crosswalk on the roadway along the busy street in Neustadt to provide safe access to the Heinrich Schütz Conservatory. The city promptly blocked off the crossing with warning cones [...] stating that unauthorized crosswalks constitute not only property damage but also a dangerous interference with traffic. Furthermore, traffic signs installed without authorization constitute an administrative offense under the Road Traffic Code."
In Los Angeles https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-10-16/risking-... "Risking arrest, he paints illicit crosswalks across L.A. ‘We can’t wait any longer’" (initially repainting faded crosswalks, rather than creating new ones)
And an example in Saskatoon, visible only in the 2015 street view image https://maps.app.goo.gl/3zWAkjtSEATswcWm8
Indeed, it could lead to cars slowing down and who could want that in Autoland germany.
[1] https://medium.com/asecuritysite-when-bob-met-alice/traffic-...
Just next street, 6 years ago, some guys painted a Zebrastreifen, and got charged for Serious interference with road traffic: https://www.dnn.de/lokales/dresden/falscher-zebrastreifen-in...
(do note that "serious" or "schwer" (lit. heavy) is a qualifier in german law, that increases the charges significantly. The serious part here is that it isn't some alteration that can be immediately removed (e.g. a traffic cone))
Update on that other situation in the district of Neustadt that you mentioned: The city actually just completed a legal crosswalk there, just last week. Here's the article by our public broadcast: https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/sachsen/dresden/dresden-radeb...
Of course, this is isn't perfect -- the user doesn't always know what they want.
[0] https://stirileprotv.ro/stiri/actualitate/comuna-unde-fostul...
[1] https://stirileprotv.ro/stiri/actualitate/situatie-absurda-i...
[2] https://www.antena3.ro/actualitate/locale/satul-sa-astepte-d...
As for the guerilla bike lane on JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park, that entire 1-mile section of JFK was later closed off to cars entirely. It required a city-wide ballot initiative, IIRC, and was very contentious. But the city government was in favor of it, which may have something to do with why they were so accommodating earlier with the bike lane.
It's still very contentious and was on the ballot again yesterday to undo the previous ballot measure and make it available to car again. The proposal to undo was defeated.
I present… [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_McElroy]
Nice slippery slope, btw.
I bet Romania has something similar.
It helps that colleges have their own police forces with a standing directive to not be too harsh on students.
Although maybe that’s a US thing? We are a weird country.
https://www.tourism-heidelberg.com/explore/historical-sights...
A few days later, the city council made this change permanent.
That may be because this is a clearer win for everybody involved.
Maybe there's no penalty, but a 6 lane road probably has traffic density/speed/flow enough to get to the "may only be crossed at intersections or junctions"
Also, this is one of the paragraphs that is just there. It's not enforced. Do you know any German that ever get fined for it? Is the police out with cameras looking for slow pedestrians? Naa, they are out with cameras looking for too speedy cars instead!
) maybe "Landei" ? But it's never used in traffic context. We simply had a car-lobby creating vile words to modify law-makers behavior like it happened in the USA at ca. 1910.
For me a pedestrian traffic sign is a hint that I can now go. But it certainly isn't a requisite. If the street is empty of traffic AND if there are no little kids around, then I'll just go.
Why not little kids? We know from science that they can't judge the speed and distance of cars. When I can see "The car is far away and slow", they don't really know. So I don't want a bad example to them. And that makes you able to observe me at a red traffic light with a completely free street --- kids might be around!
They made up the term jaywalking by combining "walking" with the term "jay" which was a slang term for a country bumpkin or idiot from out of town. They hired actors to spread the slur to refer to those out of towners that don't know how to "properly" behave around streets in a modern city. They even paid Boy Scouts to hand out warning cards and staged mock funerals
I suppose it didn’t work that well because as a rule a car or bike hitting a pedestrian is still almost always at fault.
All of this led to the 1928 Model Municipal Traffic Ordinance and notably a lot of laws in LA that shifted the liability to pedestrians instead of motorists.
