Does this work?

No rules? What a nightmare!

Just how is that supposed to scare/coax us into compliance with licensing restrictions and the like?

According to my wife, ‘Versager’ might have been better. Conveniently, though, have also taken to borrowing…’loser’ (just capitalize and add accent).

If there are no rules, can there be fouls? If everybody loses, why are people willing to play?

I’d guess btw that the Swiss angle would be more about counterfeiting and piracy of watches and luxury goods rather than software or music. (or potentially pharmaceuticals which are also a big industry in Switzerland, but your average business class traveller would be more tempted to pick up a dodgy Vuitton handbag while on a trip than a handful of counterfeit pills. Except viagra maybe. Now watch me get caught by the spam filter).

Thanks for the help with German.

Good questions, Jaywalker.

No rules? What a nightmare! Just how is that supposed to scare/coax us…

You’re obviously not German :)

Have you seen ads of this sort elsewhere?

Does this count?

Speaking of the rule-following ways of Teutons, I remember once when I was living in Regensburg I became impatient with a seemingly interminable traffic light, so I decided to cross. Across the way a young boy (about, oh, 7 or 8) looked on with muted disapproval, and as I approached, he said to me (in German, with flat affect), “You must not cross against the traffic signal.”

I suppressed a “Jawohl!” and moved along.

Have you seen ads of this sort elsewhere?

Arrivals area of Paris Charles DeGaulle is full of them. Interestingly, the adverts tend to emphasize counterfeit clothing and handbags rather than software and media, as the luxury goods industry has particular salience in France.

And to be fair, I’ve never heard of this happening in Germany.

It is a cautionary tale for any traveller – distinguished historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto tried to cross the road while in Atlanta for the conference of the American Historical Association, only to find himself in handcuffs and surrounded by armed police.

Giving my alias, I have to join the sub-discussion. Short answer: Jaywalking requires experience in traffic reading most children lack. I jaywalk often (a sensible and practical strategy in European cities), but when there are children around, I simply do not.

Peculiar to Germany is an extreme reluctance to jaywalk even if there is no motor traffic anywhere in sight. Patiently, most Germans wait at empty crossings. That’s discipline.

Abb1: If the Swiss need that many controls, I suggest it speaks against your claim. I propose it is a cheap form of sin taxation.

Jaywalker–
As for “reading traffic,” I think it has to do more with what kids are expected or allowed to do than with their cognitive skills or lack thereof. The Opies reported on the game “Last Across” that children in the UK were playing in the 1950s, in which the goal was to (1) run across a busy street and (2) be the last one to get to the other side. Points would be deducted if you actually got hit by a car in the process IIRC.

Now I suppose others could argue (turning your argument about the Swiss upside-down) that this game would not even exist if these kids had not been instilled with a healthy respect for rules, making a game that flouted those rules at great personal risk all the more exciting. Makes sense, I guess.

It might go well in downtown Beijing…

#24–

The cops ticket (and, when Darryl Gates was Chief of the LAPD, sometimes arrested) for jaywalking here in Southern California. The most famous jaywalking case was when the LAPD arrested some churchgoers as they crossed the middle of a street to go to church; a fracas ensued.

This policy may reflect the primacy of the car over the pedestrian here–the Sunset Strip riots of the mid-60s had something to do with the fact that you would get a ticket for loitering if you were a teenaged pedestrian, but not if you were a teenaged driver.

Peculiar to Germany is an extreme reluctance to jaywalk even if there is no motor traffic anywhere in sight. Patiently, most Germans wait at empty crossings. That’s discipline.

I have had the same experience in downtown Toronto, where I was the only person to cross against a light when there was no vehicular traffic to speak of. In the Maritimes (well, Halifax, at least) there is a similar reluctance to jaywalk in the sense of crossing not in a cross-walk, but this is made up for by the vigor with which motorists stop for pedestrians at cross-walks.

Some Americans will also simply not jaywalk. San Diego is a city that worships that automobile – virtually no one jaywalks here, and my husband was actually issued an official warning by a police officer, on a ticket and everything, for jaywalking.

Close to a business lounge is a place where it will be seen by people who will then think, “Hm, glad to see that our awareness campaign is working.”

Unless they know much about how advertising is sold, in which case they will think, “Hm, airport authority couldn’t get a paying customer for this location so they put up our PSA.”

I find I have to force myself to jaywalk as well, whether or not there’s any traffic.

The ad seems pointless, but not as retarded as the tv ad currently doing the rounds in .nl, where you see a sort of very bad Super Mario knockoff with the tag line “original games work better”. Yes, that will really deter people from downloading copies, not knockoffs, of your games.

RE: Cherman jaywalkers.

My Cherman correspondent informs me that crossing the road against pedestrian lights is a traffic offence as serious, in the eyes of the law, as running a red light in a car. Accordingly, you can lose your driving license for it.

That such a law exists and is (in some areas) enforced tells you something about Chermans, but it also explains why they wait for the green ampelmensch.

No blood, no foul

(and yes I have been sneered at for crossing against the light at 3 am in German provincial towns where nothing moves after midnight except the drunks and it was the drunks who sneered at me.)