Berlin - Polizei Are On The Hunt

For what it's worth, the whole legal situation causes great grief amongst sport cyclists in germany as well. For once with clipless it's impossible to comply with the regulations in terms of pedal reflectors, but also the state of the cyclepaths is often detrimental to the condition of a 4k EUR carbon road bike.

I've never been stopped when riding my road bike around Germany, and neither have any groups I've ridden in (on occasion 40-odd people). In practice, the rules are not enforced about road bikes.

The possibility that someone comes up to you, measures the position of the rear reflector and finds it higher than the required 60cm ground height, therefore fines you a tenner, is always there, but very often unrealistic.

Exactly. There are limits even to German officiousness.

One thing I can tell you from the outset is that if they find stuff wrong with your bike, or you're going down the wrong cyclepath or whatever, ALWAYS say you didn't know. In germany fines multiply if you did something "mit Vorsatz" (on purpose).
("Mit Vorsatz" means "with intent".)

I've always done the exact opposite. I never use any footway cycle paths when I'm in Germany that I don't think make any sense. I've got stopped a couple of times, but each time I've been able to explain to the officers quite precisely why I wasn't using the path. They could have fined me but realised that I knew what I was doing and went on their way.

It's not difficult to explain why the Radwegebenutzungspflicht is completely absurd. Anyone with a bit of common sense will see this.