In 1978, when as a young guy....I arrived in Germany and sat through about four hours of German traffic training (to get my license). Most Germans freak out when they see Americans get so little orientation, and end up with a license. To be honest, there's a handbook they give you the weekend prior (maybe seventy pages) and it goes through the three-hundred-odd things that you ought to know. So the orientation deal is only a refresher to the book.
Somewhere between the book and that four-hour period....I came to the topic of zebra stripes. In German traffic, this is a crossing for a pedestrians where you (the walker) have priority over the car traffic.
The basic rule is that once you step on the zebra stripes....you own that moment and cars have to stop......period.
I sat there and tried to envision this, and it's hard for an American to believe things could be that simple. Questions were asked to the guy leading the discussion (he was a German) and he hinted in a nice way, you need to stop or you get a ticket...potentially all the way up to real jail-time. Basically, you need to obey the zebra stripe law.
This topic comes up this week in Hessen because of an accident in the Frankfurt area from September 2015. A woman get ran over in the crosswalk and killed. The driver? Court concluded this week and he will be sentenced to 5.5 years in prison. It's a hefty sentence. If she'd lived....he might have done just six to twelve month in jail.
All of this drives my emphasis on driving in urban environments of Germany. You have to be entirely focused on traffic and pedestrians while driving in any city or village. In this guy's case....maybe the gal did suddenly appear in the zebra stripes area but the minute her foot touched the stripes....she held authority over the crossing. He'll sit there for 5.5 years and think about that moment.
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