Driving: Germany vs. USA | This Surprised Us!

Germany: The problem that you cannot see the traffic light clearly when you are in the front row is resolved by the fact that the car behind you immediately honks when you are not driving when the traffic light changes to green :-)

With regard to 'Turn Right on Red' Nick Alfieri from the NALF YouTube channel found a very good explanation and reason why this can only be found occasionally inGermany. Nick is a US football player who is playing for the Schäbischhall Unicorns. At first he was of the same opinion you stated. But after he enquired this topic he changed his mind and came up with a good explanation. The whole US traffic and is rules are primarily made for cars. Cyclists and pedestrians are a minority and therfeore caring for their safety isn't this important. Traffic in Germany and whole Europe is to a lesser extend made purely for cars. To protect cyclists and pedestrians is it simply safer to regulate turning right by a traffic light. And I think he has a point here.

Even if it's very convenient (for car users), the reason for not allowing turn right on red is safety, especially for bikers and pedestrians crossing in the same direction. You can find studies coming out of the Netherlands that show how deadly turn right on red actually is. It gives a false sense of entitlement to turn right without looking.

Hey some advice from a German driver. The lights are always doubled or trippled. So if you are stopping at a light.. You don't have to look upwards to see the light. Just turn your head to the side. It rare that you will have to look upwards. Turn left on red: In Europe are far more people walking, crossing or driving) riding a bicycle. Also there are intersections with the Straßenbahn (tram) in lots of cities. If everybody would turn on red, there would be far more accidents on our small roads.

My instructor in Germany told me early on: "You are behind the wheel, you are handling a weapon." This stuck with me.

2:35 The main reason why traffic lights in Germany are on your side of the crossing is clarity. Germany with its old town centers has many very irregularly shaped crossings, and a traffic light at the opposite side can not easily be attributed to a certain lane or even a road. When the first traffic lights were introduced in the 1920ies, Germany experimented with the placement of the traffic lights on the opposite side or hanging down from cables spanned across the crossing. In the 1950ies, all those installations were removed due to constant confusion of drivers. 3:20 Turning right on red lights is not often used in Germany due to pedestrian and bicycling traffic. When you are waiting on a crossing, chances are high that you not only have to watch out for car traffic, but also for pedestrians and other traffic you don't regularly have in the U.S.. Thus in Germany, turning right on red lights is decided on a case-by-case base.

Streets in Germany are tight, because most of the cities and villages had been founded way before automobiles existed. They were simply made for pedestrians and some carts per day. Even when houses were rebuilt, the size of the roads still remained. Some cities were re-planned after WW2 because they were bombed to ground, but most of smaller cities which were no target in WW2 have small roads.

Additional info: The driving license costs you around 2000€ in Germany with all courses and fees. If your traffic violations are large, you will receive points (penalty points), up to 3 for large violations. If you have 8 points, your driver's license can be revoked for life. The authority for all of Germany is based in Flensburg. This has also found its way into everyday language: E.g. I received a letter from Flensburg. Ok when did you drive too fast.

3:36 You just demonstrated why "right on red" isn't a thing in Germany. You looked left and then immediately turned right. If a pedestrian would cross the street, you might hit them.

It's quite hillarious. I am living in Germany. Me and a lot of my friends got our driver's licenses recently. Almost noone feels absolutely safe. It is quite insane to imagime how it would be like if the only training we had was with our parents...

As a german i would actually have to hold me back from "going all in" on the speed when i drove on the american freeway the first time, because i was so used to our Autobahn. The highway speed i drove in the US felt like a relaxing ride on a country road to me. I was also always surprised when someone passed me on the right, as this is totally illegal on highways here in Germany.

With regards to the traffic light position: The reason why the light is closer so you are unconciously looking to the closer part of the intersection where cyclists and pedestrians are. It's one of the design principles that make the road design safer. I'm not sure about Germany but in the Netherlands if you stop at a light with the stop line directly visible underneath your left mirror you should be able to see the overhead traffic light without issues as well.

In Germany, changing direction always requires you to give way to all other traffic, and that includes bicycles and pedestrian. Turning right on red could encourage potentially dangerous turning behaviour given the amount of non car traffic. Germany did introduce the "Green Arrow" to allow right on red in intersections where there is little pedestrian/bicycle traffic to be expected.

Right on red: Bad idea here because of way more foot and bicycle traffic. In Germany most lights are as such that when the cross direction has green foot and bicycle traffic has also green, most of the time they even have longer green than cars. So if you had turning right on red on all intersection at least in cities you would have a lot of injured or dead bicyclists or pedestrians. Intersection were it is safe to turn right on red have either a dedicated light signal to turn right or a physical green arrow sign. For the density and differences in city planning I would recommend the channel not just bikes, from a Canadian living in the Netherlands. He also explain that narrow 30 km/h streets are safer for everyone from playing or traveling kids to drivers. Regarding the drivers license, that is very well known it was so well known that until 10ish years ago it was quite common for exchange students from Germany to make their license in the US for the reasons you mentioned, it stopped 10 years ago because the visas for Exchange students now most often have a passus in them that you are not allowed to make a license (or at least that was what I was told)

Nice video! However, there is one point I want to make: The fact that you can not go right through a red light in Europe is very simple and logical! As the Not Just Bikes channel explained: Road in America are very much developed with ONLY CARS in mind. And then it is logical that you could turn right trough a red light if there is (or seems to be) no other traffic. HOWEVER. In Europa and there tends to be many more pedestrians and especially cyclists coming from all directions, and also from right behind you, who will want to pass you to go for instance straight on. It will be very hard for you as a car driver to spot all of those, and that will make your behavior very unpredictable and dangerous for those other road users. Because when they try to pass you on the right hand side to go straight on, while you turn right through the red light, you will scoop them up while they are in your blind spot. So from a European perspective it is completely logical, and necessary, that you can not turn right through a red light, even if you think(!) nobody is coming! EDIT: I now see that others have given the same reaction. But hey: the point is here to be made...

For me as a German driver it took a while to realize that the traffic lights in Germany which are installed high above the road are meant to be seen from far away whereas the lights to the left and right are for the drivers right in front of the intersection (thus way better to see from this position).

Be aware when overtaking bicycles in Germany that you need to keep a distance of at least 1.5 metres in cities and at least 2 metres outside of cities. This means there are some streets where it isn't possible to legally overtake bicycles even if it seems that there's enough room.

When I was 18 and got my German driving license I too thought driving really fast on the Autobahn would never get old. Alas, I got older and realized it's a freaking waste of money, because you consume so much more fuel. That's not just because driving fast consumes more, but also, because you constantly have to slow down and accelerate again which makes it even worse. So now, about 2 decades later I usually cruise at around 140 km/h and chill.

The last time my in-laws visited us in Germany, we took them on a road trip. They were both having panic attacks before we even left the city (Berlin) because of all of the cyclists and pedestrians constantly coming at us from all directions. They asked how I could drive under these conditions. I just told them that you actually have to pay attention when you drive here, and it becomes natural with enough practice.

A short appendix regarding stretching your neck on a intersection with traffic lights: Traffic lights with a big full circle are for every lane, therefore you can use the lights on the sides as well. However if theres a traffic light that does not have circles, but arrows instead, that light is only for the lane indicated by the arrow. It overrides the "normal" traffic light. On intersections where each line gets controlled independend of each other and you cant use the lights to your side, the stop line for the cars is much further back. Lights hung directly above you are usually for the cars in the back. In the end, the only occations I have to stretch my neck is when a big car blocks my view to the side or I overshoot the stopping line by a large margin. Have an ergonomic trip, friends!