Jesus. Where are you guys riding?
I’ve ridden 10,000km+ per year for as long as I can remember and I have never seen a cyclist (or a car) go through a red light.
Where do you live? Greenland?
I saw three cars blatantly go through red lights on theirs side, green on mine, yesterday morning at a single crossroads. It's now become so common around here that you need to check for it before you move off at certain junctions. It's also far from being a recent phenomenon, it's been getting worse for years.
As a car driver all you need to do is check that there is no camera on top of the lights and then just drive across whatever the colour.
You would have to be very unlucky to do so in front of a police car.
I see multiple drivers per day running red lights, and I’m not in London either.
I would disagree with Black Belt Barrister on one thing in his video. He appears to treat the fact that cyclists are vulnerable road users as a status or privilege whereas I see it as simply factual. Cyclists are simply more likely to die or be seriously injured by drivers, and while I see cyclists behaving in contravention of the Highway Code daily in ways which attempt to mitigate that vulnerability, they remain vulnerable road users.
This might have changed with the delivery riders tho – they are a menace
Many of them arent cyclists though but illegal motorbike riders.
I saw three cars blatantly go through red lights on theirs side, green on mine, yesterday morning at a single crossroads.
There is a light controlled roundabout near me which is awful for it. They do seem to have moved beyond ignoring the amber to ignore the red so long as it has changed in the last week or so.
I saw three cars blatantly go through red lights on theirs side, green on mine, yesterday morning at a single crossroads.
There is a light controlled roundabout near me which is awful for it. They do seem to have moved beyond ignoring the amber to ignore the red so long as it has changed in the last week or so.
On that junction I mentioned, I regularly see cars going through their red light so that they can plonk themselves into the yellow box junction and completely block the cars from moving from the other side of the crossroads.
There's also another crossroads a few hundred metres up the road where cars do this - RLJ AND block the yellow box - which actually benefits me as a cyclist because I weave between the blocking cars and head off down the dual carriageway with no-one else on the road! 😀
and while I see cyclists behaving in contravention of the Highway Code daily in ways which attempt to mitigate that vulnerability, they remain vulnerable road users.
These guys are not trying to mitigate their vulnerability though, and I think that's the difference here. They're not rushing becasue they don't earn a proper wage, or limiting their exposure to a dangerous junction. They just behave as if they're entitled to ignore the red light, and as some-one who commutes by bike and car, that sort of behaviour pisses me off as much as non-cyclists
On my commute there's one set of lights that won't change in response to a cyclist being present. That bit of road is quiet enough that I can't rely on a car or bus coming along and changing it for me so I will jump that light and feel irritated about it every time I do so.
Elsewhere on my commute I do occasionally witness other cyclists jumping red lights. As others have said they are often delivery riders but other commuters do too. I don't see that many cyclists though so it's not that common really. I do see plenty of cars going through red lights, the sort who seem to have evolved beyond "keep going if the light is amber" too "keep going if the light was amber at any point in recent memory".
On my commute there’s one set of lights that won’t change in response to a cyclist being present.
Locally, there's one light sensor on a T junction which is on a steep road, so I never stop there as starting again is awkward. I ride up past the lights, check what the traffic on the road I'm entering looks like and generally ignore the lights because I'm already on the road by the time it's safe for me to stop. It's not even vaguely designed for cyclists' safety, never mind convenience.
