Something of a rhetorical question as far as I’m concerned. Of course we should still adhere to rules of traffic lights when traffic is bad and backing up. Maybe even more important than when the roads are quiet.
In this video, you’ll see 2 cars blatantly go sailing straight through red lights. I guess they had lost patience with the queue that was building.
I have two issues with this….
- risk blocking entrance from right (also light controlled)
- when lights for cars are red, the crossing will be green for pedestrians and push bikes
So, at best you have a clear run on the other side of the junction and nothing bad happens, as it the case in this (rather boring) video. However it would be very easy for someone on a push bike to see the green in his favour and continue into the road at speed without looking. Splat.
A less disastrous impact would be blocking up traffic from the right, causing the traffic jam to spread around surrounding roads. The only thing you’d achieve in this situation is slowing down other roads for no real benefit.
Of course if you had gone through the lights and ended up jamming up the roads you make it very difficult for traffic to manoeuvre should emergency services need access (in this case, blue light cars did come past shortly after this video).
You’ll see in the video the car(s) that ignored the lights got no further on their journeys than they would have done had they followed the rules of the road.
This is an aspect of city driving I really hate. When it’s perhaps more important people follow the rules of the road, more people seem to ignore the rules of the road in a futile attempt to get ahead and avoid the inevitable delay.
