- News
- Reviews
- Bikes
- Accessories
- Accessories - misc
- Computer mounts
- Bags
- Bar ends
- Bike bags & cases
- Bottle cages
- Bottles
- Cameras
- Car racks
- Child seats
- Computers
- Glasses
- GPS units
- Helmets
- Lights - front
- Lights - rear
- Lights - sets
- Locks
- Mirrors
- Mudguards
- Racks
- Pumps & CO2 inflators
- Puncture kits
- Reflectives
- Smart watches
- Stands and racks
- Trailers
- Clothing
- Components
- Bar tape & grips
- Bottom brackets
- Brake & gear cables
- Brake & STI levers
- Brake pads & spares
- Brakes
- Cassettes & freewheels
- Chains
- Chainsets & chainrings
- Derailleurs - front
- Derailleurs - rear
- Forks
- Gear levers & shifters
- Groupsets
- Handlebars & extensions
- Headsets
- Hubs
- Inner tubes
- Pedals
- Quick releases & skewers
- Saddles
- Seatposts
- Stems
- Wheels
- Tyres
- Health, fitness and nutrition
- Tools and workshop
- Miscellaneous
- Buyers Guides
- Features
- Forum
- Recommends
- Podcast
news
Jack Shenker fined for riding through red light (veloevol YouTube still)Is it ever acceptable to ride through a red light? One London cyclist explains why he thinks it is (+ video)
Is it ever okay to ride through a red traffic light? While it is definitely against the law, one London cyclist fined during the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Safeway for doing just that, believes it is if there is no other way of negotiating a junction safely.
Helmet camera user Evo Lucas, who regularly uploads footage to YouTube, was passing the location close to the junction with Procter Street and Holborn where the rider had been stopped, and spoke to him, uploading the footage to the video sharing site afterwards.
The start of the video gives an idea of some of the hazards facing cyclists at that specfic junction - note how Lucas himself, with a car to his right, slows down as a lorry moves across him to take the right hand lane.
The RLJ debate
The rider in question is 30-year-old journalist and author Jack Shenker, who lives in north east London. In an email, he told road.cc that while he didn’t condone reckless jumping of red lights, he did believe ignoring traffic signals was warranted at times on the grounds of safety.
I think the debate over cyclist behaviour in general, and jumping red lights in particular, is a fascinating and important one. For what it's worth, I have seen cyclists jump red lights recklessly, sending pedestrians scattering as they go, just as I've seen road users of every type drive without consideration for others.
But on the whole, my impression is that most cyclists who jump red lights do so because they find themselves at junctions with little provision for cyclists, or where the provisions that have been made for cyclists (bike lanes, bike boxes) have been encroached upon by vehicles, and sometimes – not always, it depends of course on the specific location and circumstances – it feels safer in that situation to get out in front of the traffic, especially when there are no pedestrians or other vehicles moving through the junction, and move off before the lights turn green and everyone gets going.
This is particularly true at junctions where there are several lanes of traffic and vehicles potentially trying to cross over one another as they move off on green (especially when there is another junction ahead, forcing everybody to filter themselves into the correct lanes) – cyclists can easily get caught in the middle of all that tangling if they haven't already got themselves out in front – and at junctions where vehicles are making sharp turns as they move off from the traffic lights.
Cyclist explains why he rode through a red light
Describing yesterday’s incident, he said:
The notorious Holborn junction where I received my ticket yesterday ticks both of those boxes. In my case, as I tried to turn right from Procter Street into High Holborn, I found myself caught on the left hand side behind a bus that was already half-turned at a tight angle and encroaching upon the bike box as it came to a stop at the traffic lights.
I could have waited to the side of the bus, stuck between lines of traffic to my left and right and invisible to the bus's mirrors, and then tried to thread my way across a couple of lanes of heavy traffic on the turn once the lights went green (the left-hand lane at the subsequent High Holborn / Kingsway junction is for turning left onto Kingsway, but I needed to go straight ahead).
