I’m pro-cycling but this guy comes across as a complete arse. “It’s alright for me to ignore traffic lights because I’m ‘sharing the space’ but not for other people!”
Not stopping at lights is just selfishness for the most part.
At a busy crossing: sure
At a completely empty crossing where the pedestrians to the right actually have a green light and you intend to go straight onto the bike path (because of course there was none where you came from): i don’t personally think so
This is just one of those things thats is blown up and people thrown in one drawer together, just because there are some real jackasses on bikes, imo
I don’t stop at a red light if its meant to prevent cars from turning left and they just decided the bike path next to the road that goes straight should also stop. A lot of traffic is just shit and as a cyclist doubly so, very often because it feels like everyone hates you or doesn’t even aknowledge your existence.
And of course the angry drivers who hate you for cycling past them in their traffic jam
Edit: formatting
I normally approve of anarchy. There is too much regulation everywhere. The great Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman boldly advocated “shared space” in cities. He wanted kerbs, road markings and traffic signals minimised and replaced by “human discipline”. All road users should navigate urban space by watching out for each other all the time.
Um.
I think that there should be serious consideration given to rolling back traffic laws, where there’s a specific argument in favor of doing so. Inertia can be stifling.
In the US, for a long time, right-on-red was illegal. (Right-on-red permits someone to turn right at a red light as long as they come to a full stop first and yield to other traffic.) There were (plausible) arguments that this would be dangerous. A few states tried it, and it worked all right, and today, essentially the entire US permits it (New York City being a notable exception).
If you had asked me to just guess whether it was safe without empiricial testing, I don’t know if I’d have gotten the answer right.
But there’s a big difference between “being open to trying out specific rollbacks” and “eliminate all of the rules en masse on philosophical grounds”.
The article says absolutely nothing, it’s a vacuous drivel talk around the subjects. Pointless
I liked this bit:
Traffic lights can now be rendered sensitive to queues waiting at them
Smart traffic lights probably have all kinds of technical challenges, but if you can do them well, traffic lights can finally catch up with human-directed traffic—you never need to wind up with a situation where intersections are empty and users are still blocked.
It’d be especially nice at night or other low-traffic times, where there’s more of that.
I’d cost more, but I think that a lot of people would be okay with more cost for better throughput.
I’d also add that they could even change before vehicles reach them—they don’t need to wait for a queue to form.
Yes. It’s the guardian opinion pages. What were you expecting 🤣
It’s fine as long as you do it safely. Know the cycle and go when it’s safe. The problem is the people who kamikaze through intersections who put everyone at risk, including other pedestrians.
Whatever your opinion on Britain’s cycling infrastructure, blaming anyone but yourself for your own choices is a bad look, a bad position and bad for people’s opinion of cyclists. This guy should shut up. (Not the first time someone will have said that about him…)
ahh ahh ahh ahh
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The essence of cycling is to keep moving
aAAH aAHHH hHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
just get and electric bike you f****** idiot
