I rode for 20 minutes last week in London and was astonished by the number of people just running red lights. Not even looking! Just straight up powering through them.
As a previous commuter cyclist and now a cyclist for local journeys, it blows my mind.
I never had trouble with cars and tricks because they were stuck in traffic but had a few close calls with cyclists who blew through cycle lane red lights.
Just on Sunday while I was driving, I saw a cyclist go through two red lights and in the middle of the junction, slowed and looked at his phone (whilst in the road going slowly), realised he was going the wrong way so went across the pedestrian crossing twice, nearly being hit by a car turning right on a green light, then crossed another pedestrian crossing nearly hitting another cyclist turning into the way he finally decided to go. You can probably guess he was wearing full Lycra on a £3k+ bike.
Turns out, you get cyclists who are wankers who only care for themselves just like any portion of the population
And they make people really angry because they flaunt their own and other people's safety. It fuels anti-cyclist feelings.
Whilst this is certainly a problem, it's worth acknowledging that lots of people run red lights, not just cyclists. People running reds in cars/vans/trucks/lorries are creating infinitely more risk and harm and a proportional view is right and necessary
Yup, cycling is my primary form of transport so I cycle every day and every single day I see multiple of every type of vehicle from bikes through to large lorries running red lights every single day. No one gives a fuck any more because there aren't any repercussions.
I have complained about some particular bad intersections where people will run red lights on every change of the lights before and the response I receive every time amounts to until more people die we won't be doing anything about it.
I've been driving for over 20 years and I can easily say that I've witnessed fewer drivers running red lights in that time than I did see cyclists running red lights in that short journey I made. One nearly knocked an old man down as he was going across a pedestrian crossing, which incidentally happened to me last year in London, as two bikes flew through pedestrians on a crossing.
I haven't seen this behaviour anywhere else so I'm not sure why this seems to profilic in London.
Yeah ok great. Know what happens when cars, SUVs and trucks run through reds? The old man gets killed immediately instead. I've also been on the streets of London for 20 years plus and I haven't seen nearly as many wreaths, flowers and memorials for something a cyclist caused, because it doesn't happen.
It should just be straight to the FPN to be honest (and I'm a cyclist!)
I hope they have something to catch the unrestricted ebikes too.
Imagine how much of a wanker youd have to be to pay instead of watch the video? Surely paying takes almost as long, what with faffing about with payment providers
"who’d a thunk it"
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