Traffic Optimization: Cyclists Should Roll Past Stop Signs, Pause At Red Lights

Lasrick writes: "Joseph Stromberg at Vox makes a good case for changing traffic rules for bicyclists so that the 'Idaho stop' is legal. The Idaho stop allows cyclists to treat stop signs as yields and red lights as stop signs, and has created a safer ride for both cyclists and pedestrians. 'Public health researcher Jason Meggs found that after Idaho started allowing bikers to do this in 1982, injuries resulting from bicycle accidents dropped. When he compared recent census data from Boise to Bakersfield and Sacramento, California — relatively similar-sized cities with comparable percentages of bikers, topographies, precipitation patterns, and street layouts — he found that Boise had 30.5 percent fewer accidents per bike commuter than Sacramento and 150 percent fewer than Bakersfield.' Oregon was considering a similar law in 2009, and they made a nice video illustrating the Idaho Stop that is embedded in this article."

Comments

Negative accidents

[Muros]

"Boise... 150 percent fewer than Bakersfield." How'd they manage that?

Dangerous

[KingOfBLASH]

IAAC (I Am A Cyclist). However I think that people who treat riding a bike as if they own the road are asking for trouble.

It doesn't matter if you SHOULD have right of way. It matters if someone will see you and stop (and not run you over). When you come up to any dangerous intersection (or any intersection) you should slow down, look to make sure you're not going to get plowed into, and THEN go.

As a cyclist, you might be going 30 KPH easily, but you're much easier to miss for a motorist because you are so small, and you might come at an odd direction (most people aren't used to making sure there's no cyclists on the shoulder).

Re:Dangerous

[pipedwho]

There is nothing in the regulations that say treating a stop as a yield or a red light as a stop sign somehow gives you any additional right of way. All it means is that you don't have to wait as long to determine if the intersection is safe to cross.

The Idaho Stop / California Roll is all about going slow enough that you can gauge the traffic heading towards the intersection for the other directions to determine if it is safe to move. A stop sign simply 'forces' cars to stop even if it would be otherwise safe to only slow down to a few miles an hour. And a red light forces cars to stop even when you can see for miles in both directions that there is nothing coming.

A car moving slowly can easily kill or do heavy damage to a pedestrian (or another road user). Whereas a bicycle has a much smaller cross section, lower kinetic energy, and a rider that is far more likely to come off badly no matter how small the object/person is that they collide with.

You can't be serious saying it is more dangerous to give way at slow speed versus coming to a complete stop and then having to huff and puff back up to speed, while simultaneously being overtaken with inches to spare by a bunch of impatient motorists because you can't outpace them.

In fact the article gives clear statistics showing the exact opposite. Just about every cyclist I know treat 'right of way' as synonymous to 'enter at your own risk'.

enforce existing laws?

[dltaylor]

How 'bout ticketing the jerks who disrupt traffic by rolling through intersections, break up the 30-bike pelotons, and otherwise make them actually obey the law? Maybe they wouldn't have so mny accidents if the riders weren't abnoxious.

If it had been motorcyclists, rather than bicyclists that tailgated the SoCal guy and hit him when he stopped, there would never have been the travesty of justice as his murder conviction.

Re:enforce existing laws?

[nblender]

Around here cyclists have a sense of entitlement. You can be sitting in your car, at a red light and watch cars and cyclists cross in front of you. When their light turns red and your light turns green, the cars will stop but the cyclists will keep crossing in spite of the red... So you and 100 other cars are sitting at a green light waiting for the stream of cyclists to stop... I've been at the front and started to creep through the green in hopes of signalling that maybe their turn is over... The result is a nice finger gesture... On rural roads, the weekend tour-de-france wannabes ride on the 1 lane highways with no shoulders (the white line on the side of the road is in about 12" and then it's 'ditch')... So legally, you can't pass them if you have a solid line, which especially sucks if they're ascending a long hill at 3mph in the middle of the lane... Because it's a hill, there's a solid center line the whole way and you're stuck there... If you toot the horn in hopes they might consider pulling over and letting the dozen or so cars pass, you again just get the finger... "Fuck you gas-guzzling asshole. I'm out here exercising righteously!"

Yeah; I have a bad attitude... I cycle too but I don't get in everyone else's way...

Re:So a bicyclist is safer.....

[msauve]

" perhaps my opinion is clouded as to their reasoning"

Their reasoning is that cyclists don't obey the rules anyway, so why not legalize the behavior so they have one more way to bitch about cars not yielding to them.

Seriously, I live near a university town, and cyclists are terrible about obeying traffic laws, they'll glide through stop signs, ride the sidewalks when convenient, etc. Then they'll turn around and complain that cars don't treat them as equals on the roadway. Well, you can't have it both ways, if you want to use the right-of-way, you need to follow the same rules as everyone else. I have no sympathy for the self-righteous assholes. (not all, but a very large and visible number behave that way)

If it's safe for a bike to glide through stopsigns or treat all stoplights as signs, then it's safe for motor vehicles to do the same. In fact, it's recognized that this is sometimes the case - that's why there are blinking red lights. There's no reason to give bikes any special treatment.

Re:Stopping and thinking

[mrchaotica]

You wanna know what else increases the likelihood of being hit? Doing unexpected shit, like not stopping for a stop sign.

Hence the point of the article, which discusses what happens when that "shit" stops being unexpected.