Senoufou, this piece on red lights is from three years ago, I think a lot more cities have followed through now; the concept is called the Idaho stop.

The reason for someone on a bicycle going through a red light is quite different, usually, from the reason someone in a car does it, and the dangers are radically different.

More women on bicycles are killed by trucks, because women typically obey red lights; if a woman on a bicycle sees a truck moving up beside her, she'll stay where she is, and move off when the lights change. A proportion of truckers will ignore their blind spot and turn, and will crush the woman to death.

Men on bicycles are more likely to calculate the risk of going through the lights to get away from motorised traffic, and choose going through when it's clear, so they are less likely to be "T-boned" by turning cars, vans, buses or trucks.

When drivers go through stop lights it's for a different reason: they "catch the lights" by whizzing through - often nose-to-tail in a stream of several cars - after the light has turned red. This is really dangerous, because people who are coming the other way - on bikes, in cars, etc - say quite logically "Oh, goody, the light is green, I can go through now", only to be confronted by a stream of fast traffic, often turning.