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London taxi drivers claim film shows most cyclist jump red lights - but does it?

Full footage tells a rather different story - also shows cars cars turning right on red & occupying ASL boxes

London’s Licensed Taxi Drivers Association (LTDA) has footage that it claims shows a majority of cyclists ignoring the red light at a junction in Hackney. But our analysis of the complete video footage from one location shows that most cyclists obey the law.

The LTDA claims that of 170 cyclists who passed through the junction of Hackney Road and Queensbridge Road in the morning rush hour on one day in September, 108 failed to stop at the red light, a staggering 64 percent. At another junction in Camden, 86 out of 194 failed to stop.

But we counted a total of 750 cyclists riding through the junction along Hackney Road toward the city centre. Of 243 who arrived when the light was red, 131 stopped. And of 104 riders entering from the side street, Queensbridge Road, all but 2 stopped at the light.

The LTDA released an edited version of its footage, as well as the full hour of video from Hackney and Camden.  

“Various cycle action and lobbying groups constantly assure Londoners that cyclists are law abiding,” the LTDA says in the introduction to the edited version of the footage. “Apparently it’s only a few ‘rogue’ cyclists who jump red lights and flaunt (sic) the rules of the road...

“This theory is in stark contrast to the evidence that most Londoners witness every day. The LTDA decided to test the theory and discover the truth. We set up a hidden camera at busy traffic light controlled junctions to record what really happens every day on our roads. What we found shocked us...”

To find out if things were really as bad as the LTDA says, we watched all of the Hackney Road video. It shows 750 cyclists passing through the junction, heading towards the centre of London between 7:30 and 8:30 in the morning.

112 people failing to stop at the lights out of 750 is a far lower proportion than the LTDA claims, but it's not that simple. And it's still 46 percent failing to stop at the light, so while we could quibble with the LTDA’s conclusion that a majority failed to stop, it’d be splitting hairs.

What the video also shows, though, is the behaviour of riders coming out of Queensbridge Road. All but two of the 104 riders turning right down Hackney Road do so just after the lights change, indicating that they have stopped. If LTDA had positioned their camera elsewhere on the junction, they’d have found over 98 percent of cyclists following the rules, and not had much of a story.

The hour-long video covers 52 cycles of the lights, and also shows 29 motor vehicles stopping in the advanced-stop box, and eight failing to stop at the red light. That includes three extraordinarily hairy right turns into Queensbridge Road such as the one made by the driver of the silver car at about 47:10:

We point this out not to excuse the behaviour of the cyclists but to demonstrate that some Londoners seem to have the attitude that the Highway Code is more what you'd call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules.

Why are riders failing to stop at this junction? On the map, it looks like a crossroads, but Horatio Street is a residential, one-way except for bikes, and has very little traffic emerging from it. The risk of a collision from riding through the red light here is negligible. These riders may be breaking the rules, but it’s arguable that they’re doing anything dangerous.

In some parts of the world, cyclists are allowed to ride through junctions like this, or to turn left at red lights. In 2010 the office of London mayor Boris Johnson suggested allowing cyclists to turn left at red lights.

The junction in Camden where the LTDA chose to film has similar issues. In our forum discussion on this video, poster jamesv said: “I cycle through the fortess junction every weekday on my commute and if I were to pick one junction on my route to skew statistics it would be this one - by far the most RLJing cyclists.”

Management guru W Edwards Deming once said: "Your system is perfectly designed to give you the results you're getting." If you wanted to design junctions to make cyclists feel it was safe and reasonable to break the rules, these junctions are what you’d end up with.

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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58 comments

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Trackal | 10 years ago
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At the second red light the yellow car on the opposite side of the road jumps the red light. Its too boring to watch the rest

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Trackal | 10 years ago
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At the second red light the yellow car on the opposite side of the road jumps the red light. Its too boring to watch the rest

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2_Wheeled_Wolf | 10 years ago
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Perhaps we should do same sort of video at those junctions & post unedited to show the law breaking drivers to prove they arent innocent as the Taxi drivers trying to make themselves. Their own video was showing ASl abuse within seconds of it starting.

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Guyz2010 | 10 years ago
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Watching some of the red light jumpers made me think. Personally I wait in a queue in amongst cars and on the line a red lights but have on rare occasions after the traffic has cleared carried on (only when I absolutely know there will be no others vehicles coming). Part of the problem with traffic lights is cyclist have more visibility and awareness of movement traffic and feel it's easier to cross a junction generally.

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Guyz2010 | 10 years ago
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Watching some of the red light jumpers made me think. Personally I wait in a queue in amongst cars and on the line a red lights but have on rare occasions after the traffic has cleared carried on (only when I absolutely know there will be no others vehicles coming). Part of the problem with traffic lights is cyclist have more visibility and awareness of movement traffic and feel it's easier to cross a junction generally.

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OldnSlo | 10 years ago
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perhaps a road system with no road markings or furniture with a mandatory limit of 10mph may help. No. Well then, we are where we are. We have a road system thats not designed for cycles and definitely not designed for mixed mode and mixed speed traffic. So, be careful out there and obey the law when safe to do so.

