Sir, – Further to Patrick Logue's chiding of the cycling lobby ("Cyclists need to stop peddling excuses for rule-breaking", May 18th), I confess I'm an outlaw cyclist. Well, under current rules anyway, which don't take account of the fact that cycling is a fundamentally different activity to driving, involving sitting in a car and pressing a pedal with your foot.
Cycling is not a sedentary activity but a physical one that gets the adrenaline going, where preserving momentum is important and where, in cities anyway, you have to assert yourself to ensure you are seen and recognised as a legitimate road-user, in case you need to pull out of the cycle lane to go around a car parked outside the local shop.
Having risk-assessed the situation (checked for cars and pedestrians), I see no problem breaking a red light to go straight ahead on a right turn set of lights.
I do it every day on my daily commute where one such junction coincides with a bus lane on a downhill stretch! I guess some motorists are siting there thinking “bloody lawbreaker” but I’m not clear exactly how it affects them. As a I cyclist I accommodate pedestrians; if I’m approaching a set of lights and people are crossing on a red pedestrian light, I cycle around them rather than cycling at them shouting “bloody pedestrians!”
Perhaps motorists need to step out of their motor car mindset, and not worry if cyclists bend rules devised for motorists to get ahead of the traffic (and out of their way).
I don’t break red lights against on coming traffic, that’s stupid and self-limiting in a Darwinian sense.
As a motorist, I recognise that I have much more potential to kill and maim people through careless driving, so I focus on that rather than concerning myself overly with “outlaw” cyclists. – Yours, etc,
JOHN O’GRADY,
Dublin 20.