Thats not entirely accurate.
GREEN means you may go on if the way is clear. Take special care if you intend to turn left or right and give way to pedestrians who are crossing
I meant with conflictless light programs.
In NL most junctions are designed that there are no conflicts possible (if your light it green, then there's no way peds or cyclists have green). That also means if you have proof (eg, video footage or witnesseS) that you had green and you get in an accident, there's no way the insurance can put any blame on you).
I agree you can react in less than 1 second if your alert except most drivers are just not. There is a difference between reaction and actually hitting the breaks which is more like 2.3 seconds.
Therefore, drivers fault. The government here always uses 1 second for calculations of stopping distance. 1 sec reaction time + brake distance is the accepted stopping distance.
Again no ones (or at least I'm not) arguing the cyclist wasn't in the wrong.
I am, the car driver is 100% wrong legally because he didn't have the right way way, any other factor is irrelevant to who's at fault.
I'm not denying the cyclist could have prevented it, it's not very smart go approach the junction at that speed, and that he should have been more cautious due to being blinded by the Van.
But expecting cyclists to:
- Pay attention (they don't, especially the younger ones, you should see the armies of middle/high schoolers around here before or after school hours, litterally 100+ cyclists taking the right of way, going though reds, cycling 5-abreast so nobody can overtake them, general disregard for any other traffic, etc..., But generally big city cyclists don't care about the rules, that is simply a fact, and nothing will ever change about that)
- Sit in stationary traffic (seriously, if you're behaving as a car with a push or motorbike, you're an idiot, it's both not safe and it defeats the point of using a two wheeler)
- Overtake on the other side instead of near kerb (cyclists belong near the kerb, and even without a cycle lane, the standard is to treat the left (here right) side of the road as a cycle lane beside the car's driving lane).
- Insurance or riding courses for cyclists.
All above is a delusion, look in countries where there are more cyclists and stop dreaming. You need to relax the situation for cyclists, not worsen it.
More cyclists means less cars on the road so I don't even see why you'd want to discourage cycling, I myself want as much people as possible to cycle to work, it means more space for me, a petrolhead who loves anything with an engine and likes to go as fast as physically possible.