It's literally the guidance that every police force in the UK work to, you need to leave a space of 1.5 metres between your car and the cyclist when overtaking at 30mph. It might be that our road lanes are narrower than yours of course.

See https://www.northants.police.uk/police-forces/northamptonshi...

It’s the same in Germany.

Also, cyclists have to keep roughly the same distance from parked cars (“reasonable distance”, OLG Düsseldorf ruled 2018 that this means 1.5 meters from parked cars or 80 cm from a curb if there are no cars).

With those two rules combined, in most city streets bicyclists require a full lane.

A safety rule every cyclist understands after a close call or two. Don't ride too close to the curb and especially not if there are cars parked. Very nice you have that codified in law.

Yeah I've had a police car leave a space of maybe 1.5cm between me and their VW transporter. They don't care either

The police are just people. They employ some bad drivers, just like they employ some bad people.

It's the law in Britain: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-43146515