Cyclists Groups

Science

• Human Alcohol Absorption: Alcohol in bloodstream will keep rising after you "down in one" the last of your beer, & jump on your bike, & test the brakes - hard - before going down that steep hill ;-).
• Stress laws: Tensile steel brake cables will break when hardest applied = most needed (just after hardest tested ? see above).
• Kinetic Energy: (The "over the handlebars" law ;-)
  1/2 mv^2
  (If its cooler at end of evening, its easier to cycle faster without overheating. (+ alcohol might accelerate). If you go 20% faster, That's 1.2 x 1.2 = 44% more energy for brakes to dump before bike stops.
• Braking distance : The law of Crunch ;-)
  
  s=ut + 1/2 at^2
  
  ie first part of braking distance doubles if tipsy slow thinking distance doubles
  + if brakes can dump kinetic energy into heat at a fixed maximum rate, if you have double the speed, you quadruple that second part of your braking distance.
• Friction coefficients: Few pedestrians or car drivers have any clue that wet bike wheel rim brakes can take over 4 times the distance to stop. (Not [hydraulic or other?] disc brakes, they seem to suffer less from wet)
• After kinetic energy flies you off a bike, The law of Gravity kicks in ...
• Then Murphy's / Sod's Law: "I'll buy a crash helmet now I've crashed ;-)"

Defective Humans

• Few car drivers cycle regularly, few understand problems of cyclists. Some cyclists act like idiots, provoking car drivers (eg cycling in parallel when it might be legal but also obstructive, or jumping lights. Such provoked car drivers probably then treat the next cyclist badly. Pedestrians are clueless eg wandering the entire width of Diener Str (S of Marienplatz) where yes, its their Right, but if they had a brain cell, they'd leave middle of road clear for bikes. Cyclists provoke each other, eg 2 fat slow cyclists can block a path completely, never overtaking (there's a fine for that BTW!).
• The Law Of Evolution, or "Some Are Foolish, Some are stupid, (some aggressive), they won't learn, & Will walk or drive into you."
  Evolution ceased in Europe. Many humans remain foolish &/or spatially clueless (or drunk) etc, & it will only get worse. Society removed previous evolutionary "survival of fitest" selector mechanisms. Since Europeans could breed & have their offspring supported by the state, there's no reason to suppose there's evolutionary incentive for humans to improve. Lack of intelligence doesn't preclude any from breeding, rather the opposite, more who will foolishly misuse all of cars, bikes, ... & shoes ;-)

Local Hazards

• Many local car drivers are clueless don't cycle (or if so, just fat tyred slow clunkers, called a "City Rad" in Munich), & don;t know bikes with narrow tyres (tourers, racers) can't cross a tram track at a narrow angle (more so if wet), else they would catch in the rut & crash.
• Some Pedestrians assume they will hear motors of all vehicles, & too lazy to look for bikes & electric/combi cars.
• Most Pedestrians assume all bikes are slow, & eg a bike bell is a signal to later slowly consider strolling off the bike path. Not all bikes can or will stop in time. Some stand in bike lanes & deliberately don't get out of the way.
• Munich pedestrians & cyclists sometimes cross junctions as soon as their light goes green, without first looking left for vehicles turning right. (The Ich habe Recht mentality ;-) Ignorant that foreign eg British & some other car drivers are used to a different traffic light timing pattern, & will Not expect them to start crossing just then. A pedestrian or cyclist knocked down by a foreign car driver in such circumstance may usually have law on their side, but it will be No less painful or injurious.
• Car passengers don't look before opening doors across cycle tracks
• Car drivers & rear offside passengers open car doors across the narrow gap between car & tram tracks (& bikes with narrow tyres at speed cant swerve across tram tracks at a narrow angle).
• Ignition Key Syndrome
  Munich car drivers mentally become encased in their steel car, the second an ignition key is in their hand, while they step out from kerb, & open drivers door, further obstructing the road.
• Big City aggression
  Munich being a big-ish city, drivers are more aggressive than smaller German cities (eg Aachen), or UK {Canterbury, Tunbridge Wells etc}.
  (If you wonder if this author's perspective may suffer from lack of experience of Big cities, not so: I happily drive a car in London, I've been around Hyde Park corner London, a few times on a bike, not Too often, risky, & round the Arc De Triomphe Paris ( a few times, car only).
• Germanic Recht Haben
  Native English speakers generally consider locals on average as more obsessed with their rights, laws & insurance than we are, & less flexible. More people (car drivers, cyclists, pedestrians) seem to be less flexible. Supposing the law to be on their side gives some people a deluded sense of security but doesn't stop accidents, pain & injury, it merely influences who might pay if people get caught.
• Spring: Beware morons cycling on the left !
  Too many cyclists in Spring act like morons, as if they've not seen all 4 wheel traffic all winter drive on the right, & neber learnt to cycle on the right, so they cycle on the Left & middle of cycle paths, & assume all cyclists oncoming are slow enough to & & will stop for them. Of course there's a law against it, doesn't stop the morons. Apparently the first few sunny days in spring the ambulances scrape up an excess number of cyclist off the cycle paths. ! Bells of course are completely useless you'd wait beyond collision time for these morons to react at all. Shouting "Rechts!" loudly, aggresively, & in agonised stressed tone at these morons sometimes helps avert a collision, far more effective than a bell if you have a Loud voice. Sometimes morons ignore that too, sometimes they shout back Links as if it's their counter proposal for a political debate or other moronic abuse. Sure there's a law & fine to enforce cycling on right, but being morons, neither Kinetic energy of a fast oncoming bike, nor German law persuade morons to cycle on the Right. By high summer the danger from morons recedes... till next Spring.
• Summer: Innocent clueless tourists swarm in summer & Oktoberfest, they often have absolutely No idea they're standing in a bike path, on what appeared to them to be pavement.
• Föhn (On sunny days, if wind from Mountains in South, dry air, (positive ions apparently), Many more people act stupidly. (Simple rule to observe: Count the stupid mistakes on such days, compared with other days. Only count objective mistakes you remotely observe, not any subjective mistakes where you are either the wronged party, or you made the mistake).
• The dangerous continental habit/law of "Give way to the right",
  which aggressive "my right=law" obsessed inflexible drivers convert to "Screw any traffic to the left, I'll pull out regardless, Es ist meine Recht ("It's my right") ...,

