Interesting, I don't think I have seen them in Bavaria more then in exceptional cases. And even then it's just not something that is present in my head. In other countries though, like Mexico or Thailand, when I think of the roads there, speed bumps are something that I immediately think of.
It might be because they are used differently there. Like they are literally everywhere on each kind of road, so steep that you destroy your car if you ignore them. In a play zone you already have to drive very slow, so they don't bother you, but there you have to actively look for them and slow down. IMO this is because instead of having many bureaucratic traffic rules there, the bumps serve as physical traffic rules. This use case seems to be what OP is referring to in his metaphor.
When was the last time you were talking about speed bumps in Germany?