Anyone who regularly uses the new "cyclist priority" lights at Bow roundabout, I just thought I'd let you know about an incident I had a couple of days ago.
I cycled through the cycle lane lights on green, into the ASZ then as I got to the front of the ASZ the lights changed so carried on over the stop line as it was changing from red/amber to green then onto the roundabout.
At this point a police car that had been waiting in the left hand car lane behind the ASZ sounded the horn, overtook me on the roundabout and pulled me over. A male & female officer got out and told me I'd just jumped 2 red lights. I was adamant that I hadn't, but was basically told to stop arguing or get given a ticket and at one point threatened with being handcuffed. So I stopped arguing, and was let off with a telling off as long as I admitted I jumped the lights and that I'd never do it again.
Not very interesting you may think, but this whole episode did wind me up a little so the next morning I decided to do some Sherlock Holmes style investigation and what I found out was mildly interesting.
During the whole incident the police car was stationary, waiting at the red light in the left hand lane just at the stop line behind the ASZ. From this point it's impossible to see the cycle lane lights, the only lights visible from a car in this position are all red, so it may look like a cyclist is bombing through red, but they aren't, because when the traffic lights for the cars are on red, the cycle lane lights are on green.
Then when I got to the front of the ASZ it's also impossible, from the police cars position, to see the amber and green lights of the early start lights. This is because they are steeply angled downwards to avoid confusing the drivers behind as these lights change a few seconds before the motor vehicles lights. So, again, all the drivers can see are red lights that a cyclist seemingly sets off under.
So there you go, innocent of all charges
. But some info worth noting for regular users if you ever get pulled over by police who think you've jumped a red.
I have written to the met police on this asking them to make sure their officers know how this junction works to avoid this happening again, but haven't received a response and aren't really expecting one.
I think in hindsight what I should have done was act confused and ask the police to walk back to the junction to show me how I was supposed to go through it. It certainly would've been worth it to see how they dealt with it. But when your being told by 2 police officers that you've broken the law, the tiniest seed of doubt suddenly grows and I just wanted to be let off.
Apologies if my descriptions are a bit confusing, I've got no idea how to post a picture of the junction and google street view still has the old layout.
