Should cyclists be allowed to ride through red lights? Campaigners split on safety benefits

Good point...the "he/she came out of nowhere" defence. 
I see plenty of RLJ'ing by cyclists here in NL, but it's really part of the culture and most drivers seem to be expecting it and are ready to give them a good blast of the horn. However, we also have the ability to turn right at a junction on a red light on the bike (most of the time) which really makes sense (as long as we also give way to peds that may be crossing on a green). The weird thing, and it's really in the detail, is that to do that we often have to pass waiting cyclists on their left and hope they don't get a green light at the worst possible time. I have seen a few bike lanes with a right turn filter lane, but they seem to be fairly rare. 

There's a pelican crossing near me that you can wait for ages after you press the button. Quite often I press the button, cross when a gap in traffic appears and then be 20 yards further on before I hear the beeps. The crossing has good sight lines, but I suspect that regarless iit was still deemed too dangerous to be a zebra crossing largely because of poor driving and lack of confidence in drivers ability to see pedestrians. If I'm cycling along there in good light, I can see the pedestrian has crossed, I can see that there are no other pedestians are in the vacinity why would I want to stop and wait at a red light that was put in because there are lots of drivers that can't be trusted to observe a zebra crossing?

Going off on a tangent a bit, but the long wait when you press the button at a pelican crossing isn't because it is a pelican crossing, it is because it has a long wait. The solution is simple, do away with the wait.

It is nonsensical that pedestrians wishing to cross at a pelican or puffin crossing (or cyclists at a toucan crossing) should have to wait some arbitrary period of time. Sure, there are some junctions where it might be necessary to tie the timings in with other signals - however, for the most part, it keeps those wishing to cross waiting for no reason. It delays the the time when road users will need to stop, but it will still hold up some road users, for the same amount of time, it just delays the inevitable and changes which particularly road users are delayed. The only purpose I can see, is to allow parents to catchup with their children who are running or scooting ahead of them next to a busy road (and that has its own problems).

I've come to the conclusion that the primary purpose of the wait is to penalise those who wish to use the crossings (and perhaps to disincentivise use of the crossings).

The delay is to allow the pressee to look up from their phone, realise it's clear and cross anyway, all before the lights turn to red.....

Rendel Harris wrote:

I'm against on this one, I'm afraid. There's already enough conflict and resentment from drivers and pedestrians about supposedly "entitled" cyclists, rightly or wrongly this would inevitably make it worse and increase levels of aggression against cyclists. Additionally, I just don't think it's that necessary; in a 20 km commute across London I encounter approximately forty sets of traffic lights and I always stop when they are on red, yet my Strava shows that my total travel time is only ever five minutes greater than my moving time (generally around 55 minutes total, 50 minutes moving). I would far rather see a campaign to install cameras ensuring that every driver deliberately blocking an ASZ gets fined and pointed and also a campaign to have cyclist early release lights installed at every junction. We are lucky enough to have quite a few of these around our neighbourhood and they make a far bigger contribution to cyclist safety at junctions than being allowed to run red lights will ever do.

I don't think it's valid to consider the opinions of uninformed people complaining about entitled cyclists when they typically have next to no knowledge of the highway code or the dangers present on the roads. If you try to appease them, we'll just end up with tabards, number plates, taxation and licences whilst the police would just use them as an excuse to target minority groups. What we need to do is evaluate traffic in terms of road danger and not whatever crap the Daily Fail prints to rile up the aged.

hawkinspeter wrote:

 

I don't think it's valid to consider the opinions of uninformed people complaining about entitled cyclists when they typically have next to no knowledge of the highway code or the dangers present on the roads. If you try to appease them, we'll just end up with tabards, number plates, taxation and licences whilst the police would just use them as an excuse to target minority groups. What we need to do is evaluate traffic in terms of road danger and not whatever crap the Daily Fail prints to rile up the aged.

I do agree with you, but unfortunately, the fact is that "the crap the Daily Fail prints to rile up the aged" has a real impact on how cyclists are treated on the roads. Remember the HC updates when 90% of the info on it to reach the public was through the lense of anti-cyclist bile spewed by the gutter-press? I noticed a pretty significant uptick in abuse I got on the roads while that was in the news cycle.

I'm dreading the above story being picked up by the usual MSM suspects...

hawkinspeter wrote:

I don't think it's valid to consider the opinions of uninformed people complaining about entitled cyclists when they typically have next to no knowledge of the highway code or the dangers present on the roads. If you try to appease them, we'll just end up with tabards, number plates, taxation and licences whilst the police would just use them as an excuse to target minority groups. What we need to do is evaluate traffic in terms of road danger and not whatever crap the Daily Fail prints to rile up the aged.

I totally agree that it shouldn't be necessary, but unfortunately in the real world I fear it is. There's a difference between resisting the imposition of stupid unnecessary regulations such as the ones you mention and giving cyclists exemption from the laws they currently have to follow. In an ideal world a new law could be introduced, carefully explained and people would accept it; in the imperfect world in which we live, it would, I fear, simply raise aggression levels toward cyclists. Simply from a pragmatic point of view I don't believe the resentment and extra aggression towards cyclists such a measure would create is worth the marginal benefits it would prvide.

