UKC

As more and more traffic lights are being managed by road-laid electromagnet, I'm left constantly dodging either furious drivers when I run them or pedestrians when I have to detour around.

My expensive plastic bike does not have enough material in it to trigger the light change. Do I run the light? What would the police line be if they tagged me? Can I treat them as 'non working and proceed with caution' a la highway code?

What do you do? I could always sit and die of old age at the red waiting for a car to luckily arrive behind me or even worse, one to arrive but not drive close enough to trigger it.

If there's a car behind me I move forward and try and wave the car forward too so that it sits over the loop in the road.  If not, I pretend to be a pedestrian!  There are two serial offenders near me

I wait a minute, until it's clear the lights don't recognise my presence.  As long as there's no traffic, i proceed with caution.  Something i could defend in court.  If there is traffic, I'll probably get off and push my bike along the pavement - more likely to get caught - harder to defend.

I think legally you would have to walk through.

But so long as the junction is completely empty of traffic and pedestrians I tend to ignore the light and ride through if it is obvious it isn't going to change

Report the light(s) to the council as faulty.

Traffic lights should apply to all traffic.

They never seem to be able to detect a (small) motorbike, no matter how empty the other roads are.

(Yet another example of something named "smart" that demonstrably isn't).

Maybe someone with more knowledge on the inner workings of traffic lights can comment, but I would expect there to be a degree of configuration to the sensors.

Even though we live in an increasingly car-centric world, I find it very hard to believe that nobody considered other vehicle types when these light systems were proposed, developed and rolled out.

Certainly some of these lights are successfully triggered by bicycles and motorcycles, therefore the ones that aren't, must be faulty and hopefully can be tweaked to resolve the problem (but first they must be reported at faulty!).

In the meantime, to answer OPs question, treat them as any other faulty light and proceed with extreme caution as per HC176.

This has been going on for years (decades) with induction loops. I once was waiting for the lights to change in the small hours, when the plod pulled up. They just told me to treat as a Stop Sign, and cycle across ideally when there was no traffic, or if light traffic ensuring that no other vehicles would have to make changes to their behaviour by my actions.  I quizzed what other coppers would do, they admitted it was open to individual officers, but if they see the cyclist stop, put a foot down, look both ways and safely proceed, it would be highly unlikely that an officer would take issue, unless there were other factors (poor lighting, possible intoxication etc).
 

They felt that was safer than the risk of a cyclist being rear ended as they waited for car to turn up behind them to trigger the lights.

That's a very good point, especially in the dark.

There was a nasty accident near my house, 30 years ago.  A car driven by a loon at 80mph (50 limit) hit a stationary car waiting at lights at 1am. They ended up 200 ft down the road.

Dare I whisper I increasingly do this with most traffic lights...

Further to the OP, I often wonder about the legality of waiting or not at temporary lights for roadworks. Can anyone whack up a light and automatically imbue it with the same legal requirements as those in-situ at junctions?
I tend to assume that if I minimise my toolishness with regards to car traffic (and anyone actually working on the road), I'm probably okay to weave through the cones and pedal onwards

Yes - there's a set near me that didn't respond to my 650cc bike. After a couple of times being sat there for ages waiting for a car to come along, I learnt to avoid that junction.

Push bike-wise, there's a set of lights near me where I just wait for a suitable gap in the traffic. Occasionally, they change for me, but it's the exception.

Get fatter. 

By eating lumps of ferrous metal?

Might be easier to just ride a steel bike.

Temporary traffic lights have the same legal status as permanent lights at junctions do. People can't just whack up a light.

For planned works temporary lights are authorised by application to the local highway authority for a temporary traffic restriction order.

For emergency works, authorised risk management authorities have powers to make emergency decisions to temporarily restrict traffic using temporary lights.

Only those relevant authorities have the power to install temporary lights. You can't legally ignore them.

I think that's all true, but it doesn't follow that all temporary traffic lights in place have the correct authorisation. 

I know of a a couple of people who have successfully appealed (one on the advice of his CI father) on the grounds that the lights weren't legal, due to the roadworks overrunning, but there being no application to extend the authorisation.

This year mum had some Ash trees removed, which involved traffic lights. I'd been looking on the highways website for an application. I was a bit concerned especially after there was almost an accident when they were "setting up" 

Induction loop approach controlled pedestrian lights (which defaulted to red on the road but changed to green when a car approached unless someone had pressed the button to cross) were installed about 15 years ago on my cycle route to the station.  I got fed up of them not activating (and I don't even have a carbon fibre bike) and complained, and the configuration was switched to conventional mode where the pedestrian has to request a red by pressing the button.

So there is scope to fix things if representations are made by enough people.

I've not seen this configuration elsewhere, interestingly.  I *think* it was set up to slow drivers down a bit by making them stop at the lights if they approached too quickly.

There will be such cases, but if there's a pavement lifting the bike onto there is a safer mitigation (not riding on the pavement, just lift it onto there at the lights and lift it back before mounting when the lights start to change).

It's been 12 years since the Police were advised to exercise 'discretion' over prosecuting for cycling on pavements.

So go ahead and cycle on the pavement, considerately.

Round here, that 'consideration' means aggressive riding by delivery riders (including scooters and unregulated e-bikes). I wish there were Police to exercise discretion...

I'm a cyclist. I remember having to wiggle about when passing over induction loops on my old steel bike, but I don't recall having too much trouble in recent years, even on carbon/aluminium bikes 

https://roadsafetygb.org.uk/news/n-a-3319/

As a side query: of you had a magnet would that affect the induction loop enough to register your presence? If so, how small could it be?

That makes sense, really, as it'd be silly if anyone could whack up lights willy-nilly. Though I can't help wonder if there's any actual checking or enforcement for brief cases.

It'd be nice if there was some sort of monitoring of the repair jobs done when the works are complete - I often find myself wishing someone had been forced to ride over the stretch in question on 23mm tyres at 40kph before deciding it was made good

Or fit a plough.

Surely if you are pushing your bike whilst walking alongside you are not committing an offence by using the pavement? 

Junction at the bottom of our road, many cars overshoot the white line, or stop a car length short so don't trigger the lights. Always warm visitors when leaving not to cut the corner, as that also means you miss the sensor and get stuck for ages.

Sorry about the lack of clarity in my post.  I meant that if there's traffic about, there's more chance of getting busted by going through the light on red.  So  I'll get onto the pavement.

“If the traffic lights are not working, treat the situation as you would an unmarked junction and proceed with great care.”

See https://theorytest.org.uk/hwc/highway-code/chapter-8.html

Correct: when walking along pushing your bike, you are a pedestrian. There is case law for this, but I cannot remember it.