Instead, I did what felt safer, and manoeuvred in front of the bus, which put me ahead of the bike box and into the pedestrian crossing area. There were no pedestrians, and no other traffic moving on the junction ahead of me, so before the lights went green I moved off onto High Holborn, and was immediately pulled over by a policeman.
No appeal against fixed penalty notice
He acknowledges that many cyclists would not approve of riding through red lights in any circumstances, and outlined his reasons not to challenge the £50 fixed penalty notice.
I'm sure there will be plenty of people, including some other cyclists, who disagree with that sort of action, and I respect their views – I don't know what the definitive answer is to staying safe in these kind of situations, and I suspect that ultimately each cyclist has to reach their own conclusions several times every day about how best to protect themselves and show courtesy and consideration to others when they're riding through the city.
I won't appeal the penalty, partly because I don't have the time or money, and partly because I've seen far more clear-cut cases where cyclists have technically broken the road rules but were patently in the right and it's those cases we should be concentrating on to win public support and a change in the status quo.
What I do know is that these kinds of dilemmas will crop up for cyclists time and time again as long as we have a road system that fails in so many respects to accommodate different users, including cyclists, and throws them all together at dangerous junctions in the hope that everyone will just sort themselves out.
In those circumstances it always the most vulnerable – cyclists – who end up being harassed, injured or killed; when the system is rigged against you, there will be times when you subvert it to stay alive.
Is Operation Safeway missing its target?
The fine was issued as part of the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Safeway, but Shenker feels that targeting bike riders who are breaking the law as a result of putting their own safety first is missing the point.
The police told me they were blitzing the junction to protect cyclists' safety, but on the whole cyclists who break the rules in a minor way after taking thoughtful action to protect themselves are not a threat to anyone's safety; the merging of heavy goods vehicles on narrow roads with cyclists, crap road and junction design, and politicians who lack the political will to improve the situation – those are the things threatening cyclists' safety, but the police are rarely blitzing them.
What do you think? Should it be allowed for cyclists to ride through red lights in some circumstances? Or does doing so, irrespective of the excuse, simply give people ammunition to use against bike riders? Let us know in the comments.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
Latest Comments
- mitsky 4 sec ago
While I agree that driving relatively short distances is wastefull and unneccessary, I drove to 6th form daily for 6 months after I passed my...
- bikeman01 39 min 4 sec ago
Dont know why you didnt just send in a muted video if it was only your language that was incriminating. Did the or anyone else even hear you...
- Boopop 42 min 23 sec ago
Bravo! I'd love to know what modifications were made to it. I would hope going up huge hills means he had lower gear than standard.
- mdavidford 50 min 24 sec ago
We might equally pertinently ask: does this stuff come with less rubbish/trash/litter/landfill/etc. than an equivalent product that comes in...
- brooksby 1 hour 4 min ago
I think that they are 'access' or 'deliveries only'. Seems weird that these people appear to think that cyclists are a death-causing menace...
- Paul J 1 hour 27 min ago
Where do you get those numbers? I have their Power Shield Pro and Power Shield RPM pages open here now and I read this, C&Ping from the pages...
- Beatnik69 2 hours 14 min ago
I have a funny feeling that Translink don't allow bikes on trains before 9am, which is ridiculous. They ned to bring back the guard van that used...
- Daveyraveygravey 2 hours 23 min ago
+1 for my Proviz jacket. It's a proper one although I think I got it half price for £50....
- eburtthebike 2 hours 47 min ago
Much better than what I was trying to concoct.
- chrisonabike 3 hours 4 min ago
Was it you that stole my bike?...
Add new comment
105 comments
They exist already. A couple of relatively new crossings on my commute are simultaneous green across all legs. for cyclists and pedestrians. Works well.
Standard in netherlands. Also not uncommon for lights to allow all pedestrians to go at once. Only motor vehicles really need to take turns as they are not good and sharing.
