*
Just in case you’ve been living under a rock and missed it, the give way rules changed today.
I spent much of my day driving around Auckland. It was amusing because at every non-signalized intersection you could see people in the car opposite arguing about who should go next.
But I can’t scoff because my own grasp of the new give way rules is poor and I clearly need to practise (possibly all those people were arguing about why I wasn’t going).
Anyway, you can do a simulation here.
Apparently the guy who created this test was worried that 1 in 10 New Zealanders got it wrong and, I quote:
“Many also failed to give way to a cyclist approaching from behind on a cycle lane.”
Clearly this is not a man who cycles much, as otherwise he would have known that motorists failing to give way to cyclists is just the status quo in most parts of NZ.
Finally (not that I’m condoning this behaviour), but if you are in the habit of consistently running some red lights, because (just to give a purely hypothetical example) you’ve been cycling through that light sequence for 10 years and you know that in the two seconds after that light turns red, you can get ahead of the cars, just before the light goes green, and thus save yourself inhaling a lungful of diesel fumes from an Auckland bus and prolong your life by several years. Then maybe for a few days don’t do it.
Why? Because running red lights is bad. But, just in case you don’t find that argument particularly compelling, I also read an article somewhere** which suggested that Auckland Transport might be changing the light sequences at some intersections to adjust to the new give-way rules. So the green light may not come exactly when you expect it anymore…
*I borrowed this amusing image from another NZ blog Econfix.
** I can’t find it anymore.
