Dangerous Red Light Jumpers

No, not one of these..

In the past two weeks I’ve twice narrowly avoided being killed to death by red light jumpers ploughing straight through pedestrian crossings.

In both cases I had a green signal and their light had been red for some time.

Oh and in both cases, they were in cars and I was on my bike.

Yesterdays was scary. Crossing the road and a car approaches from another junction. I make eye contact. He revs! I get out the way. He flies straight through with his foot to the floor!

I can only assume that he objected so strongly to me using the crossing (a toucan crossing linking NCN cycle paths) that he needed to break the law to “teach me a lesson”.

What’s the car equivalent of “lycra lout”?

I went to Tesco the other day. There’s a zebra crossing right outside the door. As I was about to cross, a taxi came steaming through the crossing missing me by not much.

Leaving with a bag of shopping, coming back across the crossing, exactly the same thing happened. With the same taxi, going in the other direction.

I may have said a naughty word.

Apparently half the people on here think red light jumping is perfectly acceptable on a bike, so I assume they’ll be equally as defensive of people doing it in a car …

The red lights are only there because of motor traffic.

There seems to be a blanket belief that all RLJers do it at full pelt. when I used to commute in manchester I would regularly go through red lights but would go no faster than most pedestrians as that is just dangerous!

You were crossing at a pedestrian crossing.

On your bike ?

Here by any chance?

http://goo.gl/maps/O8Kt

That’s where I see most of the RLJing on my commute. The RL from the Merc garage seems to be entirely optional.

Although the junctions from the garages further down Scotswood Road also appear to have optional red lights.

This one is almost as bad:

http://goo.gl/maps/Q8Ch

You were crossing at a pedestrian crossing.

On your bike ?

Yep.

“me using the crossing (a toucan crossing linking NCN cycle paths)”

Here by any chance?

Good guess! 😀 Same road, just a little further down at the junction of Scotswood Road and Whitehouse Road.

http://goo.gl/maps/qVO1

Me heading westbound crossing at those lights. Car pulling out of Whitehouse Road and flooring it through the reds.

I went to Tesco the other day. There’s a zebra crossing right outside the door. As I was about to cross, a taxi came steaming through the crossing missing me by not much.

^^ that but at B&Q and I hit the roof with the flat of my hand as it passed (yes, that close). Car backed up but driver didn’t realise I had already hit the Raging Fury switch, and after about 15 seconds of monologue containing more sweary words than Ben Kinglsey’s entire performance in Sexy Beast opted not to get out of the car and continue the discussion

Geordie’s and cars don’t mix. Trust me on this, wife is from Throckley – she’d have got you.

I do this twice a day, is it not allowed on STW ? 😉

The red lights are only there because of motor traffic.

Really?!

What’s the car equivalent of “lycra lout”?

Tosser works.

I went to Tesco the other day. There’s a zebra crossing right outside the door. As I was about to cross, a taxi came steaming through the crossing missing me by not much.

We have this issue with our Tesco too. I will quite happily slam my trolley into them and have nearly had that the last two times I’ve been there. 1 taxi and 1 chav

What’s the car equivalent of “lycra lout”?

Criminal? Get their plates and report to 5-0?

Criminal? Get their plates and report to 5-0?

Wish I’d had the chance!

Sadly the lights don’t have red light cameras on them either (I checked afterwards), so he got away either completely oblivious or chuckling to himself at the insolent cyclist shouting random obscenities at him.

I regularly go through red lights when the route is clear in london – – on my bike. I do it when I know, and can see, its safe to do so. Nobody crossing, no cars coming and no pedestrians about to wonder into the road. I dont whip through at uber speed and particulalry slow if their are cars around and I might not be able to see all around, so crucify me, but in my 15 mile commute it feel perfectly safe. I pass 64 sets of lights over 16 miles. I got bored one day and counted them.

But I do object to cars running red lights and would never do it in my car. To be blunt if your bike hits a pedestrian it might hurt and theres a good chance you can swerve out the way as neither of you are wide objects… if your car hits a pedestrian it will get messy very quicly and possibly kill. Its all relative. I am sure cyclists have knocked pedestrians over and killed them, I recall a story a few years back BUT in the majority of cases they wouldnt. Cars kill more than bikes ever will.

I pass 64 sets of lights over 16 miles.

Blimey! You’d be better off riding on the pavement 😉

Ok … not in UK but have a look at this 0:44 second into this video clip.

If you go through traffic lights or …

I found these clips while searching for driving etiquette …

Blimey! You’d be better off riding on the pavement

I got accosted for that the other day.

