Sometimes Newsnight throws up something really worth watching.  Today, it was a report on why traffic lights are the root of the world’s problems.  Perhaps the piece was less emphatic than that, although Paxman rightly described it as “polemic”.  Martin Cassini seems to be something of an expert in the field of ripping street furniture up, and his short film succinctly described why the roads should be much freer of distractions and rules.  I am a firm advocate of such a policy.

I cycle in London.  Moreover, I cycle most on a Sunday morning.  My ten-mile round trip takes me into the West End - needless to say, I meet many sets of traffic lights on my journey.  At nine o’clock on a Sunday morning, not many cars are on the roads, so there are rarely long queues at junctions, but a handful of cars are jammed behind red lights when it is perfectly safe to continue.  Most cyclists in such situations would break the law and run the red light - I prefer not to without good reason.

At other times of the week I travel by bus, during the rush hour, into the City.  The whole feel of the road is different - for one, I would not dream of cycling with that volume of traffic on the streets - but the issue remains the same.  Traffic is held at red lights, each line of cars at a time, instead of feeding naturally.  Traffic jams occur because traffic is stopped from flowing, often at “bottlenecks”, which are usually exacerbated by traffic lights.

As I ride my bike on a Sunday morning, I push off from one set of lights only to be halted at the next: there is a set of lights for every junction.  It would be far safer, I believe, to allow people the respect to judge when it is safe for them to cross a junction.  If drivers have to be careful and co-operative, they will soon become courteous.  Lines of traffic will naturally feed into one another, instead of seeing one wait for the other to move.  Instead of stop-start traffic, a constant flow would be created, easing congestion and cutting pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

Our current system of information overload has lulled people into a false sense of security.  On Sunday mornings, I pass a string of small junctions.  The last in the string is a right turn, about 50 metres after a pedestrian crossing.  There is a traffic light for vehicles that are not turning right, and the cars travelling in the opposite direction are free to move at the same time.  I see a green light and presume that my right turn is safe - crossing a lane of oncoming traffic.  The traffic light is misleading.  A traffic planner would probably suggest placing a right-turn feeder sequence on that junction.  I think there should be no traffic lights there whatsoever.  We see green lights and think “go”.  Instead, we should see a junction, slow down, and consider whether it is safe to proceed.

There are several counter-arguments to this plan, of course, but few of them are of any consequence.

1. How would you stop cars speeding through junctions?
   If you expect drivers to speed though a traffic light-less junction without looking, I suggest that they will pull away at a green light without looking.  At least in the first scenario, everyone is paying more attention because of the obvious dangers.
2. How would you protect smaller vehicles or cyclists from lorries or buses?
   Smaller and more nimble vehicles can navigate junctions more easily.  Sometimes it would make sense for them to stop and allow larger vehicles a little more room.  Drivers of large vehicles would be more aware of their surroundings if they looked around at a junction instead of seeing a green light and expecting to turn.
3. What about pedestrians?
   Unlike hardcore free-streetists, I think pavements are a necessary part of pedestrian protection.  I write that as someone who two days ago was forced to within an inch of the curb by a lunatic in a white Mercedes whose judgement of distance was about as honed as Screaming Lord Sutch’s dress sense.  I feel safer when vehicles and pedestrians are segregated.  When a pedestrian chooses to cross a road, they must acknowledge a degree of responsibility, as do the motorists around them.  I judge common sense, not traffic lights, to be the best method for ensuring that.

Traffic lights hold traffic up.  They cause congestion, pollution and general consternation.  They irritate, annoy and endanger pedestrians and motorists alike.  We should scrap them.  If the state allowed its citizens to think for themselves and judge safety for themselves, perhaps we wouldn’t have so many deaths on the roads each year.  Traffic lights take the thought out of driving.  I would like to trust my judgement, not that of an automated system.  And I say that as one of the most exposed road users in central London.

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UPDATE: Animation to demonstrate this is now online: Traffic Animation.