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stuartanderson | 10 years ago
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Perhaps taxi drivers should concentrate upon their own particular skills, (actually driving safely). If I was consistently poor at my job then I would quickly be disciplined and eventually be looking for new employment! (Apparently not if you're a taxi driver!).

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felixcat | 10 years ago
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I try hard to obey every traffic law. I want to have a firm place to stand when I criticise the drivers who risk my life.

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FluffyKittenofT... | 10 years ago
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Picked another (large) junction and watched the cars behaviour, just for two cycles of the lights.

For both, two cars went through on amber, and two cars went through after the lights had clearly gone red, vs only one that stopped correctly (can only be one per phase doing that, logically).

The first car to stop did so correctly behind the ASL, the second one ended up stopping well beyond the ASL, right across the pedestrian crossing, after starting to run the red and thinking better of it.

True, during the time I was watching, the single cyclist to appear slightly marred my experiment by quite blatantly jumping the red (I wanted to shout 'you're spoiling my numbers damn you!'), but, using the same system as the Taxi Driver study and not counting vehicles going through on green, the proportions for motorists and cyclists breaking the rules were still fairly similar - 100% of the one-and-only cyclist vs about 80% of the larger sample of motorists.

I got bored after two traffic light phases, sorry. I'm a rubbish scientist.

Though I've noticed its not uncommon at this junction for up to four cars to race through after the lights have gone red.

In short, I would suggest that cyclists are actually not very different from other road-users, statistically, in their tendency to pass the stop line when they legally shouldn't.

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cousinbillybob | 10 years ago
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Of course taxi drivers are the best drivers on the roads..... Pulling across lanes of traffic without indicating to pick up a fare without indicating or using mirrors; doing u-turns in front of cyclists without indicating; cutting across cyclists to turn off main roads...... The list goes on....

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kie7077 | 10 years ago
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Personally my adherence to the stop line is all about safety, not law, if I filter up to the front of the traffic and can't sit between vehicles because they only have 1-foot gaps between them then I will find a safe place in front, where I am visible to drivers, so that once they have finished reading their Facebook messages they don't knock me over.

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harrybav | 10 years ago
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I can't figure out why taxi organisations care about or study cyclists' behaviour?

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nivagh | 10 years ago
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Yawn. A random video, showing bad behaviour by all road users. Got bored after about two minutes (during which time there were two red lights and the vehicle at the head of the queue on each occasion totally ignored the ASL).

I'm all for fines for bikes who jump red lights, in the same way I am for fines for cars, buses, lorries driving over the ASL. It's the law. It's there to protect you and others. Get on with it. Same for those who whinge when they are caught speeding - there's a speed camera sign and the damn things are painted bright yellow. What more do you want?

Move on.

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Trackal | 10 years ago
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First car that appears on the video jumps the red light

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FluffyKittenofT... | 10 years ago
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I mean, I disliked our car-centric culture back when I was a pedestrian and public-transport user. Now I have discovered (late in the day) that cycling is a better way to get around (and offers hope for getting more people out of cars).

Yet somehow, by merely taking to two wheels, I have apparently taken on responsibility for policing the behaviour of everyone else in the country who has a bike! And now, apparently, I have to get every one of them to behave perfectly at all times before I can return to asking for less car-centred cities! Even though the worst cyclist behaviour is less lethal than the average motorist behaviour.

I feel puzzled by this.

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w jones | 10 years ago
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Very dangerous comments at the moment wasn't me was him type of thing car drivers hate cyclists etc etc what they got to realise that cyclists are just as entitled to the road as they are ,safety should be their priority not moaning about cyclists on the road etc.. Try crossing the road if your old or injured and see if cars slow down to let you cross etc..

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bikecellar | 10 years ago
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Back in the day only cyclists rode bikes, now too many non cyclists are riding bikes.

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skull-collector... replied to | 10 years ago
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(mod, remove this)

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FluffyKittenofT... replied to bikecellar | 10 years ago
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bikecellar wrote:

Back in the day only cyclists rode bikes, now too many non cyclists are riding bikes.

I think I would rather not think of myself as a 'cyclist' so much as going back to being just 'not a motorist', as I was before I started cycling.

Too many "cyclists" seen to think that 'everyone with a bike obeying every law at all times' is achievable and that it would change the situation with motorist behaviour and bad road design. As far as I can see both those ideas are mistaken.

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skull-collector... | 10 years ago
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Cherry-picked for dramatic effect, discard, forget.

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dullard | 10 years ago
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"But we counted a total of 750 cyclists riding through the junction along Hackney Road toward the city centre. Of 243 who arrived when the light was red, 131 stopped."

I was never that good at maths, but that's really A Really Bad Thing isn't it? You're making out it's nothing. Nearly half didn't stop? I often now sit at reds watching f#ckwits ride through reds (normally the same mob - NuFreds, girls pootling along at 10mph listening to music - without lights) and hoping guiltily they get sided.

