Sneaking Ahead

Lately, the concept that bikes are vehicles, and so should behave as such, is seeming to sink in with more and more of my fellow cyclists: I see an ever-increasing percentage of them signalling turns and stops; fewer red lights are being run; and incidents of other types of rule-flouting behaviour are also becoming rarer. Still, I do occasionally see, for example, cyclists riding against the direction of traffic on major roads or weaving wildly around cars as though they were part of a circus act. And the odd cyclist will still brazenly ride through a red light.

But on the whole, cyclist behaviour on city streets is much improved nowadays.

A bit of a throwback to the days of rampant red-light running, though, is what might be described as the red-light sneak. This is when a cyclist is temporarily stopped at a red light but then starts to slowly ease through the intersection after the red light has been showing for a while. Drivers, and most cyclists, know that you can’t proceed until the light has actually turned green. But some cyclists seem to think it is okay for them to run a red light because the light will be turning green soon and because they aren’t speeding through the intersection. It is as though they are thinking that because they are moving slowly, running a red light doesn’t count as a traffic-rule violation. I mean, hey, the light was about to change, wasn’t it?

An awful lot of bad blood still exists between drivers and cyclists. This sort of red-light running doesn’t help matters.