"Rules also make normal days easier. Something simple like waiting at a red light even when there are no cars takes away the work of deciding whether to cross. "

Ah, he really became german. (It seems I ain't anymore by that standard - when there are no cars, of course I go.)

To me that aspect is a symptom not of a rule-following culture, but of the favouritism given to cars. The car lobby has a lot of influence in Germany. It is why there are no speed limits on highways, trains are in a terrible condition, and finally pedestrians are made to obey rules optimised for car traffic. The rule could be different, like in UK where the rule is that the pedestrian is allowed to jaywalk and it is not breaking any law, and you would still get a rule-following society (in that respect at least). The difference is in the expectation of whether a car is a guest in a human environment or a human is a guest in a car environment.

Or you became a Berliner.

(There's a small part of me that wishes I could've naturalized as a Berliner, not German — many (though obviously not all!) things I love about it are really about Berlin specifically, not Germany. Seeing "waiting at traffic lights to cross even when there's no cars around" being described as a German thing always makes me smile a bit; having worked for ~3y near Kotti. Nobody does that there.)

[dead]