Vielleicht…Abwechslungen (Maybe…Changes)

During my time in Germany, I have seen many differences between the United States and Germany. I have also come to realise that not all of these differences are good and not all are bad. Additionally, some are merely differences that work in their country either way. However, there are a few things that I would like to see the United States, or, at least, San Luis Obispo, implement.

First is the concept of bike ramps built into stairs. This is easier to describe with a picture than with words, so I have found one. This allows people to walk their bikes/baby carriages/suitcases up and down the stairs with much greater ease.

As I previously mentioned, Marburg has a lot of features built into buildings and on the street to help with the handicapped population. The second thing that I would recommend places in the United States incorporating into their city design is guidance arrows on top of the crosswalk-request-buttons. These arrows point the visually-impaired in the correct direction, as well as vibrate with the signal changes to “walk,” in case they are hearing impaired as well and cannot hear the auditory tone.

The third recommendation that I have apparently already exists in some grocery stores in the United States. To this, I would say that Ralph’s in San Luis Obispo needs to get on their game, so to speak! This improvement is to list per measure-unit (ounce, gram, pound, etc.) prices on the shelf-price labels along with the item price. While I know that this can be calculated mentally or on a calculator, having it listed saves a great deal of time in comparison shopping.

My last change deals with traffic signals. While the United States’ system of Green-Yellow-Red-Green is good, I have often sat at a traffic light and wished that human reaction time was better or that the car in front was paying more attention to the light or both! Germany has attempted to solve this problem by implementing a sort of warning system to alert drivers that the light is about to turn green. Just before the light changes from red to green, the yellow signal flashes briefly in conjunction with the red. This very brief double-light does an excellent job of letting drivers know that it is almost time to go.