Unironically though. Just use your fucking brain. Sometimes its safe to drive through a red light, sometimes its unsafe to drive through a green light.
In car i would never, because you cant hear or see shit, but on a bike, when there is zero traffic and you can see far down all the roads then why not? People walk over roads that have no traffic lights all the time and nobody is worried there…
I don’t think the term “drive”, which you used in the first comment, is generally associated with cycling.
I understand what you’re getting at about using your head, but unfortunately we live in a society that needs to cater to the lowest common denominator.
At 3am, when there’s nobody around, and you’ve slowed down and can see for absolute certainty that’s it’s clear then yeah you could perhaps justifiably run the red light.
But then that concept gets normalised, people start pushing boundaries. Trying it at midnight when there’s still some traffic and pedestrians around. Trying it at 4pm because “it was quiet”. Guess what’s going to happen? Baring in mind how many terrible drivers you witness every single day.
With driving we need to apply Kantian principles.
“I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.”
Or more simply: “What if everybody did this?”
The purpose of the lights is to remove the requirement for everyone’s judgement at junctions, because human judgement has been shown to often be poor and result in collisions. Yeah, sometimes it may be unoptimised and you have to wait an extra minute, but really, what’s the rush?
At 3am, when there’s nobody around, and you’ve slowed down and can see for absolute certainty that’s it’s clear then yeah you could perhaps justifiably run the red light.
That’s why some traffic lights have to be set up for certain times of the day, as sooner or later rules can be broken.
I once crossed a one-lane one-way street at like 3 am on my bike while the bike path crossing light was red. I stopped and looked around. There were no vehicles or even humans in sight on the street or any of the connecting streets for hundreds of meters. It was 100% safe to cross. Anyway one of the parked cars on the cross street alongside the bike path was a cop with all their lights off, and they rolled their window down and yelled at me. Silly Germans.
We used to live near an intersection that, at night, the red turn arrow would just never change. There would be 0 other traffic, cycle after cycle, so… yeah. In some rare cases I’d rather safely go on red rather than wait hours for morning traffic to arrive.
Unironically though. Just use your fucking brain. Sometimes its safe to drive through a red light, sometimes its unsafe to drive through a green light.
A user by the name unexposedhazard is telling me I should push through the red light. Nah, I ain’t falling for that shit.
In car i would never, because you cant hear or see shit, but on a bike, when there is zero traffic and you can see far down all the roads then why not? People walk over roads that have no traffic lights all the time and nobody is worried there…
I don’t think the term “drive”, which you used in the first comment, is generally associated with cycling.
I understand what you’re getting at about using your head, but unfortunately we live in a society that needs to cater to the lowest common denominator.
At 3am, when there’s nobody around, and you’ve slowed down and can see for absolute certainty that’s it’s clear then yeah you could perhaps justifiably run the red light.
But then that concept gets normalised, people start pushing boundaries. Trying it at midnight when there’s still some traffic and pedestrians around. Trying it at 4pm because “it was quiet”. Guess what’s going to happen? Baring in mind how many terrible drivers you witness every single day.
With driving we need to apply Kantian principles.
Or more simply: “What if everybody did this?”
The purpose of the lights is to remove the requirement for everyone’s judgement at junctions, because human judgement has been shown to often be poor and result in collisions. Yeah, sometimes it may be unoptimised and you have to wait an extra minute, but really, what’s the rush?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kantian_ethics
That’s why some traffic lights have to be set up for certain times of the day, as sooner or later rules can be broken.
That’s true, yes. It’s allowed.
What the fuck
I once crossed a one-lane one-way street at like 3 am on my bike while the bike path crossing light was red. I stopped and looked around. There were no vehicles or even humans in sight on the street or any of the connecting streets for hundreds of meters. It was 100% safe to cross. Anyway one of the parked cars on the cross street alongside the bike path was a cop with all their lights off, and they rolled their window down and yelled at me. Silly Germans.
Sometimes it is unsafe to drive through a green light, especially when people like op drive through red lights lol
We used to live near an intersection that, at night, the red turn arrow would just never change. There would be 0 other traffic, cycle after cycle, so… yeah. In some rare cases I’d rather safely go on red rather than wait hours for morning traffic to arrive.