Let me preface this week's entry by saying that I'm a pedestrian, I ride a bicycle and a motorbike and I drive a car; I'm intimately familiar with the rules of the road for all four. That's why I have an axe to grind about our local police force who behave, it has to be said, in much the same way as police forces pretty much every where I've lived. Last week on a lunch break, a group of colleagues and I were sitting at the front row of a set of red traffic lights, next to police car. A cyclist came dodging between the lanes of cars (I don't have a problem with that) and then cycled through the red light and across the intersection. The police officer did nothing. However, on his left, the left turn lane had changed to amber, then to red and one car went through on red to turn left across the intersection. The police car lit up like a Christmas tree and took off after him.
So why is it OK for a bicycle to go through a red light but not a car?
I've no doubt if a car on a green light had hit the cyclist jumping the red light, it would have somehow been the car driver's fault.
What makes it worse is that cyclists have been doing this for so long they now think it's a right. I nearly had an entertaining accident on my bicycle last year when I stopped at a red light and the cyclist behind me nearly ran into me. As he gave me the international signal for "you're number one", he wafted through the red light shouting "why the f*ck did you stop?".
So : moronic cyclists + biased police officers. Seems like all us drivers are to blame for everything now.
