Thinking Like a (Decent!) Cyclist: When to Obey the Rules
A blog post about why it’s - sometimes! - ok to break the rules.
Cyclists have a bad reputation for jumping red lights.
I’m here, as a cyclist that sometimes jumps red lights, to tell you that it CAN be a good thing, and we should all learn from those that do it well. (While continuing, of course, to condemn those that do it badly).
Let’s see how this goes…
Lea Bridge Road
If the lights change, should they stop? (well, with the police car there, maybe yes…) Image from Google
Come with me to this pedestrian crossing on the Lea Bridge Road. This crossing connects Walthamstow Marshes with Hackney Marshes. There’s a pedestrian underpass, so it is only really used by people who’re using the bus stop. It’s there because the road is an A-road with lots of traffic, so pedestrians need to be able to stop the cars.
It’s on a long, straight section of road with perfect visibility. As a cyclist, you can see what is going on from a distance of over a hundred yards. When the light turns red, it’s normally because someone has got off a bus and pressed the button. Frequently, by the time you (the cyclist) get to the crossing, the lights have turned red and the sole pedestrian is already across the road.
Should you stop?
The rules say ‘yes’: pragmatism says ‘no’. It’s clear why the crossing is there: it’s to break the unbroken stream of cars. In that situation, I wouldn’t stop and nor would the vast majority of cyclists. The risk to a human of continuing in that situation is literally zero.
LUDGATE Circus
Red light means stop. Image from Google
OK, now cycle with me down the busiest cycleway in London, along the Farringdon Road and into Ludgate Circus. Here, when the lights turn red, the bikes stop. Why? Because each cyclist has realised that they are now part of a mass of bikes that are at risk from other road-users and a risk to other road-users. The lights are there for others but also for them.
Every so often, I’ve seen an idiot jump the lights at Ludgate Circus (normally a Deliveroo rider clearly on the clock) but it’s much more rare than on the Lea Bridge Road.
Without knowing it, sensible cyclists have developed a set of behaviours that largely make sense.
It makes sense to keep going on the Lea Bridge Road and it makes sense to stop at Ludgate Circus.
(And, yes, I know we’ve all seen idiots do utterly stupid things at red lights - but, while very prominent when they weave across the A1 against a red light - their prominence is because of their rarity. You notice the one who did something stupid but not the majority who did not).
What about when driving?
When driving a car, you stop at the red light. FULL STOP.
Why is that?
Well, a cyclist might weigh somewhere between 10 and 15 stone: a car will weigh around 250 stone. A bike is unlikely to be going fast, a car is unlikely to be going slow. A car is much bigger. A cyclist has full visibility and situational awareness in the open air, a driver has blind spots and limited outdoor hearing. A cyclist is vulnerable, a driver is protected. For all of these reasons, if the light is red and you are in a car, YOU STOP.
Drivers sometimes get grumpy about this and feel that because they have stopped (e.g. on the Lea Bridge Road), so should the cyclist. But it’s about a different type of risk.
What’s the point of all this?
If we’re going to get things done faster and better (which is what I support people and organisations to do), we need to move as quickly as is safe. That means we should sometimes break our organisation’s rules. But when, and which rules?
Well, if the rules are about safety or the environment or a defined legal obligation, then this is like driving a car. YOU OBEY THE RULES. You obey the rules because these rules matter in these situations. It might feel pointless for a driver to stop their car on the Lea Bridge Road when they can see no-one’s crossing and it might feel pointless for a manager to wear a hi-vis vest visiting a building site out-of-hours. But we obey those rules because the risks involved are too great and we cannot rely on our judgement to know when to break them. So we just don’t.
But work is full of rules that aren’t about safety or the law: they’re about company policies and procedures and many other things. Should we break these? Yes, sometimes.
We should approach these rules like a cyclist.
The first thing is to be clear that we understand why the rule is there. A bit like the crossing on the Lea Bridge Road, I understand its purpose, so I understand when it’s safe to disobey. If there’s a rule you don’t understand, it’s worth trying to figure it out before breaking it. A traffic light that looks inexplicable might be protecting a fire station or a dangerously narrow bridge just round the next corner. Obey the rule until you understand it’s safe to break it.
Even then, that doesn’t mean you should break it.
You should break it if it is going to slow you down and achieve nothing. Like a cyclist approaching the crossing on the Lea Bridge Road when the only pedestrian has already crossed, the purpose of the red light is clear and sensible but it shouldn’t apply to you now. But that does not mean that red lights don’t apply to you. At Ludgate Circus, you should obey every red light. That’s because the purpose of these lights is to control the large volume of cyclists using this route, and you are part of that large volume of cyclists.
Be a cyclist, not a banker
My point here is not that you should ignore rules. Rules are not there to be broken.
As an illustration of this, people say that the financial crisis of 2008 was caused by the banks being under-regulated.
But that’s simply not the case: it was fairly obvious what the regulations that existed were designed to achieve.
The problem was that bankers found ways to create tradeable products with enormous risks attached that got round the regulations. The letter of the rules was followed but the spirit was broken.
I’m saying precisely the opposite. Sometimes you can (and should) disobey the letter of the rule, if doing so will get things done faster. But you should only do so if you understand why it was created and can explain why it’s safe to break it.
A decision tree
To summarise:
Is the rule designed to protect safety, the environment or some other legal obligation? If “yes”, OBEY
Is it obvious why the rule exists? If “no”, OBEY
Will disobeying it do harm? If “yes”, OBEY
Will disobeying it get things done faster? If “no”, OBEY
If your answer is no, yes, no, yes then you’re making the same situational judgement I make on the Lea Bridge Road. And you have my full permission to break the rule.
Take action!
Freewheeling teams show a bias to action. Take action now:
If you’re a leader:
Explain these principles to your team. It’s much better for everyone to understand when rules can be broken
Role-model intelligent, risk-assessed rule-breaking. Make sure your teams know when you break rules that are set for you; and why you did it
Support your teams for breaking rules as long as they broke the right rules for the right reasons
If a team-member has broken a rule, treat it as an opportunity to improve the rule. It may be that it’s not fit-for-purpose any more, and a tweak can retain its spirit but prevent it acting as a blocker
If you’re a team member:
Talk to your boss about these principles. Do they agree? If not, why not? See if you can figure out how to make them work in your organisation
If you do have to break a rule, seek forgiveness afterwards. If your company is a good one, it will recognise it as an opportunity to tweak the rule
