It's in fact one of my least favorite things about living in Germany (not the pristine-ness, but the holiness GP mentioned). Cars are absolutely holy, many drivers absolutely freak out when you dare touching their car or take up precious road space with your unworthy bicycle. Traffic rules for cars are often mere recommendations, and breaking them goes unsanctioned. Prioritizing motorized traffic is a borderline religion (e.g. the eternal discussion about a speed limit on the Autobahn), and other means of traffic are only very slowly awakening. What a waste of space, resources and quality of life.
People also don't hesitate to honk if you are driving with a bike, or even a car slowly. It has a fine of 10 Euros, so nobody cares (even the Police themselves) if you call the police for abusive honking.
Last week we were driving 43km/s on a road with 50km/s limit. The driver behind us drove 10cm away from our bumper for like 5 minutes, and even though our indicator was on he didn't calculate we will slow down even further to turn right, and made an emergency brake then honked like 10 seconds as he/she was driving away as fast as that car could.
To be fair, it's not remotely as bad as back in Istanbul (what a mess there!), but I expected more from Germany, a country in which people normally love sticking to the rules.
In a weird way, it calms me down to see others also having similar problems. Edit: Just opened the latest video and here's another one - https://youtu.be/8mUi2uOzXvs?t=543
> People also don't hesitate to honk if you are driving with a bike, or even a car slowly.
The acoustic warning signal is meant to warn other traffic participants of imminent danger - which includes the intend to overtake (outside of towns). There is no fine for that.
> but I expected more from Germany, a country in which people normally love sticking to the rules.
Careful there: Your scenario does not exactly paint you as a hero. Driving deliberately slowly (you mentioned for "like 5 minutes") when higher speeds are possible (both from the street conditions and your vehicle's capabilities), if it hinders others from using legal use of the road (which includes driving at the speed limit), can be construed to be "Nötigung", which is a crime. (The other driver of course could be fined for the same as well)
> The acoustic warning signal is meant to warn other traffic participants of imminent danger - which includes the intend to overtake (outside of towns). There is no fine for that.
Honking before overtaking is completely fine, I know my rules. Imminent danger honking is allowed everywhere, even in towns. It's completely not allowed honking to mean "drive faster".
> Careful there: Your scenario does not exactly paint you as a hero
You are missing context, perhaps I should have given the full picture: The road IMHO wasn't suitable to drive at 50km/h. It was curvy with many parked cars on the sides. I wasn't trying to annoy anyone. I even started breaking earlier before turn so it wasn't a harder break, which may have saved us from an accident. Also 43 is nowhere near going "too slow". You need to drive 25 or less, so that it becomes a dangerous situation. The instructors would give you a warning in an exam before failing you if you do it twice, if you drive less than half the limit.
You can also drive 60km/h in a country road (limit 100km/h), and as long as you do not go below 50 for an extended period of time, you don't need to worry. If you are going slowly just to piss someone off, or you are creating a dangerous situation (for example, blocking the flow of the traffic when there's cross-traffic), that's a different story.
