Brakeless in Berlin

It is from the Berlin Police website. It says that that all this is about protecting elderly and child pedestrians. In Germany it isn't illegal to ride on the pavement and many cyclists do. I'm a bit puzzled though because Berlin has shit loads of cycle lanes that are on a different level from both pavement and road.

Anyway, please hold while Herr Oliver Schick is proceeding to this thread. I'm sure he is drafting a well-argued essay as we speak.

Not much to say, really, as I don't know much about Germany except that, as Lenni knows, they have actual traffic police and therefore have the capacity for such an initiative.

NB as far as I remember it is illegal to ride on the footway in Germany if you're over 12 and no part of the footway is designated as a cycle track/path.

Without taking a position either for or against brakeless riding (there are plenty of brakes threads around as it is), it's easy to see that the tone is paternalistic and breathlessly worried. In Germany, a big point always made about bikes is their "Verkehrssicherheit", or 'safety for use in traffic' (irrespective of the rider), and brakeless bikes are not considered "verkehrssicher" by default.

I can't put the explanatory paragraph about casualty statistics into its proper context as I don't know the overall stats from Berlin, but it is certainly possible to stress even without this knowledge that stats like this don't give an adequate picture of what really happens on the streets. The estimated modal share of cycle traffic in Berlin was reported to be 10% as long as two years ago, which translates into a huge number of trips that would show that the risk indicated by the number of collisions cited, about which there is of course cause for worry, is actually quite small--as usual where there are lots of cycle trips.

I don't know if it's unusual for Germany that the main emphasis of the press release is on contraventions by cyclists as opposed to those by users of motor vehicles (which is pretty much par for the course in this country), but this paragraph gives some balance by stressing the police's determination to check how HGV drivers turn right (i.e., the equivalent to what turning left is in this country), and the behaviour of inattentive and reckless drivers:

Zum Schutz der Radfahrer werden Kraftfahrzeugführer verstärkt in ihrem Verhalten beim Rechtsabbiegen gegenüber parallel fahrenden Radfahrern überprüft. Trotz der umfänglichen Diskussionen zu den Gefahren des Toten Winkels bei Lkw verhalten sich immer noch zu viele Fahrer in solchen Situationen unaufmerksam und zum Teil rücksichtslos. Kontrollen werden überwiegend dort stattfinden, wo es in der Vergangenheit vermehrt zu Verkehrsunfällen mit Radfahrerbeteiligung gekommen ist bzw. dort, wo in der täglichen Verkehrsüberwachung auffällig viele dieser Verstöße festgestellt werden müssen.

How this positive intention works out in practice is to be seen.