Cultural Contrasts

Motorway Interchange near Frankfurt

In addition to writing travel blogs, I have always been fascinated by cultural differences and local customs in places I have visited and I have speculated on and sometimes investigated their origins. I hope to expand on this in future articles but let’s start with an anecdote which demonstrates the contrasts between Ireland and Germany. 

I once had a conversation with three Germans about road safety. We were in Russia at the time and the chat originated in a comment about that country’s very high rate of accidents and death on its roads. The Germans admitted that they also had road deaths but they were confident that they had an effective driving test regime, law abiding motorists and a good policing set-up so they felt their records would be much lower. They were correct – Germany rates 170^th for road deaths per capita out of 183 countries surveyed by the World Health Organisation (WHO). I was quick to point out that while Ireland has had high figures in the past, we have now improved greatly and despite a recent increase, we are actually one better than Germany, in 171^st place. 

We spoke about driving habits, policing and penalties and eventually the subject of driving bans came up. I think both Ireland and Germany issue a driving ban for the same number of penalty points a driver accrues. It was at this juncture that we had our major disagreement. I posed the question, ‘what penalty would apply if a driver who was banned was ‘caught’ by the police driving a vehicle? All three Germans looked at me in confusion, if not bewilderment. “But this is not a situation that could happen,” said one. I argued that it was quite plausible and that I knew of several cases where this had occurred in Ireland. Again, I was met with baffled looks. “How can a person who is banned from driving be driving? This is impossible,” said another guy. While I continued my questioning, the third guy got really agitated and asked me to stop asking questions which made no logical sense. Of course I knew where they were coming from at this stage – most Germans are so disciplined and accepting of rules that they could not envisage someone breaking such a thing as a ban. I guess while they might ignore the odd minor rule, something such as this was sacrosanct, a matter of honour indeed. 

I then reiterated that many Irish people who are banned from driving do actually take the chance and go back on the road. You see, the chances of being detected are miniscule. I have been driving for over fifty years and I think I have been requested to show my driving licence on only three occasions. My brother-in-law, who has even more driving experience, recently told me that he has never been asked for it at all. So people take the chance. Now, I am not for a moment suggesting that Irish people are notorious law breakers but we do have a different attitude to rules than other nations, particularly the Germans. I hasten to add that it is only some rules. We seem, as a people, to trip over ourselves in the rush to implement and obey EU directives, whereas many of our fellow EU nations simply ignore them. But you see we are proud Europeans and these laws are European laws, unlike the majority of our own domestic legislation, which has its roots in, yes you’ve guessed it, the British system.

History tells us that we spent 800 years fighting to rid ourselves of British rule and it’s a fair guess to suggest that for the majority of those 800 years, our citizens did their best to ignore rules imposed by a foreign power. Germans tend to be a logical and fair minded people and I can only assume that most of their laws made reasonable sense. (We will omit the period between 1933 and 1945 for good reason). Germany or its various previous entities have generally been self-ruling and possessed a sense of nationhood and so laws and customs became an intrinsic part of life. There was a right way of doing things and it was accepted and enshrined in legislation. In contrast to German laws, some of the legislation imposed in Ireland by the British was not just oppressive but daft in the extreme. I am thinking in particular of the ban on speaking Irish, our own language and the ban on practicing the Catholic faith, both of which carried extreme sanctions. Add in the fact that the British seized all Irish lands, gave them to English noblemen who built large houses on them and then sub-let the lands to the former owners, who became tenants, effectively paying rent to a foreigner for property that was originally their own. I have no intention of rewriting or indeed reciting Irish history here. I am just making the point that the inherent tendency amongst (some) Irish people to break the rules took its roots from a highly oppressive regime with some nonsensical statutes.  

Irish people, by contrast to Germans, had no say in how they were ruled so our citizens did their best to frustrate their conquerors and oppressors and civil disobedience became the norm. Now I am aware that we gained our independence in 1921 but our laws effectively stayed the same and as people had been disobeying them to some extent all their lives, they took a long time to change. In fact, it’s probably only in the last generation that we have become a more mature, law abiding society. I was born in the 1950’s and I can remember the attitude to people who didn’t pay their correct taxes. It wasn’t quite hero status but there was a certain admiration for people who could ‘beat the system.’ Similar attitudes pertained regarding driving licences, insurance, motor tax and a whole raft of other regulations. Thankfully, most of these attitudes have now been consigned to the past although some people still ignore the rules. 

But let’s get back to my German friends: When I explained my country’s history and culture, they seemed to understand but they still felt that to disobey such a serious sanction was unforgiveable. While all three still insisted that it wouldn’t happen in Germany, they posited that if it ever did, the protagonist would probably be banned from driving for life. I suggested that he might also be shot, ☺ but unfortunately my attempt at humour fell flat. I did point out that Ireland was far from the worst, even in the EU and they agreed that southern Europe, in particular Italy and Greece, had turned the practice of ignoring the rules into almost an art form. We will discuss this on another day.   

Footnote: According to the WHO road death statistics, the country with the worst figure per capita is The Dominican Republic with 67 deaths per 100,000 people. The next twenty places are, predictably, taken by African countries. Russia is 119^th with 11.23 closely followed by USA with 11.1. Germany is at 2.98 and Ireland 2.92. For the record, the countries with the best record were Antigua and Barbados, with no road deaths at all for the period under review, so it can be done.