Should cyclists have the same speed restrictions as motor vehicles?

[Rockets]

Police do seem to be taking a more proactive approach to enforcing rules for cyclists. I know City of London police have been doing it a lot but I saw a load of PCSOs lingering around the junction of Chelsea Embankment and Albert Bridge last week and saw that they were jumping out and grabbing cyclists who were jumping the red lights - I couldn't see if they were issuing PCNs or just giving warnings.

[Spartacus]

I am curious why some cyclists jump red lights. 

I was on a bus the other day which was stopped at a red pedestrian controlled light, a large number of cyclists also stopped but as soon as they could approximately half of them started up again and went through the red light. 

I was once told it's to do with losing momentum, but in this case that's obviously not the reason. 

Can someone from the cycling side explain the rational because I, and lots of others, just don't get it?

If its not acceptable behaviour for motorised vehicles, why is it accepted by a large number of cyclists? 

 

[Rockets]

As a cyclist I think it is a number of things:

1) not losing forward momentum

2) trying to get ahead of traffic before the lights go green for other vehicles

3) an ignorance that the red lights don't/should not apply to cyclists.

 

It's interesting because back in 2007 (and I can't determine if they have done one since) TFL did a cyclist red-light jumping survey of a number of sites across London and found that 1 in 6 cyclists were jumping red lights and concluded then that it was not "endemic" but that "at this level may encourage more to do so in the future". I do wonder what the level is now and from unscientific observations I would say it is a lot higher than that now - I have actually been chastised by other cyclists for stopping at/waiting at red lights.