Originally Posted by
acidfast7
In theory you're not allowed to use the street unless if a bike lane exists. Sometimes, this is not enforced is the rider is on a rennrad (sport/race bike) and leaving the city. A general commuter (no spandex, etc...) would be stopped/shouted at by the police in Frankfurt for example.
Most of the time the infrastructure is clean and maintained.
There are a lot of split cycle/ped paths, however peds are extremely good about not being in the bike portion as they'll be responsible for any collision (damage to bike / injury issues). Same with the autos actually, in general it's quite collegial.
The further east one goes across the continent until the Urals, the nicer the people are but resources (time, space, infrastructure) are more scarce, which seems to cause issues (parking, petty theft, etc...)
According to commentary in Youtube: "Rennradfahrer nehmen in der StVO eine Sonderstellung ein. So besteht bei Trainingsausfahrten ein Wahlrecht zwischen der Benutzung von Radfahranlagen und der für den Verkehr bestimmten Fahrbahn. Voraussetzung dafür ist, dass das Fahrrad ein Rennrad entsprechend den gesetzlichen Vorschriften ist."
So, according to the traffic law, bike racers in training have the right to choose between using bike infrastructure or the traffic lane, as long the bike is a racing bike in accordance with legal guidelines. This seems very precise, in that Teutonic sort of way.
There's a lot of push back in the comments, essentially, the cyclists was doing nothing dangerous, nothing illegal, and the driver was making things dangerous by not understanding the law.