(2020) Motorists Break Law To Save Time, Cyclists Break Law To Save Lives, Finds Study

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"A Transport For London camera study of 7,500 cyclists at five junctions found in 2007 that, contrary to popular perception, most cyclists do not run reds: 84% of the cyclists stopped at red traffic lights."
This surprised me. I haven't noticed that many cyclists running reds. The tone seemed to suggest that was a good statistic for some reason. That is way too high. If 16% of cars ran red lights my life expectancy would be about three days. I'm in favor of cyclists bending or breaking rules to protect themselves but I don't think running reds qualifies. Everyone should always stop at reds. I'm a bit of a scofflaw when it comes to some traffic laws but that's too far.
- I could be wrong, but aren't a lot of injuries caused by being rear-ended while waiting at a red? I'm pretty sure that's the case for motorcycles so I imagine it's similar for bikes. I normally wait at reds but I'll run it if there's no traffic. It feels more like jay-walking than running a red light. Most people are perfectly fine with jay-walking.
- In London about 95% of the ones I see running reds are the uber eats etc riders, pretty much all the modded e-bikes don't stop at reds. My colleague saw a woman knocked down by one ignoring a red light at a crossing, the woman had kids with her.
  I've also had a cyclist effing and blinding at me because I stopped at a red.

42 comments