It’s first thing on a Monday morning and you’re walking from the station to the office. You’re bleary-eyed. The hair’s a bit skewwhiff. Maybe you have a flat white in hand. You come to a crossing. Ah lovely – green man. You start walking. WHOOSH! A cyclist whizzes past you. Misses you by a few inches. Splat. There goes the coffee. The liquid scolds your leg on its way down. Now you’re awake and positively fuming. It’s a scene anyone living in a UK city will know all too well. Walk anywhere in central London these days, and you’ll see swarms of cyclists buzzing by. Pedestrians are suffering. Things need to change.
First, though, a disclaimer: I mostly cycle to work, and yes, sometimes I even wear Lycra shorts. But as a fairly responsible and normal person, I feel genuine shame most mornings, when I see cyclists nearly mowing down pedestrians as they jump red lights at high speed. In the Venn diagram of types of bike people, there tends to be a large crossover between those nearly killing walking commuters and the head-to-toe Lyrca-clad red-light jumpers going 40mph in a 20mph zone. These speed freaks make the rest of us good guys look bad – they tarnish the cyclist brand and take away from all the wonderful things about biking.
The key issue, of course, is that it’s dangerous. The number of pedestrians hit by cyclists has increased by a third since 2020, according to police data released in May. And red-light jumping is especially bad in the exact area I commute in. Last year, during a five-day police crackdown against anti-social behaviour at Bank Junction in London’s Square Mile, 77 cyclists faced fines for running red lights and having near-misses with pedestrians, cars and buses. That said, we’re not as evil as cars – road casualty statistics show that bikes are involved in just two per cent of pedestrian casualties reported to and by the police. The rest, 98 per cent, are hit by motor vehicles.
I’m no saint. I run red lights occasionally – at about 5mph, when there are no pedestrians trying to cross and no cars in sight. Sometimes, it’s actually safer for someone on a bike to pass through a junction when the light is red, to avoid getting snarled up in the waiting cars and motorcycles. This won’t change until the UK gets more “head start” lights, which allow cyclists to go before traffic, and hold the left-turning traffic for longer. Of course, we’ve all bent the rules at some point, whether it’s driving a smidge over the speed limit or going for a wild wee. But as one passionate poster on a Reddit forum put it: “Cycling cautiously through a red light when nobody else is around to give way to? Don’t care. Cycling through a red light at speed and expecting other people to slow/stop/swerve in order to avoid a collision? P***k.”
Yes, the people who are knocked sideways must be furious. I know I am, when I’m on foot and it happens to me. It’s the rudest of awakenings in the morning. And pedestrians are at the bottom of the commuter food chain – think of HGVs as the terrifying predators, cyclists as agile foxes and walking commuters as fluffy bunny rabbits – so they need to have the right to feel safe and put their trust in the green man. If they can’t, then all cyclists will eventually be seen as the scourge of society, and we can wave goodbye to harmony on the roads.
There’s already a culture war between cyclists and motorists – what if a bubbling resentment against bikes snowballs into restrictions on cycling in urban areas? That would be so sad. I am that insufferable bike nerd in the office who goes on about how great cycling is. There are the obvious upsides: it’s good for the environment (and therefore good for even non-cyclists) and it’s free. But it’s more than that. I’d have moved out of London by now if it wasn’t for my bike – it allows me to avoid death by suffocation on the tube and travel sickness on lurching buses. With the commute there and back, it’s an hour of exercise built into my day. It’s also the fastest way to get around the city, when you can weave through traffic and nip across parks. And it makes you aware of your surroundings – not only do I have a proper sense of direction in London now, but I get to see the morning sun bounce off Tower Bridge in the distance and, perhaps more often than I’d like, hear the splash of raindrops on my helmet.
So please, for all our sakes, the next time you’re approaching a red light at speed, think about hitting the breaks.
