Why cyclists need to get a jump on life

This morning as I cycled through Covent Garden, Melanie Phillips nearly killed me. Here’s how: I often jump red lights in London on my bike. I quite see how irritating it is, but it just feels safer to be in front of the buses. This time though, as I was about to sidle through a red, I remembered that last week in her excellent blog, Melanie accused light jumping cyclists of being “sunk in a pit of moral blackness.”  The force of her rhetoric, her obvious anguish affected me so I held firm and waited.

Red, amber, green: I set off. A second later, a taxi on my right swung left straight into my front tyre. The bike fell over, the taxi fled without stopping to see if I was alive. Had I been a foot or so further forward, I’d have been toast.

What’s the moral here? Well, that the moral case isn’t always as clear-cut as Melanie thinks.