Red lights, white lines, black tar rivers

[j4]

"I try not to go through red lights but I'm not the Pope," says one of the ninety-three cyclists caught jumping red lights in three hours in central Oxford.

I've often seen cars and buses creeping slowly through a red light, as if they were cyclists who couldn't take their feet off the pedals, but I've cynically assumed that they were just intent on being a yard or two further ahead of the car behind them when the lights change (or that they didn't know how to brake). Perhaps I misjudged them: perhaps they're actually grappling with their conscience.

I wonder if the cars I photograph parking on double yellow lines and in cycle lanes are also trying really hard not to park illegally. I'm trying really hard not to photograph them, but they just keep slipping into the viewfinder. Imagine how hard it would be to avoid it if I had a camera strapped to my head.

Comments

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Look, I didn't mean to be uncivil, and I didn't mean to be blustering (and I didn't regard you as a complete stranger, and didn't mean to troll). I explained in my initial post why I was putting it the way I did; and maybe I shouldn't have posted when I was so narked. If the way I posted got your hackles up, I apologise for it.

And I never claimed to have elite cycling skills. The only reason I act the way I do is because in 4000 miles of cycling in Edinburgh and 2000 in Newcastle (not counting when I was little), I never got knocked off my bike once; whereas in 7000 in London I've got knocked off twice, and just recently came within a squeak of it a third time. I'd love to live in a world where I could keep to the Highway Code in London as fully as I did in Edinburgh and not feel I was putting my life on the line. But until the standard of driving here improves, I'm putting number one first; because I'm not prepared to pay the penalty of hopitalisation or death for keeping to the strict letter of the law.