BBC article on cycling accidents

They were random stops:

City of London [Police] spot checks on HGVs [were] carried out on 30
September 2008 as part of the Europe-wide Operation Mermaid2, which is
intended to step up levels of enforcement of road safety laws in
relation to lorries.
On this one day, 12 lorries were stopped randomly by City Police. Five
of those lorries were involved in the construction work for the 2012
Olympics. All of the twelve lorries were breaking the law in at least
one way

Repeat: a 100 per cent criminality rate among small random sample of
HGVs on the streets of central London. The offences range included
overweight loads (2 cases), mechanical breaches (5 cases), driver
hours breaches (5 cases), mobile phone use while driving (2 cases),
driving without insurance (2 cases) and no operator license (1 case).

3 women have been killed by collisions with lorries so far this year.
I doubt that being able to turn left on red would have enabled any of
the 3 to avoid the collisions that killed them.

Meryem Ozekman, killed at Elephant and Castle last week, was nowhere
near a traffic light when she was run over. Rebecca Goosen, killed on
Old Street, was almost certainly going straight on over the junction
with Aldersgate Street, as her office was on Cowcross Street, so she
is likely to have followed Clerkenwell Road at least to the St John
Street junction.1 And Eilidh, killed at Notting Hill Gate, is known to
have followed NHG all the way down to Shepherd’s Bush, and, in any
case, is reported to have been on the right hand side of the lorry
that killed her.

http://www.movingtargetzine.com/article/boris-left-at-the-lights