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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."
"Boise... 150 percent fewer than Bakersfield." How'd they manage that?
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).
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.
Yup, idiots blasting through red lights is a big no. Thankfully that is not what the article or anyone is proposing. In Idaho, red lights can be treated as stop and go for bicyclist. Running red lights is still illegal, and fines are much higher than other states/cities and are enforced. Bicylist are also allowed to make rolling stops at stop signs. Which means slow down, to make sure the intersection is safe, and yield to other vehicles, and if there is no one, just proceed. Blasting through a stop sign is a big no, too.
So, have you ridden a bicycle in a commuting type situation? I've read before that converting many stop signs to yield signs, even for cars, would save all sorts of energy without significant increases in accidents.
With a bicycle it's all about energy conservation. When I'm biking it takes me significantly longer to get up to speed, and my top speed is still well below that of the vast, vast majority of cars.
As such, I typically have much longer to assess an intersection before I reach it, my stopping distance is extremely short, but if you make me stop it extends the time I'll be in the intersection when I DO cross significantly. If I'm allowed to use a stop sign as a yield, I'll attempt to time my passage such that I'll cross near my maximum speed, clearing the intersection expediently. Being through quicker reduces the chances I'll be involved in an accident there.
As a bonus, this way I'm less in driver's way, making me less likely to piss them off.
I don't read AC A human right
" 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.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
It depends on which you are using at the reference point. If the raw numbers are 40 for city A and 100 for city B, then city A has 150% fewer accidents than city B when city A is the reference point, but 60% fewer when B is the reference point.
- W. Blaine Dowler
http://www.bureau42.com
In many developed countries now, road and petrol taxes are essentially punitive taxes: the state wants to make driving more expensive so that more people choose to use public transportation (or cycle) instead. As cyclists are not harming the environment or contributing to gridlock on city roads, then there is no reason they should be expected to pay the tax. Maintenance of roads is out of the general state budget anyway, not just paid from the taxes extracted from drivers.
As a cyclist who commutes year-round in Chicago, I just want to give a little shout out to the motorists, who are almost all incredibly polite. It's human nature for us to notice and remember the jerks (and I recall a few) but the incredibly vast majority of motorists are accommodating, friendly, and (when paying attention) cautious.
If I have one request of motorists, it's to get off the cell phones, something I am sure every road user -- pedestrian, cyclist and motorist agrees with.
The Idaho rolling stop law doesn't make taking your right of way legal. In fact, it makes it illegal. The proposed Oregon law increases the penalty for doing it. If you got to the intersection first in your car, you get the right of way. This is how I treat stop signs when I'm on my bike: if a car got there first, I stop. Unfortunately, they then usually motion me to go, which is really annoying, because I already stopped, so they aren't doing me a favor, but they think they are, so I have to be nice about it. One of the arguments in favor of the rolling stop law is that it avoids this annoying dance—drivers know what the law is, and are more likely to follow it, and so do bicyclists. The problem with the law in many states now is that it's bogus, so bicyclists and drivers collaborate to violate it.
It's really funny when someone says "I'm a professional, so my opinion matters more than the data." Well, maybe funny is the wrong word.
No, this means that you don't understand physics. If I come to a full stop and then go, I am going slower, so the time during which I am exposed to cross traffic is longer, which increases the likelihood that I will get hit. So at two-way stops, any bicyclist with a strong sense of self-preservation and long lines of sight goes through the stop sign without stopping. It doesn't mean that we blast through without slowing down, but we do try to keep as much speed as we safely can. Life is full of tradeoffs...
Hence the point of the article, which discusses what happens when that "shit" stops being unexpected.
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