Or they could look to their right before setting off......
Trouble is that you look right, wait for the red light jumping traffic from the right to clear by which time the traffic behind you has set off and you get left hooked by cars going onto the A12 northbound.
The fundamental flaw with the junction set up is that the "early start" is simply a deep ASL where the lights at the front of the ASL go green moments before the others. Get cars in the ASL or some f*ckw*t deciding to gun it hard and the cyclists will get left hooked. I have a video of a motorcyclist doing exactly this. Add to this that as more people use the lights then anyone not off very quickly (or at the back of the queue) will be still in the path of left turning cars.
This whole set up is a horrible mess. TfL act as if the junction, by some law of nature, is dangerous, but this isn't really true. The junction is a mess because TfL are prioritising motor traffic flow at the junction over cycling, and ignoring pedestrians completely. The solution of having a cycle and pedestrian only phase of the lights would work but would diminish motorised throughput and therefore TfL come up with this weird scheme that had a forest of lights beforehand. Adding in even more lights at a slightly different height isn't likely to make matters much better.