Today if you "jaywalk" in most of the country you get called an asshole. It was an incredibly successful act of social engineering
Guess some schools have wiser faculty than others.
In USA, the fines are often higher. And damages to be paid are WAY WAY HIGHER. If you do a criminal offense, then you get way more years in prison in the USA than in Germany. The police treats you even worse in the USA than in Germany.
So if you break the law ... then better do it in Germany.
Also, go around in Germany and ask germans "Did you ever get a fine for walking just over the read? Or by walking over the road when the pedestrian light was red?". I'll wage 50€ that it will take you more than a day until you find the first occurrence. Ask around "Have you ever got speed ticket in a car" will get you however instant answers.
You guys blow some imaginative danger out of proportion. And I really wonder if there is ONE country with laws that written but no one looks after? Isn't that usual? We even have german saying on this: "Papier ist geduldig".
Incarceration rate in the USA is also way higher than in Germany.
I'd wager people to come up with verifiable statistics where "breaking law" is more dangerous than in USA. They probably exist, in niche areas. Would still be fun to learn.
A bit of backstory... My little cluster of townhomes sits beside a 35mph, wide (was 4 lanes, reduced to 2+bike lanes), busy suburban road. Cars regularly go 50mph because the road is wide and smooth and 50 feels right. People have died crossing the road (2 in the 7 years I've lived here). There's a bus stop on both sides of the intersection, housing on both sides, a park on one side down a block, and a golf course on the other side, also one block down.
The response from VDOT was essentially "there's currently no proof of pedestrian need" This despite bus stops, parks, and housing existing. And pedestrian deaths. And frequently seeing with my own eyes people dashing across the road, trying not to get squished,
It's complete idiocy from the various traffic planning orgs. It's 100% car-first, consequences be damned. Bike lanes are added reluctantly, and usually as a requirement to get federal funding; little attention paid to utility... did I mention the bike lanes on the road above go "nowhere"? They literally end several blocks on either side of the local school complex, start again, then stop before the local shopping center. So you can't actually use them to get anywhere you'd want to go.
Well of course. Just how there's no proof of "train need" before tacks get built. Why do we ever build tracks if there is no preexisting train traffic to justify the need?!
The college students also generally don’t vote in that location lowering the desire of public government to engage with them as much. Again transient. You’re right to ask but I’m guessing this was the primary issue.
* We don't have "college students". We have however real students, e.g. in University.
* Over here it's not custom to go with micro-management problems to an elected person, e.g. to the member of parliament of your area. Whenever I see the (partially propaganda) shows where russians ask the dictator Putin about day-to-day things and they even air this yearly in the TV I cringe. Or when I see in US movies that people go with low things to their congressman... that simple isn't custom in Germany. And thus the elected people are much LESS likely looking if people wanting something would elect them or not.
* Normally it is the executive, not the legislative, that decides over these matters. In Germany, the executive isn't elected by the public.
* In Germany we have the idea of "main point of living" (Hauptwohnsitz) and "secondary point of living" (Zweitwohnsitz). And in quite a few towns you have to pay an extra-tax on the Zweitwohnsitz. There are ways to mitigate this, but the easiest solution as a student is just to take your Hauptwohnsitz at your university town. And there you can then vote (you can't vote at your Zweitwohnsitz). And so it happens that the town magistrates of student towns are usually a bit different than of "normal" towns, e.g. the town mayors from the green party. All these young students voting more for this party than e.g. the german liberals.
So, all in all, from the POV of the story in Berlin ... little of what you wrote made sense. Except your first sentence. Infrastructure building is a slow, a tremendously slow process in Germany (however, once we have it, it's usual very nice. We germans call shit on our railway ... but it's lightyears better than e.g. the US railways system!). And even a zebra crossing falls under the infrastructure categorization.
Doesn't make for a good story though. What I relayed above has become university lore. Its accuracy is hard to judge decades later.