That would make it worse, since the issue is that you often can't see the bike coming. (Bikes are quiet and quite difficult to detect in peripheral vision.) When there's a convention that everyone stops at certain times to let pedestrians cross the road, you don't have to worry too much about that -- if people actually follow the rules.
I've never seen a no-motor-traffic intersection that used or needed lights. Somehow cyclists and pedestrians manage to negotiate priority at junctions on paths, cycleways, and in pedestrianized town centers just fine, human-to-human, even blind corners.
Who said anything about no-motor-traffic intersections? I'm talking about cyclists in London. Regardless, it's pretty eccentric to suggest that traffic lights are responsible for collisions caused by people who ignore them. However safe a particular intersection currently is, removing traffic lights from it will make it less safe than that. That might be tolerable in a scenario where there's no motor traffic. But there is, obviously, motor traffic in London.
> Who said anything about no-motor-traffic intersections? I'm talking about cyclists in London.
You seemed to imply that safety at intersections between cyclists and pedestrians needed or was helped by traffic lights. I don't think that's true.
> Regardless, it's pretty eccentric to suggest that traffic lights are responsible for collisions caused by people who ignore them. However safe a particular intersection currently is, removing traffic lights from it will make it less safe than that.
>You seemed to imply that safety at intersections between cyclists and pedestrians needed or was helped by traffic lights. I don't think that's true.
Safety is helped in London, in the real world, when people don't run red lights. You seemed to be saying that this wouldn't be the case if there were no cars, which is totally irrelevant.
>There's an increasingly mainstream view that just the opposite is true
Try crossing a busy road which doesn't have any lights. I have one of those on my walk back from work, and it's by far the most dangerous crossing.
> Safety is helped in London, in the real world, when people don't run red lights.
Maybe. If stricter enforcement of red lights leads to fewer people cycling, it might lead to more deaths overall.
> You seemed to be saying that this wouldn't be the case if there were no cars, which is totally irrelevant.
You asked about who or what was "causing" the issue.
> Try crossing a busy road which doesn't have any lights. I have one of those on my walk back from work, and it's by far the most dangerous crossing.
It's dangerous if cars are driving fast. Other changes (e.g. narrower streets, speed limits) can make it very safe. Look at the article's example: crossing Exhibition Road, without lights, feels safer than light-based crossings IME.
>If stricter enforcement of red lights leads to fewer people cycling, it might lead to more deaths overall.
I did not call for stricter enforcement. Cyclists could choose to stop running red lights without any changes in the law or how it is enforced.
>You asked about who or what was "causing" the issue.
You seem in effect to be saying that we can’t blame cyclists for running red lights here in the real world because you can imagine some kind of cycletopia where lights wouldn’t necessary. If a cyclist runs a red light and consequently crashes into me while I'm crossing the road, the cause of that accident is, obviously, the cyclist and not the light. Removing the light isn't going to make bikes any easier to see, or cyclists any more careful. (Those of a careful disposition wouldn't be running red lights at pedestrian crossings in the first place.)
Cyclists are free to argue for different traffic regulations and infrastructure, but in the mean time, they should follow the rules and stop endangering others.
> Cyclists could choose to stop running red lights without any changes in the law or how it is enforced.
True, but that would carry a similar risk of leading them to cycle less.
> After all, the accident would have happened just the same if the light wasn't there.
Disagree; you would likely have acted differently if the light wasn't there. If you were right, we'd see cyclists colliding with pedestrians at no-motor-traffic junctions all the time, since none of them have lights. But we don't.
>True, but that would carry a similar risk of leading them to cycle less.
Nonsense.
>you would likely have acted differently if the light wasn't there.
I don't act differently when there are no lights, since I know that most cyclists ignore the lights anyway!
>If you were right, we'd see cyclists colliding with pedestrians at no-motor-traffic junctions all the time, since none of them have lights. But we don't.
Cyclists are harder to see when there are cars on the road, so that's an irrelevant comparison.
In any case, cyclists do collide with pedestrians in the absence of motor vehicles. The canal tow paths in London are particularly bad for this, for example:
> I don't act differently when there are no lights, since I know that most cyclists ignore the lights anyway!
Then it sounds like cyclists ignoring the lights aren't putting you in any real danger, and that "cyclists choosing to stop running red lights" as you suggest would do you very little good.
> In any case, cyclists do collide with pedestrians in the absence of motor vehicles.
They do, occasionally. But notice how no-one in that article even mentions the possibility of introducing traffic lights, because they're so obviously not a solution to anything.
>Then it sounds like cyclists ignoring the lights aren't putting you in any real dange
That is simply a non sequitur.
>"cyclists choosing to stop running red lights" as you suggest would do you very little good.
It would stop them frequently nearly crashing into me, which would certainly be good from my perspective.
>But notice how no-one in that article even mentions the possibility of introducing traffic lights
Erm, because it wouldn't be possible to add traffic lights on a canal tow path. The point is that ignoring traffic lights is dangerous, not that traffic lights should be put everywhere.
