Nuxx:4e22023d$0$2538$da0feed9@news.zen.co.uk

Path: num2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!num1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!number.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!goblin2!goblin.stu.neva.ru!ecngs!feeder2.ecngs.de!zen.net.uk!hamilton.zen.co.uk!shaftesbury.zen.co.uk.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <4e22023d$0$2538$da0feed9@news.zen.co.uk> From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: Re: RLJ Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2011 22:27:24 +0100 References:  <65eb0aac-964c-4c7a-b428-9327c127ba71@dp9g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>    <4e1f4224$0$2536$da0feed9@news.zen.co.uk> <624712c0-1a07-4836-8b0a-0c2d67bb42a1@fv14g2000vbb.googlegroups.com> <9893dkFk6mU1@mid.individual.net> <18ou175kand98fc4b4dq3mjecgb7sfeg9m@4ax.com> <989ae2F7rdU1@mid.individual.net>       Lines: 38 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; en-US; rv:1.9.2.18) Gecko/20110616 Thunderbird/3.1.11 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To:  Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Organization: Zen Internet NNTP-Posting-Host: b1e5d2ba.news.zen.co.uk X-Trace: DXC=Yc5Y5RbMmMIbinC`K2hQ > Bloody hell, the sky's the limit if you include the amber phase, > especially at levels crossings it seems.

Yes, it's just terrible, isn't it?

Let's get one thing clear though, shall we? I'll wager that you know, as well as anyone else does, that the "really bad" red-light jumping (jumping a light which has been red for, say, at least 3 seconds, and is not going to change back for at least 3 seconds) is almost always committed by cyclists (psycholists) rather than motorists.

When a motorist jumps a red, it's almost always just after it's gone red, or while it's still on red + yellow just before it goes green. That doesn't make it acceptable, but the sailing through lights which have been red for a long time "because they shouldn't apply to me" is almost always the preserve of cyclists (except sometimes maybe for pedestrian crossings where all pedestrians are long gone).

There is a hardcore of cyclists who, upon approaching a red light, think "Now, how do I get through without stopping?", and do their best to time it so they can RLJ while no-one (they hope) is coming the other way. Very few motorists have that mentality.

I'm sure we all know that however uncomfortable it makes some people, the percentage of cyclists who regularly show complete contempt for red lights is far higher than the percentage of motorists. Why is it so hard for some people to just admit that? Why do they insist on obfuscating, playing dumb and pretending to think that motorists jump red lights just as much, and just as badly, as cyclists do? Why not something like "Yes, more cyclists jump red lights than motorists, and while I disapprove because it gives cyclists a bad name, I can see why they do it, and perhaps the law should be changed to allow cyclists to treat red lights like give way lines, [etc, etc]"? People are so obsessed with defending their "chosen side" (cyclists OR motorists, because it's got to be one or the other), no matter what, that sincere, open, objective debate is never apparently permitted.