Bike snobbery and road rage

We have a culture in which speeding cameras are seen as an unfair tax on motorists. In Copenhagen, I was jaywalking across empty streets while people were waiting for the green man and giving me odd looks. In my mind, the street was empty, so why not cross? But for them, you obey the signals, and you don't feel hard done by for doing so. I think our existing infrastructure design reflects our predispositions, and that better, more interventionist design can help reign them in - but our predisposition in the UK is still to push push push, and there's a limit to how far good design can contain that.

You appear to misunderstand that you were breaking the law there, whereas if you're here you don't if you 'jaywalk' (which, by the way, does not just mean 'crossing the street on foot wherever you like', as it's more complicated than that, and we should avoid using the term in a UK context). It's got nothing to do with infrastructure design, just with legislation. Obviously, you have the usual attitudes there like 'don't set a bad example for the children', 'it's not safe', etc., too, but you can get fined for walking across the street on a red man over there. It's one of the most significant traffic freedoms we have in the UK and we ought to celebrate it.

You're obviously right that design doesn't do everything people always hope it will, and that at the same time good design is still important.