Why cyclists should be able to roll through stop signs, ride through red lights

I think this over-states the case for &quot;otherwise law-abiding&quot; cyclists. Anyone who&#x27;s tried crossing Market Street on foot has probably been nearly hit by a cyclist completely ignoring stop signs, red lights, and anyone else&#x27;s right of way. Those problems need to be addressed with direct enforcement before we can possibly consider giving bicyclists any special treatment above the behavior of cars -- specifically because they have already shown that many of them are not capable of using their own discretion with respect to a pedestrian&#x27;s right of way.<p>I spoke to an SFPD officer on Market and 2nd the other day, and he watched as five different cyclists ran a red light stopping vehicular traffic on Market. I asked him why he wasn&#x27;t giving tickets to the cyclists, and he told me that he is specifically not allowed to. He reiterated to me that the official policy of the SFPD is not to enforce traffic violations by cyclists on Market Street. He told me that this is because the SF Bike Coalition has run a campaign vilifying police officers and accusing them of harassing cyclists. This is all at the cost of pedestrian safety.<p>I&#x27;m not making this shit up, either. I&#x27;ve been hit by two bicyclists in the last year who were running red lights while I was legally crossing Market street on foot. And let&#x27;s not forget all the cyclists riding on the sidewalk or against traffic.<p>SF is a zoo enough without people gleefully ignoring all traffic safety laws to suit their own convenience, and I don&#x27;t think we should make it any easier on the people who do it.

The energy-use argument strikes me as ... interesting. It&#x27;s not that stopping and starting takes any less energy for a car (particularly avehicle without regenerative braking), but that the <i>rider&#x27;s effort</i> is greater. In fairness, the article states this, but the distinction could be clearer.<p>It does highlight just how much of an efficiency loss frequent stop&#x2F;start traffic is. In my experience, my most efficient travel (long distance at ~90 kph) is about 1.7x more fuel efficient than when I&#x27;m driving surface streets with frequent stops, based on liters&#x2F;100km (US MGP ratings obscure this relationship).<p>As a cyclist, <i>in light traffic</i> I tend to the Idaho Stop practice. There are a number of rationales:<p>• The injury a bicycle can inflict is generally vastly less than that of an automobile.<p>• Cyclists almost always have much better visibility and awareness of surrounding traffic, with the possible exception of traffic to the rear.<p>• Bicycles generally accelerate much more slowly from a stop than motor vehicles.<p>However, <i>in traffic</i> scenarios, I tend to fairly studiously adhere to the rules of the road. Why? Predictability, and my own risk. If I&#x27;m following RoTR, drivers have a much better sense of where I&#x27;ll be, and <i>I</i> am less likely to get into an unpredictable (and likely harmful) situation.<p>One other item: stop signs outside the US are often substituted for with &quot;give way&quot; signs (you&#x27;ll occasionally see &quot;yield&quot; in the US). Where it isn&#x27;t necessary to <i>always</i> stop, cautioning drivers (and establishing legal rights of way) is considered sufficient. Replacing intersections with roundabouts also addresses this through traffic flow.

It may be difficult to believe, but automobiles are a much bigger threat to the safety of pedestrians than bicycles are. This is true no matter how you measure it: rate of incident, rate of injury, rate of death, etc. Motorized vehicles drive too fast in urban areas. Pedestrians should welcome anything that effectively slows them down.

If bicyclists are to be allowed in vehicular traffic lanes, then they should be treated as vehicles and governed by the exact same laws as vehicles. No exceptions.<p>Bicycles are part of a larger system and that system runs on expectations. Adding a new class of movement patterns for bicycles which are sharing lanes with cars makes this system much more difficult to predict <i>for everyone</i>. There&#x27;s no way this would be safer in dense, highly trafficked cities.

In a somewhat related note with bicycle laws, what is the best way to deal with bicycles filtering? Bicycles can filter at a light&#x2F;stop sign to get up to the front. However, they then hold up the cars since the bicycle should be treated as taking the entire lane and the cars have to wait for the other lane or an empty turn lane, etc to pass them. This is exceptionally bad on roads with speed limits more than 20&#x2F;25 mph, causing severe back ups between lights and stop signs. This is just another issue that causes people to rage about cyclists.

