We have all done it and this guy breaks down why we do brilliantly.
Cyclists run red lights not because we consider ourselves to be supreme beings but because of the forces of physics. The nature of the bicycle is that we have to use our own energy to move. Getting going is not simply a matter of disengaging the clutch with the left foot and easing the right foot onto the accelerator. When cyclists stop we have to give up all the kinetic energy we’ve built up and when we start again we have to overcome the inertia of our own body masss and that of the bicycle, the road resistance, wind, and so on. Cyclists running red lights are like people walking in a park who walk in the direction of where they want to go rather than following the paved paths. If enough of them are doing it, the result is a muddy rut in the grass. We don’t blame the walkers, we blame the planner who didn’t think about desire lines when making the paved paths.
Short excerpt taken from ‘The Physics of running red lights’. Read more of this great article here.
Found at The Bike show blog.
Big up John for the linky.
January 7, 2010 at 8:50 pm |
Tidy.
January 9, 2010 at 10:45 pm |
Good reasoning, but I still stop at red light because I’m not in any rush, after all bicycle are part of the traffic, not against it.