tends to be my tactic if I bother with them, albeit doing that I'm being no more legal than the drivers are by jumping the advanced stop line too.
I've had it out with a traffic PCSO before, their reason for ignoring ASL infringements in Manchester at least was that ASL's had "only been in force for 8 years and that was too soon to expect drivers to have learned what they're for".
make your own conclusions from that one.
less officially, I know other cops who are frustrated and angry at the tiny number of them there are generally going out actually to patrol and respond to incidents as they occur, different shifts, other duties - going to court, booked appointments with people tying them down to a desk or a set time to be at somebodies house, specialist sections that the top brass have set up or decided to stock with a cast of thousands all steal the reality of the Dixon of Dock Green copper out and about to deal with these low level and in most peoples eyes victimless crimes. Adding to the widespread view backed up by lenient judiciary and weak laws (IMO) over more serious misdemeanours/crimes committed when driving and we're very much on our own shouting for enforcement of ASL's.
All in all ASL's are a red herring, ignored by most drivers unenforceable in reality, giving a false sense of security and entitlement for us and attracting huge swathes of time and words on the internet when arguably there are far better ways of keeping me safe and far worse examples of inconsiderate driving we should be shouting about.
They've failed in/by their ubiquity, I think we'd do better to scrap them at all but junctions where there is a demonstrable higher risk but have them enforced properly by targetted manpower campaigns, as per the London ones & Grimaldi (GMP) & Bluenose (? - Essex) etc and all the time routinely by cameras and FPN's at those points as with speeding.