Rendel Harris wrote:

I totally agree that it shouldn't be necessary, but unfortunately in the real world I fear it is. There's a difference between resisting the imposition of stupid unnecessary regulations such as the ones you mention and giving cyclists exemption from the laws they currently have to follow. In an ideal world a new law could be introduced, carefully explained and people would accept it; in the imperfect world in which we live, it would, I fear, simply raise aggression levels toward cyclists. Simply from a pragmatic point of view I don't believe the resentment and extra aggression towards cyclists such a measure would create is worth the marginal benefits it would prvide.

Sorry, but I just don't think that unlawful aggression should be used as a reason for not making improvements. Throughout history there's many examples of minorities being subject to aggression (some of it illegal, but all of it immoral), but not wishing to change the status quo because of it is flawed logic - the laws often need to be changed to reduce that aggression. Imagine if the gay-bashing of the 70s/80s etc had the effect of not introducing anti-discrimination laws - how would that have helped matters?

We're not talking about antidiscrimination laws though, are we, we're talking about giving cyclists an exemption from traffic law that all other road users must follow. If anything we would be introducing a new layer of discrimination in our favour and that inevitably causes resentment.

Rendel Harris wrote:

We're not talking about antidiscrimination laws though, are we, we're talking about giving cyclists an exemption from traffic law that all other road users must follow. If anything we would be introducing a new layer of discrimination in our favour and that inevitably causes resentment.

My point is that some motorists discriminate against cyclists and that leads to unlawful behaviour on the roads that injures and kills cyclists. Now, this discussion isn't about making their discrimination illegal (although I'd consider a case could be made for that), but about different modes of transport and increasing safety for the more vulnerable. I fail to see why people cling to "one rule for everyone" when there's already different rules for buses, taxis, cyclists, pedestrians etc.

With segregated cycle infrastructure, there's a clear discrimination against motor vehicles with a stated purpose of increasing safety for vulnerable traffic and by copying Paris and other places, we'd be attempting the same thing by modifying the red light rules. Your argument could equally apply to scrapping all LTNs and cycle infrastructure and I think it's unhelpful to think in terms of appealing to the biggest contributors to road danger when we need to be increasing modal share of cycling/scootering etc.

Rendel Harris wrote:

[...] we're talking about giving cyclists an exemption from traffic law that all other road users must follow. [...]

That's simply not true - pedestrians are road users and don't have to stop at red lights. It also overlooks the numerous othe ways in which the law treats different road users differently (e.g. speed limits; insurance/tax/licence requirements etc.)

In some ways, I think that is actually key to this discussion. The law, and society, largely treat cyclists as "car-lite" - i.e. bikes and cars are both "carriages" in the eyes of the law. Whilst the earliest road traffic laws referring to carriages actually predate the motor vehicle, that term has stuck and the law has been extensively (re)written around the motor vehicle, with the humble bicycle caught up in this definition (with some additional bits of law tacked on for motor vehicles specifically). (Incidentally, having bicycles classified as "carriages" was actually considered a win by cycling campaigners at the time, because it gave cyclists the legal right to freely use public carriageways.)

I would argue that bicycles are better considered "pedestrian-plus". In pretty much all regards (e.g. weight, size, power, speed, vulnerability, situational awareness etc.), a cyclist has more in common with a pedestrian than a car.

And there are plenty of car-free spaces where pedestrians and cyclists mix comfortably with no traffic signals - from my own experience the best examples would be Cambridge's various green spaces (Jesus Green, Midsummer Common, Parker's Piece etc.) which are key routes for both cyclists and pedestrians and yet very safe and largely incident free (not 100% incident free, but if you browse Crash Map or similar it is striking how few incidents occur compared to the nearby roads open to motor traffic). 

In that light, any change should not be viewed as "giving cyclists an exemption from traffic law [as it applies to carriages]" but rather "bringing cycists into line with existing traffic law [as it applies to pedestrians]". 

danhopgood wrote:

There are a core set of rules in the Highway Code that apply to all road users. 

I'm not sure that junctions apply here - the rules for using junctions are already different for pedestrians and motor vehicles. In fact, I suspect that very few rules apply to all road users - the code is very clearly sub-divided by different users. I suppose you could make the case if you exclude pedestrians from being road users, but that just becomes a fiction

the little onion wrote:

danhopgood wrote:

There are a core set of rules in the Highway Code that apply to all road users. 

I'm not sure that junctions apply here - the rules for using junctions are already different for pedestrians and motor vehicles. In fact, I suspect that very few rules apply to all road users - the code is very clearly sub-divided by different users. I suppose you could make the case if you exclude pedestrians from being road users, but that just becomes a fiction

Sorry, almost every driver I know hates cyclists with a passion, and if we were given the ok to go through red lights in certain circumstances, that situation is only going to get worse.  And if a cyclist went through a red under these new rules, and caused an accident...

You simply cannot explain to drivers that there are different rules, they just do not get it, or don't want to get it.

Daveyraveygravey wrote:

You simply cannot explain to drivers that there are different rules, they just do not get it, or don't want to get it.

In that case, it's best to completely discount their uninformed opinions and let the adults get on with implementing the best solutions, especially those that have shown benefits in other countries. If a segment of the population are willfully ignorant then there is no benefit in trying to appease them anyway.

What you said!  Different modes are different.  The fact that in the UK we're unclear about this just means we need to be clearer!

Examples: cyclists are not pedestrians so don't lump them together (especially not on crap infra - being exactly the same narrow footway space).  Cycles are legally "vehicles" but are not the same as "motor vehicles" and are already subject to different rules (restricted from motorways etc.)