£60 fine and 3 points, feels very excessive for essentially seeking safety from car drivers rear-ending you or crushing you in-between lanes. Does any one know the legal standing on this? Is there a way to appeal?
The (cycling) Police seemed to be targeting this on City Road last week. I got booked along with a few other motorcycles as we were filtering to the front on a red light… left lane a cab stopped fully into the ASL, on the right lane another cab just over the line. We ended up stopping in the right lane inside the green box not even realising. There were no cyclists around.
I am a learner rider, have my L plates on display, and see the majority of other bikes using the ASLs … which a lot of the time are invaded by cars anyway. Did not realise this was such a big issue, is it a new crack down for the Olympics traffic? or a new campaign pro-cycling?
This is worrying! A lot of people on here seem to have been told by the Police themselves that these boxes aren’t enforced…
And yes, it does seem excessive. What penalty code is on the notice? Supposedly you’ve effectively run a red light so it would be interesting to know if the offence code is the same.
I’m surprised that the ASLs are being enforced at all, I’ve seen plenty of cars & motorbikes happily driving into them in front of the police and never so much as a quiet word has been exchanged.
Whilst I think that there should be some sort of enforcement of the boxes, 3 points seems a bit harsh. A bit of ‘education’ is probably what’s needed first - pulling motorists over to explain the importance of the boxes etc as I don’t think most drivers realise they can get points for stopping in there.
I’m waiting for the letter to come in the post sometime this week. From what I gather from the guardian article below it should be a different offence than jumping a red light, as that would give you 6 points. Also, they seem to say it is not illegal to stop within the ASL if the light is just turning red as you enter… but of course that doesn’t cover filtering.
There were a few bicycle police officers “hiding” there so makes me thing it was a planned effort to enforce the ASL. One perhaps particularly aimed at motorcycles.
Whilst the officer cycled and stopped in front of us, and we were spoken to in generic manner, I have a feeling the cab driver did not get penalised although this might be for the reason on my previous post.
bastards. just trying to get their numbers up i suspect. this is what it comes to when the police are given targets rather than just allowed to police.
if they had no target they would have just told you why you shouldn’t do it and taken up some of your time like in the old days!
I’m not surprised at this at all. In fact I am actually surprised it has taken this long before plod started enforcing the ASLs.
From what I have seen myself, the cycle plods mainly pick on bicycle riders jumping red lights and otherwise generally being a nuisance. How many times then will they have heard a cyclist defend him/herself by saying that the ASL are all full of motorbikes so it was safer to keep going? This way, they can properly say that they are on to this, and so the cyclists should behave.
On the other hand, the plod may have been there to watch for cyclist light jumpers and the motorbikers were simply a bonus.
No doubt within a couple of weeks there will be a thread about getting the same penalty for using the cycyle lanes in Upper/Lower Thames Street. It’s only a matter of time…
I never even realised it was an actual offence to enter these things until I joined this site. They didn’t exist when I took my car test and I don’t remember them being mentioned at all when I did my DAS training, as I don’t think there are any where I did it.
Yes, it’s in the highway code and we should all know the highway code off by heart :Whistling: But why aren’t motorists sent official letters explaining any new additions to the highway code, or even a letter to tell them a new rule has been added. That way people would at least know.
Well yeah they should get rid of everyone except cyclists from ASL but if they’re targetting bikers they’re going about it the wrong way. Cyclists are there because of all other traffic and complain about bikers, bikers are there because of the cars so logical move would be start with the cars because so very seldom I see car stop properly and it’s only because of that that bikers go into ASL.
Or they have to fix the rules, make the box half cyclists half bikers or something, because standing between two big cars at the lights isn’t the best thing either.
Seems clear enough, the offence is a ‘failure to comply’ depending on the circumstances
TS10 Failing to comply with traffic light signalsTS50 Failing to comply with traffic signTS70 Undefined failure to comply with a traffic direction sign
All can be covered by FPN and attract a £60.00 fine and 3 penalty points
I’m sick of seeing cars and bikes go forward into these for absolutely no reason.
Just stop at the first line, between or along side the cars. So what if you’re not in front of them, you’re on a bike aren’t you? Just zoom away when the lights change.
Every 5 minutes on my commute I stop at a red light, only to see a scooter come along and go right past me to the very front of the green box.
The cycle box is for bicycles not motorbikes.
Of course the exception is when you are already in it when the lights turn red. Or I might move forward into it a little bit if there are cyclists trapped between cars behind me, to let them through.
^ exactly this. Except since I’ve been cycling in to work, the ASL jumping bikers & scooterists tend to be wedged alongside me instead of in front. It’s one of the things that gives bikers a bad name with cyclists when we actually share a lot of similar concerns on the road (ie everybody else seems to be trying to kill us).
i’m not claiming to be perfect and I’ve certainly been caught out filtering before and had to pull into the ASL but there are people I see doing it daily, often pushing through the middle of a pack of cyclists and often followed by dangerous/aggressive manouevres away from the lights - they deserve to be caught and fined just as much as the infamous red light jumping cyclists.
Spoke to a local pushbike plod recently, and around work they are trying to clamp down on cyclists running red lights and otherwise having no respect for the highway code, and as he said, it cuts both ways, if they are going to enforce the cyclists, they have to enforce the ASL too. seem to be doing alternate days round here, couple of cyclist mates got on the spot fines for skipping the lights, £50 I think
If you treat the advanced line the same as a regular traffic light stop line then it’s no different than a normal traffic light - I don’t see big groups of bikers filtering past traffic and then pulling over the stop line at traffic lights without ASLs.
It would be better if the cyclists stop box was actually infront of the lights, although presumably the cost would be prohibitive if traffic lights had to be relocated.
