Yesterday on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?", the €500,000 question about the 2-metre rule was asked: "Who must always observe the so-called 2-metre rule when on holiday in the Black Forest?" There were four possible answers: mountain bikers, dog owners, motorhome drivers and non-swimmers.
The candidate didn't know and drew the 50:50 joker. The answers mountain biker and non-swimmer remained. But she still needed her last joker and called her son. The lawyer from Heilbronn (!) guessed mountain bikers because he thought they had to keep two metres away from pedestrians. In the end, the candidate guessed the right answer after all.
Heiko Mittelstädt is involved in the German Initiative Mountain Bike e. V. (DIMB) is in favour of opening all trails to mountain bikers, provided this is compatible with nature conservation and socially acceptable. In Baden-Württemberg, he has been campaigning for years for the abolition of blanket trail closures. We asked him whether the fact that the 2-metre rule was the subject of the 500,000-euro question might have a favourable effect on negotiations with the state government.
BIKE: The 2 metre rule on TV - positive or negative?
Heiko Mittelstädt, DIMB: Positive. We cyclists don't need to justify the 2-metre rule. We see everything that publicises this nonsense as positive. The damage is certainly done to Black Forest tourism. Mr Jauch has emphasised that the regulation only applies in BaWü. In the Black Forest, you have to ask yourself whether such a regulation casts a region in a positive light.
Bild.de reported overloaded information pages, we also had a lot of traffic to articles on the 2-metre rule. What was going on on the DIMB website?
I have analysed our website statistics. There were 17,000 visitors to our website yesterday directly in connection with the programme. Normally there are about 1800, which is about 10 times as many visitors. But I can't say whether the server collapsed.
On Google, however, our pages on the 2-metre rule are listed at the top. I think most people have already come to our site. The two pages in demand were roughly equal.
https://www.dimb.de/aktivitaeten/open-trails/weg-mit-2m-regel-in-bawue
https://www.dimb.de/aktivitaeten/open-trails/weg-mit-2m-regel-in-bawue/644-2-meter-regel-faq
As we present our position on both sides, the number of visitors was very valuable. We hope that many people were well informed.
Could this put new pressure on Forestry Minister Hauk and the government?
Anyone who has been following it knows that there have been disagreements between the minister's statements and the cycling organisations over the last few days. The pressure has been high for a few days now. The fact that "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" has now coincidentally taken up the subject is adding to the pressure. If RTL awards the answer with 500,000 euros and Mr Jauch, the candidate and her telephone joker, a lawyer from Baden-Württemberg, do not know the answer, then this shows that the rule is largely unknown. How can Mr Hauk then think that the rule has proved its worth? The programme is currently spreading like wildfire on social media and the ministry has already heard about it.
On the subject: 2-metre rule - path closures for mountain bikers
The so-called 2-metre rule is a paragraph in the Baden-Württemberg State Forest Act, which states that cyclists may only ride on paths in the forest that are wider than two metres. Trails are therefore generally prohibited for mountain bikers. Baden-Württemberg is the only federal state that maintains this blanket ban on trails for mountain bikers in its forest law. And it has done so for over 20 years now.
Even an online petition and over 58,000 signatures did not help. How BIKE reportedthe state parliament once again rejected the abolition of the 2-metre rule in 2014. Since then, exceptions have been made to simplify the approval of individual mountain bike trails. The Balance sheet of the DIMB after a year looked sober. Under the Minister for Rural Areas and Consumer Protection, Peter Hauk, who has been in office since May 2016, an end to the 2-metre rule in Baden-Württemberg seems to be a long way off.