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mrkeith119 | 10 years ago
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I think the main question raised by these videos is why at a time when a "share the road" type of campaign should be promoted, to try and help road safety, is an organisation for professional drivers deliberately trying to antagonise a single section of road users. The videos are of no real help to anyone. Seeing as the LTDA have found 2 junctions that have a large number of traffic violations (not just cyclists), the responsible thing for them to have done would surely be to inform the met police so they could do one of their advice blitzes. Not to put a camera there and then try to vilify cyclists.

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kie7077 | 10 years ago
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When those bastards learn to drive safely then they can criticise, until then they can STFU.

I had one of those shitheads riding a little over a foot from my back wheel whilst I was trying to overtake another cyclist, the c**t nearly caused an accident and when I remonstrated with him, he threatened to take me out and I dont think he had a restaurant in mind.

Their standard of driving is appauling, I will admit that they're not all bad, just most of them.

I like to see a new law passed - cyclists can vandalise cabs whenever they are wronged.

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stuartanderson replied to kie7077 | 10 years ago
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!

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Nice Wee Cod | 10 years ago
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pmanc | 10 years ago
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Call me cynical but I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that the Standard chose to use the most reckless scary looking screen capture they could to illustrate their story - note the caption:

Cyclists whizz past as a woman pushes a buggy across when the green man is showing

Actually the woman is quite a distance away from any cyclists, and doesn't look in least bit bothered by them*.

Of course I don't mean it's generally OK to jump red lights, especially not on busy pedestrian crossings, but if that's the worst incident in two hours of filming I'm going to suggest it's not as big a deal as it would be if that many drivers were jumping red lights... Maybe we could compare it to drivers going over 70mph on the motorway for instance.

*Please let me know if there are any bits where women and children run screaming from the two-wheeled menace only to be ruthlessly mown down before they can reach the safety of the kerb. I can't be bothered to watch it all on the offchance.

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Carl | 10 years ago
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Are there any habitual RLJers out there who can tell me what goes on in your heads when the lights have been red for a while and you approach the junction and ignore them? (Like the stream of RLJers at about 24 mins). I'm not talking about getting a couple of seconds ahead of a light that's about to go green, it's when other people are sitting there and you just breeze past them.

To me it's: "The law doesn't apply to me" but maybe there's something else going on up there?

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Cantab replied to Carl | 10 years ago
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Carl wrote:

Are there any habitual RLJers out there who can tell me what goes on in your heads when the lights have been red for a while and you approach the junction and ignore them? (Like the stream of RLJers at about 24 mins). I'm not talking about getting a couple of seconds ahead of a light that's about to go green, it's when other people are sitting there and you just breeze past them.

To me it's: "The law doesn't apply to me" but maybe there's something else going on up there?

This is a great, great question. It is only by understanding the psychology of the offence that we can tailor education or infrastructure to discourage RLJ.
I'd also like it answered for those who advance just past the white line then stop even when there's space in the ASL (which I find even weirder than full-on RLJ as it doesn't actually get you to your destination any quicker!).

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congokid replied to Cantab | 10 years ago
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Cantab wrote:

only by understanding the psychology of the offence that we can tailor education or infrastructure to discourage RLJ

Interesting point about adapting the infrastructure, and one that I think ought to be strongly considered by those in charge of transport policy.

In David Hembrow's AViewFromTheCyclePath blog, he describes bike journeys (ones with actual destinations, not just pootling around) in and around Assen, where he lives, as being almost traffic signal free - there is virtually no opportunity for people on bikes to jump red lights because they encounter so few - if any.

That's what I'd like to see in London and in fact everywhere else in the UK. As well as extensive physical separation of bikes from motor traffic - which would mean everyone aged 8-80 would feel safe travelling by bike and encouraged to do it, not just the Strava types - there would be fewer points at which bike journeys are interrupted.

If it means making short car journeys more inconvenient, all the better, as this would help provide the space for much of the required segregation, and further encourage people onto their bikes as well as reduce pollution and many of the other drawbacks of our reliance on motor transport.

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mephistopheles replied to Carl | 10 years ago
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Carl wrote:

Are there any habitual RLJers out there who can tell me what goes on in your heads when the lights have been red for a while and you approach the junction and ignore them?

When I first started to cycle to work, about 5 years ago I would RLJ most of the time. Why? First reason was that it cut my journey time slightly. Secondly, I was unsure if it was illegal for cyclists to RLJ. Thirdly and most importantly, for exactly the same reason so many motorists either use a mobile while driving, drive over the speed limit and drive into the ASL, because there is no fear of getting into trouble for these traffic violations and that they are not seen as a misdemeanour by the wider public. IMO more needs to be done to catch and fine these law breakers. Only when people feel that they might be caught and there will be repercussions will they think twice about it and stop doing this.

Within a year of cycling I stopped RLJing completely. Why? I found out that even for cyclists RLJing is breaking the law. Fear of getting caught and fined. Realising that it’s just plain wrong. Disliked the thought of others thinking I’m another RLJing wxxxxr. Couldn’t work out why I was in such a rush to get to work.

Nevertheless, I don’t know what this video is trying to achieve. LTDA are just stirring up trouble. We should be looking to learn to share the road space in the most safe way possible, ie For drivers and cyclists to respect each other and follow the Highway Code. It’s not difficult but neither seem to want to take the initiative.

Much better to point fingers and call names  19

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