2010-11-26 - Rider Down, Tottenham Court Road / Euston Road

I think this might be the incident my boss was talking about seeing the other day. Apparently the bus floored it to sneak through the lights on the cusp of red, and the bike (along with loads of peds) was doing that thing of anticipating the light change too, and setting off sharpish.

The timing of lights is ridiculously close as it is. I've raised this issue before. With everyone keen to sneak through/set off at the first available nanosecond, it would make sense to have a pause of a few seconds between red light and green man. But of course they'll want to keep the traffic moving...

As though that would make any difference! Not the place to mention this but I hit a ped on King Street heading southbound just getting onto London Bridge. The lights holding the southbound traffic are quite far off, so you can't accuse road users of sneaing early. It's a fast junction yet folk insist on meandering across without looking adequately. He went down pretty hard, which, I felt bad about but that was tempered by the risk to my safety (especially if I end up swerving onto the wrong side of the road into on coming traffic).
Once he was ok he immediately aknowledged his error. I just don't get it.

Hope the rider above is/will be well.