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Comment by nwallin | Hacker News Reader

There's a problem with that. Lots of people who regularly drive cars but never cycle see cyclists flagrantly ignoring the law on a regular basis. It's easy to come to the conclusion that the reason cycling is so dangerous is because cyclists would rather throw themselves into oncoming traffic rather than dealing with the inconvenience of having to stop at stop lights.

And when there are pushes for regulations to make cycling safer, they roll their eyes and vote against it, even when they're simple, effective, cheap measures.

The seemingly widespread belief among cyclists that they don't need to follow the rules of the road is, in my opinion, a large part of the reason Americans are so opposed to changing said rules to make cycling safer. There are a very large number of Americans who believe the primary reason cyclists get hurt is because the cyclist was doing something dangerous.

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> Lots of people who regularly drive cars but never cycle see cyclists flagrantly ignoring the law on a regular basis

They also see many more cars flagrantly ignoring the law on a regular basis. On a normal late afternoon, I can stand outside the local supermarket and see 20+ cars jumping red lights, obstructing junctions, sitting on pedestrian crossings, etc. within half an hour.

> cyclists would rather throw themselves into oncoming traffic rather than dealing with the inconvenience of having to stop at stop lights.

Yes, as do a lot of car drivers.

I have seen maybe once or twice in a decade a driver running a red light. I see about 1 in 10 cyclists running a red light. The proportions aren't even close.

Whereas in London, for example, I can see probably 80-110% of cyclists running a red light compared to cars on any given day depending where I stand.

My observation of your observations and other observations like it is that the observer chooses a narrow definition of "jumping the lights" that suits their own biases.

Specifically, the issue is with Amber lights. The highway code says:

AMBER means ‘Stop’ at the stop line. You may go on only if the AMBER appears after you have crossed the stop line or are so close to it that to pull up might cause an accident

Observing car driving habits in London, an average of 2-3 cars break this rule every time a light cycles from green to red. This behaviour is legally the same as jumping the light on red. Cyclists are far less likely to break this rule (they're slower across the junction and are aware that that puts them in danger from the other lights going green).

If you factor in all those cars into your assessment, you'll probably find that cyclists are not worse than cars at obeying the law around traffic lights.

I'm going with your definition of "jumping the lights" because that's what I was taught many years ago. I'd also include "people who enter a controlled junction with no clear exit" since they end up beyond the red light without being able to move - that's the situation at our local supermarket.

Normally end up with a bus in the bus lane and 3-4 cars sat in the junction across the pedestrian crossing on every light change at peak time.

> or are so close to it that to pull up might cause an accident

Well there is your loophole big enough to drive a truck (lorry?) through even on an amber light!

Except if you observe a junction for a short while you'll see that in general people drive through even if there is no chance it would cause an accident.

/devils advocate

The loophole for a cyclist is that they could swing their leg off the bike and magically become a pedestrian, cross the stop line, get back on, and legally ride away across the junction regardless of lights. Given that swinging your leg off the bike makes no reasonable difference to anything, why get annoyed if they don't bother with that part?

Isn't it just like claiming a general exemption on all amber lights because doing anything might cause an accident?

I'm not sure that the statistics bear that out: https://beyondthekerb.org.uk/laws-whos-breaking-what/

Ah. Thanks for the data. Now that you mention it, I realize that plenty of drivers run red lights regularly. And yet I very rarely registered it as an emergency situation, especially compared to cyclists. What is going on?!

* Some cyclists blatantly run a red light in the middle of the cycle, oftentimes out of nowhere. Overall, perceived as unpredictable behavior.

* Some drivers tend to run the yellow, and sometimes pass through the intersection a bit after the red has been on. It just happens that the red cycles overlap a bit, then the other drivers are still stopped, and alert for the road to clear. While annoying to lose 500ms of the start, it is fairly predictable and rarely leads to sudden brake slamming.

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