I've noticed RLJing increase significantly in Brum over the last 18 months. To the point that I'm surprised if I see one stop.
We've discussed this before, I think. On the routes I take, I rarely see another cyclist, let alone anyone jumping the lights (although you wouldn't across the middleway would you?). The number of people I see riding on the pavement are vastly outnumbered by the lights-using types on the roads. I'm not condoning RLJing or pavement cycling, quite the opposite in fact, but to suggest it's the majority of cyclists is pretty fanciful.
I'm fed up of getting the brunt of their behaviour.
Going back to the OP and "getting our house in order", if every cyclist magically transformed in to a model of Cyclecraft perfection overnight, would every driver also magically transform into a model highway citizen? Every cyclist would be safer, but would the ridiculous things drivers sometimes do become just a bad memory?
Cyclists shouldn't be RLJing, or on the pavement, or running the wrong way up one way streets or any of the other stupid stuff. It probably does endanger me slightly through "general bad feeling", but the reason they should be more sensible to make themselves safer.
There is, I think, a minority of drivers who drive dangerously - too quick, dodgy overtakes, and so on - in the full knowledge that what they're doing is unsafe or illegal. They continue to do so because a) they're hardly ever nicked and
everyone else on the road accomodates them by slowing down, moving out of the way, and so on. Those prats are going to drive like dickheads no matter what.
There's a much larger group who simply aren't as good as they think they are, who get things wrong occasionally. If a "discussion" ensues they're probably quite likely to bring out the RLJ, wobbling around, etc stuff because they can't see or won't admit their own mistake. (After all, if someone really was wobbling around you'd give them more room, not less surely
). Those are excuses, not reasons, and crap excuses at that.
Unfortunately the same applies to cyclists. I'm aware this might sound like a council of despair, but I don't mean it to be (and that I've wandered off my own point a bit). I'm just laying out an alternative position.