Bought a BSO a week or two back for hacking around London. Riding it back, getting used to the strange new bike, adjusting gear indexing, getting my head round toe clips for the first time, dodging London traffic, all whilst not really having much of a clue where I was going and trying to follow a vaguely signposted NCR, I wound up on the pavement at one point. Not far, only for about a block.

It wasn’t really a conscious decision, between random intermittent cycle lanes and dropped kerbs I kinda got fed there. I was travelling, at most, at walking pace as I was fairly lost.

Met a pedestrian coming the other way. It was a big wide pavement, so I moved to one side, and he moved to the same side. So I moved to the other, and he took to walking right down the middle. As I got closer and by now barely moving at all as I tried to negotiate between him and the railings separating path and road, he bellowed “why aren’t you on the faaackin ROAD?!” at me.

Now, I suppose in hindsight it was a fair comment, and a witty riposte explaining that it was an accident and that I was lost and nervous on a brand new bike in heavy traffic is something I would have liked to have been able to think of. As it was, I was so stunned by a complete stranger going out of their way to be inconvenienced by me and then yelling in my face about it that the best I could muster was “oh, wind your bloody neck in” as I wobbled past, doing my bit for pedestrian / cyclist relations everywhere.

Tsk Cougar. 😀

I’ve been shouted at numerous times for “cycling on the pavement” whilst using shared-use paths. Once by a bloke stood directly under the shared-use sign as I rode over the big bike symbol painted on the path.

A couple of months ago I stopped completely because an old lady was approaching the narrow bit of a shared-use from the other direction.
I sat waiting patiently for her to toddle through it and as she drew near she looked me in the eyes and said “F*** off!”. 😕

To be blunt if your bike hits a pedestrian it might hurt and theres a good chance you can swerve out the way as neither of you are wide objects

So you RLJ, clip a pedestrian at 5mph, they lose their balance, fall over, hit their head and end up seriously injured or dead. This can and does happen

Still safe?

To be fair you are probably far safer (slowly) jumping some red lights in London given the often terrible layout and the fact that few drivers respect the advanced stop boxes reserved for cyclists.

When you read into the rare cases of a cyclist causing a fatality they are usually riding like a nutter and doing so on the pavement or in a zone shared with pedestrians.

There have been over 32,000 deaths on the UK’s roads in the ten years between 2000 – 2010 and a tiny fraction were caused by cyclists. A far larger percentage of the victims were cyclists.

My conclusion therefore is that if you jump a red light it is statistically your own life you are risking not someone else – although the driver who hits you might be a bit truamatised…

So you RLJ, clip a pedestrian at 5mph, they lose their balance, fall over, hit their head and end up seriously injured or dead. This can and does happen

Still safe?

I walk at 5mph.

I walk at 5mph.

bloody dangerous pedestrians! What if you’d hit a motorist? Grrrr

Just watched those video clips- bet that plays havoc with Katie Melua’s lyrics!

Yes I do consider myself safe, I look ahead and anticipate and like I said before its all relative… a bike versus a human = injury a car versus a human = serious injury and probably death. Its the relativity that is important, the probability. We all take risks every day that could end in tears, we all weigh up the probability of danger in our actions every minute.

This morning on my commute, I stopped at some lights at a some crossroads. A guy pulled up next to me, but seemed dead set on RLJing – he crept forward until he was on the junction, looking carefully, weighing up his options. The roads were fairly quiet, not a lot of traffic was crossing in front of us.

He was about to launch forward to run the red when a car came flying across from the right which made him stop abruptly.

You see, although he was looking carefully, the silly sod was only looking at the road coming from the left for some reason.

He thought he was making a good call, thought he was judging the situation, thought he *knew* he was making the right call in RLJing.

But he nearly got hit by a car.

We all take risks every day that could end in tears, we all weigh up the probability of danger in our actions every minute.

While that is true, if* you are jumping red lights purely because they inconvenience you then you are choosing to put other people at risk of injury for your own personal gain. That is ass-hattery.

bike versus a human = injury
bike stopped at lights while human walks in front of it = no injury

* If you’re doing it to preserve your own safety then I have more sympathy.

Stop at red light as cyclist.

Dismount.

Cross road as pedestrian, pushing bike.

Mount up, ride away, having ‘jumped’ the red light in a perfectly legal manner. Everyone’s happy.

I’ve ridden the same route for over two years, often early in the morning when there is little traffic, I know these roads well. I dont jump a light without being sure and I have jumped red lights because there is nothing coming and / or very little danger to me or anybody else. I have never had a near miss on a red light… plenty of near misses as stoopid cars do stoopid things but never a near miss on a red light.

Mount up, ride away, having ‘jumped’ the red light in a perfectly legal manner. Everyone’s happy.

but you look like such a fanny doing it.

Not this again! GrahamS – I call unintentional troll 🙂