[[[[[ In the Netherlands (capital "N", innit?), 90% of urban riders situpandbeg at about 7mph and cooperate with each other, rather than zoom about like we do here in GB. But you're right about pedestrians---2mph really is scary stuff.
P.R.
Apologies, I didn't mean to imply that he jumped the red, he went up the inside of a left turning tipper and went straight ahead thus putting himself in very real danger. There's no cycle lane there.
@AC
True enough, I don't habitually jump red lights like some, I just object to the idea that we should all strictly follow rules that were put in place to control motor vehicles and the strange philosophy that legal = moral and illegal = immoral.
The real key to less deaths is of course better equipment and education of both drivers and cyclists. But as the video shows, what the police are doing is a waste of time and sometimes counter-productive to cyclists safety.
@kie7077
on that specific junction I completely agree that the police being there is mostly pointless especially as they seem to target cyclists yet ignore cars/vans/buses/lorries that block the various bits of the junction beyond the lights.
Here's a video from yesterday of someone doing just that at the exact same junction where a rider was killed last week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmAVycQX1lE&feature=youtu.be
Note that the cyclist squeezes up the left of the lorry, which is indicating left, but later on you see that at the junction she was actually turning right. Dangerous as hell, and she probably had no idea.
Having once been just behind a rider who almost ended up under a skip lorry in exactly those circumstances - the driver saw her at the very last second and slammed the brakes on - you do wonder just how to get the messsage across.
Scary stuff. No helmet either. Not that it would have made a great deal of difference if the truck had hit her.
through social media etc and people like that rider trying to warn them. That is just stupid at the extreme and is simply down to common sense nothing else.
The person I feel sorry for there is the truck driver who would have no idea they did that until he saw them pass him.
OK it's daft to do this.
But... it's the driver's responsibility not to run you over if he's turning left. If he pulls off and turns left without looking properly in his mirrors then it's his fault. Obviously the cyclist wouldn't have been there if they hadn't come up on the inside. But it's still the driver's responsibility to look.
The comments on here seem to imply it's your own fault if you go up the inside of a stationary lorry, and then it turns left and kills you. Which it isn't: it's the driver's fault for not looking. Please remember that.
The point should be that infrastructure should be protecting people from situations like this. Having a moment of poor judgement should not mean you end up dead.
Anecdote warning: this morning I was cycling in to work through Clifton in Bristol, having come over the Suspension Bridge. Nice wide(-ish) road, daylight, clear views/visibility. I approach the junction with Observatory Road, which is on my left. Woman approaches said junction in small hatchback to come out onto the road I'm on. She stops. Looks both ways (I saw her). Then she pulls out in front of me and turns right, so close that I had to actually stop rather than ride into her door.
Sometimes people just don't look. And sometimes people don't see what they are looking at.
correct the infrastructure should be in place but where it is not then common sense should prevail surely ? Surely your own life is more valuable than cutting off a couple of seconds ?
Simple rule expect people not to look and do not chance it, the bloke on the bike was spot o with his comments about those idiots.
I've quoted this out of context, obvious why.
Also the drivers fault if the fail to stop at zebra crossing or pedestrian crossing showing red light/green man. Do you just step out when the green man appears or do you look and make sure the car is actually stopping?
Their fault, but your life. Assume there are 29million idiots sharing the roads with you and act accordingly.
I don't think anyone is saying may be the cyclist's fault; but going up the inside of a large vehicle that is clearly indicating to turn left is putting yourself in a position of danger you wouldn't be in if you held back.
Whatever the rights and wrongs are - we have had a cyclist/HGV driver on here before saying how difficult it is to check eight sets of mirrors - it seems clear that we really have to get the point across for people on bikes not to put themselves in a position where they are relying on whether or not they have been spotted.
30 or 40 years ago, when we had a couple of TV channels, a public information film between BBC programmes would have done the trick.
