I have lived a little over half my life in the U.S. and the rest in Germany. There are things about each I love and other things not so much. My focus in this blog post will not be on cultural behaviors but rather on how things work day to day.
Things I Wish Germany Did Like the U.S.
The top of my list has to be the “10 items or less” checkout lane (also known as the Express Lane) at supermarkets and other large stores. Sometimes I want to pop in at the store and grab a few items. But then I come to the checkout and find every lane is occupied by people whose shopping carts are filled to the brim. It is true that if Germans see you with one or two items, they often invite you to go ahead of them, although with social distancing in the checkout lines, they seldom see you in time to make the generous offer. But having five to ten items is definitely a losing battle. You wait and wait and wait for your turn to pay. The Express Lane is a standard at American stores and is so very welcome.
While I am talking about supermarket checkouts, why do the large stores not employ a single feeder line. When you get to the front of the line, you go directly to the next checkout station. No more guessing which lane is faster and no competition to get into that new station that opens while you are in line.
Stoplights where I can see them is my next wish. I don’t drive a tall SUV or pickup truck. So, when I pull up to a red light in my car, stopping right at the line painted on the street, I can often only see the stoplight by bending down in the car. This is because the lights are placed before the intersection rather than on the other side of the cross-street. I assume this is done to discourage me from encroaching into the crosswalk, but it is often most uncomfortable. American stoplights are either across the intersection or hung directly over big intersections.
Sticking with driving, I wish that when Germany was reunited, it had adopted the East German practice of allowing a right turn on a red rule after stopping and checking that it is safe, as is done in the U.S. If this were adopted in Germany – or perhaps the entire EU – we could save a lot of waiting and perhaps even some unnecessary burning of fossil fuels in those cars which do not automatically turn the engine off when stopped.
Things I Wish the U.S. Did Like the Germans
Intelligent Escalators: In Germany, many escalators turn themselves off when no one is riding them, thus saving electricity and wear-and-tear on the equipment. And some even have a pressure plate where you enter at the top or bottom which allows them to change direction (when empty) to accommodate upward and downward passengers. In locations where the demand is not too great, it allows one escalator to serve where two would otherwise be needed.
Intelligent lighting in public hallways. Hotels, apartment complexes and office buildings need lighting in the halls. But that light does not need to be on all the time. In Germany, most installations either use a motion sensor to turn the lights on and off or wall switches at convenient intervals to turn the lights on and a timer to turn them off again. Electricity is saved and lightbulbs last much longer.
Intelligent Speed Limits: Contrary to the myth, German highways (the Autobahn) are not the “wild west” of driving where people can travel at any speed whenever they want. It once was that way, but today cameras and sensors feed information to a control center about the volume and speed of traffic at many points along a highway and slowdowns due to accidents. There are also remote-controlled signs which display a speed limit if travel without a limit would be unsafe due to weather conditions, accidents, or other reasons to moderate speed before coming upon a danger. There may be a very few examples of this employed in the U.S., but we could do with much wider implementation.
Nobody has all the great ideas. We should be looking to see how others are solving problems and put good ideas into practice in our own country.
- Herb