I find it interesting that the article compares this to right turn on red. There&#x27;s a fair amount of evidence that right turn on red is pretty damaging to pedestrians and cyclists. For instance, this report [0] from the US DOT saw an increase in collisions with bikes and pedestrians of between 50 and 125%.<p>Not exactly the horse I&#x27;d hitch my carriage to...<p>[0]: <a href="http://ntl.bts.gov/lib/25000/25600/25603/DOT-HS-806-182.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ntl.bts.gov&#x2F;lib&#x2F;25000&#x2F;25600&#x2F;25603&#x2F;DOT-HS-806-182.pdf</a>

According to the article and video, under the proposed law, bikes wouldn&#x27;t be allowed to &quot;blow through a stop sign&quot;. The fine for that would be even increased.<p>Which makes me wonder, what&#x27;s the difference between &quot;yielding while preserving some speed&quot; and &quot;blowing through&quot;? Is there a defined speed that is still allowed?

For San Francisco, my biggest right of way question is: is a homeless person pushing a shopping cart filled with bags of recycling, at 1mph, occupying a lane of traffic, a pedestrian, or a vehicle?

I&#x27;m from Ireland. Our level of cycling and accommodation of such in law and infrastructure is certainly far better than the US but also far worse than, say, the Netherlands or Denmark (who are exemplary in this respect (and many others)).<p>I come across these kinds of arguments a lot on boards.ie (Irelands main internet forum) and in general public discourse.<p>What I find interesting in these kinds of arguments&#x2F;discussion is, basically, how bigoted people are, without realising it. In almost all cases I have seen, people who cycle are in favour of cyclists rights, poeple who drive are in favour of drivers rights, people who do both are in favour of a compromise. Very rarely do you see any impartial evidence based assertions on the matter. All of you here: Read back your comment and think about that, are you biased?

There are two concepts that come into play when complying with a stop sign. The first is to come to a complete stop. The second is to yield to any conflicting traffic prior to entering the intersection.<p>What many people fail to realize is that the first action is largely unnecessary when there is sufficient visibility to check for conflicting traffic prior to actually reaching the intersection. As long as one yields to conflicting traffic, coming to a full stop is immaterial to intersection safety.

After bicycling to and from work for a couple years, I settled on exactly this behavior. If you&#x27;re doing it as stated, there&#x27;s no risk because there&#x27;s no car driver close enough to be reasonably confused about what you&#x27;re doing.

If you&#x27;re riding your bike on the road, I think you need to follow the rules of the road. Otherwise, get off the road.<p>I&#x27;ve seen way too many cases where cyclists make the roads more dangerous for everyone.

The Idaho Stop makes sense to me and is basically what I did as a kid when I biked a lot more, but as a driver (in Redmond no less, the &quot;bicycle capital of the northwest&quot;) I still want more restrictions on bikers. Basically my dream is this: if there isn&#x27;t a defined bike lane, bikes are pedestrians. This implies they should stay on the sidewalk (or if there is no sidewalk then the shoulder or side-dirt) and use the pedestrian crosswalks at stoplight intersections unless the Idaho Stop applies, especially if they need to go left they should wait at the crosswalk instead of crossing over a few lanes to the left-turn lane.

TFA seems to exaggerate the difference between Idaho and Dead Red for stoplights. Depending on how Dead Red laws are interpreted, the stopping time is not necessarily a &quot;set period&quot; as stated. If the cyclist knows the induction loop isn&#x27;t going to pick up the bicycle, then a momentary stop meets the requirements in many jurisdictions.

Cars pay yearly taxes (registration) and face inspection and insurance requirements to drive on roads. Cyclists are not taxed yearly for owning a bike, required to get licenses, insurance, inspections, etc. Until this changes, riding bicycles on public roads is a privilege, and should be treated as such.

Yep.<p>Cars too.

If cyclists want to ride on the roads that are predominantly used by cars they should have to follow the same traffic laws as cars so they are as predictable as cars. Pedestrians walking on the road have a strict set of rules to keep everyone safe. Alternatively, they should be barred from riding on roads and have their own rules which would make them equally predictable.<p>Northern Virginia has some of the worst drivers I&#x27;ve seen anywhere in the country but you can predict that they&#x27;re going to run a red light up until 5 seconds after it&#x27;s changed or that they&#x27;re going to race past a line of stopped cars and try to cut into an exit at the last moment while texting.<p>Cyclists here are a completely different breed and are in no way predictable. I&#x27;ve seen them riding into on-coming traffic, ditch off a road onto a sidewalk to cross an intersection only to jump back onto the road after the intersection. I&#x27;ve seen more near misses with pedestrians in cross walks and cars making a right on red than I can possibly count.<p>Because they don&#x27;t consistently follow any rules whatsoever they&#x27;re dangerous and the majority of them have an holier than thou attitude because they&#x27;re not ruining the environment. They&#x27;re just ruining every driver and pedestrian&#x27;s commute.