Should I stay or should I go?

Germany seems to be the only country in the world where people can get into a fist fight and other life threatening situations when they cross an empty road at a red  light - mind you: as pedestrians! Ever so often, when I cross a street at a red light, someone shouts at me  "You are a bad example!" "Don't you have children!?" "Didn't your mother teach you anything?" Therefore I avoid crossing at a light like the pest and go an anarchical 20 m up the road and cross there. Sometimes, when I am in a patient mood,  I wait  and watch the other people waiting on either side of an empty road, watching the empty road, no car in sight, waiting for a car that is not coming to justify their obedience to the rule, and watching unobtrusively each other, trying to judge each other - who will stay, who will have the courage to go first? Can I cross without drawing wrath upon me? Without evoking another "good" person's aggression? Can I pretend to be non-German and not know about the unwritten rules for pedestrians? Can I pretend the lights are just "suggestions" as anywhere else in the world? And who will be the "correct" guy to say something?

This habit must be a leftover from Germany's bad days when every other person was  a "Blockwart" working for the Stasi and telling on his neighbours. In some Eastern parts of Germany they even had - and still have -  a special regional light,  the Ampelmännchen. Here I captured the split second when both lights of the Ampelmännchen are shining, the red is not quite gone but the green already visible, with the Brandenburger Tor in the background.

                                            Ampelmännchen

Andere Länder - andere Sitten: In Paris, when I was waiting at a red light on a very crowded street - lots of other people in a hurry had passed before me to honking horns and angry drivers  - I did not dare cross. A car approached, slowed down, the driver rolled down his window, waved a hand and thanked me for waiting at the red light and letting him pass!  In some countries even cars go on a red light if the road is empty, although for a German that seems to be evoking disaster to the effect of not being allowed into heaven on judgement day ...
Living in Germany certainly has its advantages, but sometimes German correctness goes way beyond what is sensible.

                                                                      A London traffic light on Hyde Park Corner  

This is a collection of traffic lights and other crossings and experiments with them.