  I'll pull across that single or line of car driver[s] or cyclist[s] on the left, ignoring any/ all of: common sense, courtesy, risk, kinetic energy, bad road surface, poor visibility, possibility of bad brakes, T junction, or narrow road ahead I want to turn left into -

  (The French to their credit, on their major routes, reduced this dangerous continental habit on their major routes, decades back),
  Munich re-introduced greater use of this daft legal system (maybe around 1995 ?), when they removed white lines & signs from city junctions. That would have required more courtesy & sensible flexibility in case of near simultaneous arrival at junctions. Of course that often didn't happen with "Es ist mein Recht - Muenchners" - I saw many more near accidents after.
• Munich taxi drivers
  Even more aggressive than normal Munich car drivers, & don't back off (At a 2 to 1 funnel heading south along Isar, West bank, south of Fraunhofer Str, I saw a classic in 2012: 2 taxis had refused to allow each other through first, & rammed each other, side ways on. Typical. What the word "Schadenfreude was invented for, to laugh at them from a distance while walking by ? ;-) Munich taxi drivers are mostly bad drivers. (Wouldn't so likely see that from black London taxi cabs I guess, not only better trained in knowing the roads ("The Knowledge"), but taxis not allowed on roads if scratched. )

  (Yes london cabs will cut corners in city of London endangering pedestrians, but after someone I know got sick of it every day & held out his long umbrella , brass ferule at end toward the taxi sides, to prevent them clipping the corner, that they avoided : A scratch on a London black taxi means off the road & no earnings !
• Munich city council creates occasional hazards.
  • They assume all bikes are dead slow. (The state of the tarmac is very bad at any decent speed, smoother & safer on the road.)
  • Cobble stones (pflaster- stein) Junctions eg Holz & Muller Str.
    They assume all bikes are fat tyred city-rad. They made road junctions More dangerous in recent years: They dug up the tarmac & replaced with cobble stones (pflaster- stein) so badly laid, they have gaps between wider than tyres of tourer bikes. They planted these cobbles at junctions in the name of "Verkehrs Beruhigung"(thinking of slowing cars with the bump). Look for classics at eg junction of Holz & Muller Str.
  • Fraunhofer Bruecke
    Cycle East on the south side of & suddenly the cycle track swerves 1 width to the right. A path just wide enough for 1 bike to overtake another, suddenly becomes barely wide enough for 1 bike often with oncoming pedestrian hazard on /near path, & in dusk or poor visibility, easily overlooked, when the tangent would then toss you out in the road, to be run run over by 4 wheel traffic. No 4 wheel vehicle could ever pull over as hard & sharp as that kerb does, so that first bit of road tarmac can never be used, & stupidly just makes a completely un-necessary hazard to cyclists.
  • Stachus
    A bit of paint would reduce risk to a lot of cyclists & pedestrians at the East-West pedestrian crossing north of Stachus.

German Fines