Nowadays, in a much more fragmented media landscape (and one in which the cyclists who may be most in need in having this pointed out to them are not people who will be visiting cycling-specific websites) it is far more difficult to reach them.
Let's agree it was silly riding, and that given the current design of truck it would have been horrible for the driver. But it really cannot be that hard to design tipper trucks without blind spots. Surely this has to be the correct solution.
I'm not going to disagree for a moment that the two cyclists were stupid to go up the inside of that truck, but I don't think the driver is necessarily blameless here. The truck passed these two cyclists while approaching a junction on a red light, and then inevitably blocked their way. It had barely passed them before it needed to brake, pull left and stop. Sure, that doesn't justify them doing what they did to get to the front, but if HGV drivers are actually serious about stopping killing cyclists then they need to cut out this sort of MGIF rubbish and actually hang back and not pass cyclists when coming up to a junction or obstruction.
Oh. My. God.
The analysis is fine as to why it might be safer to do it than not, but I have heard drivers say similar things about some speed limits and speed when overtaking and why they thought it was safet to encroach on a lined area.
I don't agree with the conclusion. If you can't take up the bike box position because it has been encroached by someone breaking the rules that doesn't entitle you then to brak another one
The simplest and safest way is to join the queue of traffic in the lane. That enables you to do everthing a bike box did. You move off in the lane of traffic and keep your position until the opportunity to move safely to secondary arises.
It is pretty simple to follow.
Now having said that the police ought to have bigger fish to fry and my observation is that there are plenty of things that get the Nelson treatment that are far more serious.
Looks like the Metropolitan police have changed their positions at this junction http://youtu.be/Xhlp3WoZM3A
I have thought about that, and I'm not sure if I would get the same issue with a steel or alloy bike, but it's not enough of an issue to make me bother about it.
Like I said, I don't agree with jumping reds as a general rule but there are the odd occasions with good visibility and very quiet roads when I do it.
(Edit; a glance on the net suggests that magnets don't work?)
10 metre ASLs enforced by cameras or a separate signal phase for cyclists at any junction over a certain traffic level or allow cyclists to treat red lights as give way.
Fining cyclists for running red lights and pavement cycling sends the wrong message to police, casual and potential cyclists and more importantly to drivers.
Once we have 95% of all casual motorists and 100% of all commercial motorists driving without any at fault incidents then we should start looking at improving the behaviour of cyclists and other vulnerable users - let he who is without sin cast the first stone!
if people in vehicles are annoyed with cyclists as a group, theyll be annoyed whether we all stop at red lights or not, theyll just pick the next excuse for disliking us off their irrational list of things they dont like, some motorists moan when cyclists are filtering because they see it are queue jumping for gawd sake. its not a rational debate so its false to believe that attitude will change.
if the lights are already red, absolutely dont jump them, but if the lights are changing, I dont think its always the safe option to stop,even if I know Ill only be at best only halfway across some of the big junctions with them now at red, do motorists consider that cycling RLJ,almost certainly.
but if drop the anchors and stop, Ive got to be pretty sure the vehicle behind me will also stop,because Ive had it happen several times where the lights have changed, Ive been able to stop quite quickly, but the car following closely behind,no doubt complaining behind the wheel I was getting in there way, chose not to stop, and ends up close pass overtaking and scaring the hell out of all concerned, or panics madly to do an emergency stop, and then moans at me for stopping instead.
I have several times had cars either bump into my back wheel when Ive been in prime, or nuzzle my leg as I like to call it when Im not, because I had clearly unreasonably chosen to follow the rules of the road and stop when Im supposed to.
so whilst appeasing the irrational cyclist dislikers by not red light jumping and technically following the rules, so that I can instead be wiped out by the vehicular amber gamblers or those whose only driving style around cyclists is always must overtake, seems abit like hobsons choice to me.
