GDPR Compliance & cycling in Germany: Insights from a Berliner Cyclist

The trend of people abandoning cars in favor of bikes is growing rapidly these days. Bikes are widely recognized as a fast, affordable, and environmentally friendly mode of transportation. Cycling has been particularly prominent in Germany, which has emerged as one of the global leaders in cycling.

According to research, a staggering 80% of Germans now use bicycles, with 55% considering them an essential mean of transport. Cycling has become a popular choice for commuting to work and for parents picking up their children from school.

In Germany, Twitter serves as a hub for the largest community of passionate and enthusiastic cyclists. It’s the go-to platform for discovering the latest trends, news, and discussions related to biking in the country.

Germany cycling stats (Top picks)

Over 80% of germans use a bicycle
55% consider biking as a means of transport
41% of people in the range of 14-69 has expressed their intention to cycle more often in the future
80% all houses in Germany own at least one bicycle

With a deeper understanding of German cycling habits, let’s now immerse ourselves in an interview with Michel Martin, a fellow cycling enthusiast from Germany actively engaged on Twitter. He graciously accepted our invitation to share his personal cycling journey in Berlin in a brief but insightful interview.

Could you please introduce yourself?

My name is Martin and I am a data analyst in my mid-40s working in the music industry. I’m married with two daughters and live in Berlin since 2009. Besides my professional role, I’m passionate about advocating for the expansion of bicycle infrastructure in our city. Over time cycling has become a personal passion, as I recognize its potential as a sustainable, fun and healthy mode of transportation. As a family we don’t own a car and get around the city on foot. We usally use public transport and most often on the bicycle. But Berlin is still a very car-centric city and many routes do not offer safe infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists. That is why I document my bicycle rides through the city. By posting them on Twitter, I aim to raise awareness and improve the cycling infrastructure.

Can you give us a glimpse of how a typical day unfolds for you as a bicycle enthusiast in Germany?

On non-home office days, I commute 16km through Berlin to work on my folding bike. In recent years there were many improvements on my route, making cycling a lot safer. But there are still too many dangerous sections. Especially where people park their car on the bike lane or where I am overtaken with too little distance.

When I am back home – after cycling another 16km back from the office – I am downloading the footage from my action cam and choose a set of positive and negative experiences. After editing the videos, I process them with BlurIt to anonymize faces and license plates and then post them on Twitter.

At best, my commute is without any hazards, so I don’t have any recordings. But unfortunately, that is still rare.

In your perspective, how would you describe the dynamics between automobile drivers and cyclists on the German roads?

First of all: My impression is that most automobile drivers respect cyclists and strive for their safety. But there is still a noticeable group of car drivers which show a behavior that puts cyclists at risk. Parking in the bike lane or overtaking with too little distance is often thought of as a trivial offense. But in my district cyclists died from those situations.

And with rising numbers of cyclists who demand safety and sufficient traffic space for themselves there are sometimes heated arguments with arrogant automobile drivers. I think that is a good development: Cyclists have given up their subservience and now demand equal treatment as road users.

In the end it is a power struggle: it is obvious that we need less cars in cities and that we need to strengthen more active and sustainable forms of transportation. This is only possible when we take away some of the existing (vast) space for cars. And of course, this fear of losing privileges produces some resistance which can be also felt on occasions as aggression in road traffic.

Is Germany a bike friendly country compare to other countries you’ve cycled in?

I can only speak for Berlin. In the district where we live – Friedrichshain – it is really getting better in recent years. Our older daughter can now ride safely to her school thank to the protected bike lanes on the whole route. That is really great, and we enjoy this very much. Other districts are slowly catching on but there is a lot to do. Car infrastructure is historically very dominant here. And there are still a lot of areas in Berlin with no decent bicycle infrastructure at all.

We recently took trips to Copenhagen & Amsterdam as a family and were simply blown away by the dedication to cycling. It just felt as the most natural, time-efficient and fun way to explore those cities by bike. We were a bit sad that Berlin can’t quite keep up in this area, but at the same time it was a wake-up call to do even more for good cycling infrastructure. It just makes life better if people of all ages can get safely around town by bike.

I started recording my daily bike commutes after some colleagues told me that my bad experiences in traffic were isolated cases and that it was totally safe to cycle in Berlin. After a while I saw people sharing these kinds of videos on Twitter and so I also began to share my experiences there. It was comforting to see that fellow cyclists also made the same bad experiences on their daily commute.

Over time, I got to know more and more people who are committed to cycling and started attending bike demos. In the meantime, I have become a real bicycle enthusiast and would like to contribute to making Berlin a bicycle-friendly city.

While my reach is limited, I still feel it’s important to use the videos to indicate both positive and negative developments. And I have a feeling that this succeeds to a certain extent, because cycling is much more prominent in the public eye today than it was a few years ago.

Before using BlurIt I manually edited all my cycling videos in order to anonymize faces and license plates. It was a very tedious and time-consuming process. I masked all occurring faces and plates with white rectangles keyframe by keyframe with iMovie on my MacBook Pro.

When there were many cars and people in a short video it would sometimes take me an hour to finish the video. And the result was not visually appealing at all: the white rectangles did not look good but did the job. My output was reduced to only several videos per week as it took too long to edit all my footage. And I could not publish some videos with interesting content as there were just too many cars and people in scenes, which would have taken hours to anonymize.

So I looked around for a solution which would automate this. At first, I found some plugins and software which could automatically track objects. Using them already improved the process but it was far away from being perfect. Sometimes the tracking did not work, and it was still a hell of work when there were many cars and people in a video.

Some time later I found the BlurIt solution and immediately decided to try it even if it was a paid service. My frustration was just too big! And so far, I never regretted this choice. It is just so much better to upload the video, then wait some minutes and finally getting the anonymized result which looks so nice. No more white rectangles masking plates and faces in the video! Instead, all plates and faces are nicely blurred so that it does not affect the viewing experience.

How Has BlurIt Optimized Your Time and Effort?

Since using BlurIt I can almost immediately post all my videos on Twitter, as the processing is so fast and accurate. And videos with a lot of cars and license plates – like riding on a bike demo or on a very crowded road – are no problem anymore. This way my output has increased tremendously. With blurring faces & license plates in videos I have the impression that people are more confortable to share them.

So BlurIt really improved the number of videos I am able to share per week and took over the tedious and time-consuming work of the video editing. For me it was a great relief, I can now use the gained time to concentrate on the content itself. Finally, as a software developer, I can absolutely recommend to use the BlurIt API. It is well documented and has many examples in different programming languages. I was able to quickly develop my own Python scripts and a Mac client to utilize BlurIt.