Friday, June 11, 2010

Danishize: Traffic

Whenever I get together with other exchange students, we always wind up talking about the weather or biking or biking in terrible weather. 

This photo shows several interesting things about Danish traffic.

 
(Are those two people kissing? That would also illustrate social acceptability of PDA here.)

It's amazing to see the red AND yellow light lit at the same time! Traffic lights here don't go from red straight to green. They go red, red and yellow, green. I think maybe it helps drivers of manual cars? But I love that little touch anyway.

Also, you can see people biking. Practically every road in Denmark has bike paths like this one. Only the small residential streets don't. There's also a scooter in the bike lane. I believe that is the place for them but it still scares me when they wizz past me when I'm biking. 

We also have traffic lights for bicycles. Very very nice. 



Not that this location means much to you, but this is the intersection of Nordre Ringgade and Langlegade that I walk almost every day. My house is just in the opposite direction from this photo. 

3 comments:

Jeff said...

the red+yellow would definitely save time for manual drivers. that's kind of brilliant. do you know if any other european countries do that?

CYW said...

I think other European countries also have this... only because I can't clearly recall any that have red-->green. This Danish kind has become normal to me now.

Anonymous said...

they have it in France Chen too!