I have cycled in London for many years. Very frequently between 1995 to 2008, when I commuted to work every day, much less often since then, as we moved out to the country.
I must confess, for the first part of the time living in London, if the roads were quiet I would often run red lights. I basically approached junctions in a pedestrian, not motorist mindset. If it was safe to go, I'd go.
Whereas, in a car, if the light was red, I would never go.
Certainly, at that time, I think that was a prevalent attitude amongst cyclists.
I now believe, very strongly, that it was very very, and dangerously, wrong. Not dangerous to me, when I jumped the reds, as I only did so when it was safe, but dangerous to others because it provokes the hate response in non-cycling motorists.
A key element- probably the key element- in safety for cyclists is having all road users feel they belong to a single tribe of road users, rather than a tribal war between cyclists and motorists. (For the same reason, I fear that many of the YouTube-ing cyclists may be damaging rather than helping the cause.)
If the law applies to you, therefore, you have to follow it.
It is bloody frustrating, in a way, but I now resolutely sit at the red light when there is nothing in sight in any direction.
If I feel there is any danger at a junction, I get off and become a pedestrian for that junction. (Similarly, if the sensors don't detect you, become a pedestrian.)
Should I have to do that? No, of course not. The infrastructure should be improved, and drivers should be more considerate.
But, we are where we are, the world is at it is, etc. Jumping red lights on "safety" grounds will make the city less safe for cyclists generally, because it will piss drivers off. And I don't want to be near the pissed off driver of a 1 to 2 tonne killing machine if he is pissed off with the whole cycling tribe.
stopping ahead of the line is something I always do as to give the car/lorry etc behind the max chance of seeing you.
But I have stood in London and watched many cyclists and I have to say many simply ignore the road rules which is why some many motorists down there get angry and in many cases rightly so.
there is clear differences between
Bad - Riding though a red light and across opposing streams of traffic that have the green. Don't do it
OK(ish) - carefully jumping a red when the sensors do not detect you. I have a handful of these and try to avoid. If I cannot I try to judge the sequence and ride carefully across and be ready to stop/sprint as necessary
Ok - Stopping slightly ahead of the line to give a "better" position when the lights change. This is what ASLs do and what it sounds like the guy in the article did. Vehicles do this ALL the time. Not strictly legal but can be a good defensive technique
OK - riding across a red pedestrian/cycle signal on a crossing with no traffic. Everybody does this on foot or on wheels. anyone who says they don't is a fibber
The key to all of these is that the risk is with the rider, not with any driver in the event of a collision - They just get inconvenienced and some scratched paint. I'd much rather see attention to amber-gambling motorists as they are a much bigger source of danger to every road user
Got pulled for jumping a light last week but managed to reason with the officer, my logic was sound so I got off without being ticketed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25NBwqoB478
Hate to jump a light, hate people who do so..that was my initial comment, then I thought about that junction and realised I too have jumped a bit early on that one. Teacher, rule follower, still alive cyclist!
Came through this junction this evening and the police seem to have taken up a different position. Rather than waiting around the corner in a 'poaching' position to pull cyclists. Tonight two officers were right at the ASL itself. No doubt ready to issue FPN's to any vehicle entering the ASL in an illegal fashion.
This had the effect that when I fitered up to the lights the ASL was clear for cyclists to enter and safely await a green light.
Funny how that has an effect doesn't it! Complete lack of enforcement is the real issue. I cycle through Lewisham a lot and they quite often have plastic police there. This morning... no cops...motorist ignores me and actually drives at me whilst I'm dead central in the ASL box.
It still confuses me why cyclist only green lights are never mentioned. I was in Cambridge a couple of months ago and saw them in use there at a couple of the major junctions. They could have a transformative effect in the very heavy traffic central London junctions giving cyclists that crucial extra 10 seconds to get out and away ahead of the traffic or to make the right hand turn. Probably pretty cheap to retro fit to existing infrastructure.
Pages