The majority now ignore a red light. But should we hold on to the principle?

I was struck on my journey in this morning that unless there's a dangerous situation, the norm is now for people (cyclists, that is) in London to go through red lights. Cyclists do stop if they're going to get run over by traffic coming the other way - but when it's merely a matter of principle, we/they chose to run it. I know it's a pretty boring debate, well-rehearsed, but I was struck by it at these lights, and (you guessed it) I have a bit of video to show what I mean. Cue very badly edited, amateur shots with lots of traffic noise. For those interested in such matters, I'm heading West along Theobold's Road, coming up to Gray's Inn Road, WC1. I'm sorry if I sound like a prude - but I did just find it interesting to see that so many jumped these lights.

The roundabout of death

This morning I risked the roundabout of death. Some of you may know it - it's a very very strange cycle path which runs along the edge of a roundabout on the edge of Victoria Park - intersecting Grove Road and the Old Ford Road. The main problem with it is that you're actually going the opposite way to traffic, and traffic does not expect you to be crossing their path just as they're trying to turn left off the roundabout.

Thanks to helmet cam, I took a shot of myself traversing it. It looks quite benign in the video as there were no cars coming either way - but hopefully you can get the idea of how dangerous it is.

Here's how you can find it
View Larger Map And here's my rather crappy video from my helmet. Again, apologies for the editing - still not quite there yet.