The Colorado Safety Stop is the law of the land | Hacker News Reader

The Colorado Safety Stop is the law of the land

bicyclecolorado.org

320 pointsmooreds616 comments

The solution that’s never on the table is getting rid of most stop signs.

The main point of a stop sign is to control intersections that objectively need the stop to permit safe traffic flow.

We are instead seeing unwarranted stop signs proliferate like rabbits, justified by things they can’t do, like slow or calm traffic.

On top of that, we’re ignoring the problems _caused by_ unwarranted stop signs, including crashes that wouldn’t otherwise happen, increased noise, increased pollution (especially small particles in the stop sign’s vicinity), higher speeds that are induced after the stop sign (drivers make up for time lost at the stop), and the broader consequences of reducing credibility of traffic regulations overall (people aren’t stupid, and when they are conditioned to that stop signs are mostly pointless, the conditioning bleeds over to the whole regime of traffic regulations).

Stop engineering malpractice, ditch most stop signs, and problem solved!

In west coast cities, stop signs seem to serve the purpose of letting pedestrians exert their legal right of way where it would otherwise be taken by cars. Without stop signs, cars are not really likely to stop and pedestrians will wait until the road is simply clear rather than playing a one sided mortal game of chicken. The result is that cars can pretend that the pedestrian doesn't actually want to cross. With a stop sign, pedestrians can reason that a car has to stop for the stop sign, and so they will also be able to walk.

That said I think stop signs is a terrible solution to this issue.

Said it better than me, at the same time. It's also better than a fully controlled intersection with lights for pedestrians, since you don't have to wait for a light cycle or choose to cross on red.

It's pretty sad to see people having to wait for a gap to sprint across a road, and little wonder that the situation perpetuates people driving everywhere - it's the safest and fastest way to even cross a street.

But there's an even better alternative to that: pedestrian controlled lights.

There is a main road in France I often take, in the south Paris (RN 20), that goes through a small town. There are traffic lights that are only there for the pedestrians. When there's no one there, they'll be green for cars. When there are pedestrians waiting, they can push a button that'll switch the lights.

Instead of the repurposed stop sign, this has the advantage that cars can flow through without stopping at all when there are no pedestrians, which is basically always. I've only ever stopped there a handful of times.

I think roundabouts with pedestrian crossing lights solves the problem. Roundabouts alone also reduce accidents or make them less severe.

They reduce car crashes with other cars. I don't know off the top of my head if they reduce car-pedestrian crashes but I suspect not.

I used to live off of a busy roundabout in a place that makes heavy heavy use of roundabouts (almost no four-way stops). It felt dangerous as fuck honestly. The crosswalks are a little "downstream" of the true circle, where cars have already begun to exit. Frequently (saw this a few times myself) a car would stop for a pedestrian and then get rear-ended by another car focused on exiting the roundabout.

This was not the US so unfamiliarity with roundabouts can't be blamed. They were the norm there.

Every time I see a crosswalk near a roundabout, I think that's a terrible place for a crosswalk (the drivers are distracted by figuring out if they need to stop, and when it's clear to keep going).

How small can you make a roundabout? Where I live stop signs are common at very small intersections.

Alternating two way stops (n/s at intersection one, e/w at intersection two) seems like maybe an ok way to reduce the problem by half at little to no cost?

Roundabouts generally require a driver to look in a direction other than their direction of travel, to determine if it is safe to go. They are also designed to reduce the amount of time any given vehicle has to actually stop if there is no reason to. However, to keep the flow, a driver must check if there is incoming traffic. This varies based on left/right side driving countries. Lights for pedestrians might help, but then the benefit of continual traffic flow is reduced. There are more considerations that can make it work, but I often see this point (my first sentence) overlooked.

For those who live outside the US (or maybe outside California) in California there is a legal crosswalk (ie a 'zebra crossing') at EVERY uncontrolled (ie without lights) intersection, whether it is painted in or not, and pedestrians have absolute right of way (the trade off is that they are not allowed to cross anywhere along a block between intersections).

I now live in NZ where mostly we have Yield/Give Way signs if anything, and pedestrians have no rights (also the neighbourhood speed limit is higher 30mph vs 25) - I'd love for us to have 4 way stops everywhere and slower speed limits everywhere

There's pedestrian crossings in NZ, but sounds like a lot fewer.

Plenty of stop signs here though, but it kinda depends on where you're driving though. They're rather rare in cities now, either replaced by lights or roundabouts.

And honestly, NZ road rules at a "4 way stop" confuse the crap of everyone, as they violate the general assumption of "just give way to your right".

(E.g., I'm at a 4 way stop, I'm going straight, the person to my right has the right of way... ...if he's going straight. If he's turning, then I have right of way. Far more complex.)

But there's still lots of them in the country still :)

I like the solution of the pedestrian triggered stop signs. The don’t literally say stop but they flash yellow and cars have to stop even if there’s no one in the street.

No. This is wrong. Disregard it, please.

If you’re talking about at least California, that isn’t how those work, and please never stop at one unless it’s occupied. Those of us who read the book are expecting you to proceed through an empty crosswalk because we know the flashing yellow lights are legally advisory and often keep going long after the crosswalk is empty. Some even flash permanently. Every time you stop for an empty, flashing crosswalk, you’re risking a collision that you’ll probably get away with, but that will really be your fault deep down.

This is quite simple: if a pedestrian is threatening to cross or actually crossing, whether the crosswalk is painted, flashing, not flashing because they didn’t push the button, or even merely implied by an unpainted intersection (another overlooked reason to read the book, given my pedestrian experience!), you yield. Otherwise keep moving. It’s that easy.

This solution is really cool: https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/ped_bike/tools_solve/fhwasa14014...

Road guy rob is one of my favorite youtubers. He did an awesome video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHX8ezW2XGs

> stop signs seem to serve the purpose of letting pedestrians exert their legal right of way where it would otherwise be taken by cars

So do clear pavement markings and yellow flashers.

Beg buttons with yellow flashers aren't nearly as strong a guarantee in my experience – more people blow through those than stop signs in my area

> In west coast cities [...]

... outside of Berkeley.

When I'm walking, I specifically plan routes with as many stop signs + as few stoplights for this reason.

When I first visited the US the frequent stop signs were one of the strangest things to me. They are so rare in Europe where there are yield and right of way signs instead. Ever since I've been wondering if the fossil fuel lobby is causing this to drive up fuel consumption.

I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago in the 70s. Our house was on a corner.

The city decided that just about every uncontrolled intersection should have a stop sign, and for busy intersections, a 4-way stop. It happened that they put in the stop signs in the winter. We had a few weeks of entertainment watching out the front window as car after car was caught off-guard by the new stop sign. They'd try to panic stop at the last second and of course slide right into the intersection.

Yep, and when there's snow on the roads and a stop sign top of a hill, we treat them as yield signs so we don't get stuck on the hill.

I find the "right of way" signs in Europe way more strange, specifically when the signs aren't present. When you're on a main thoroughfare, it's pretty obvious you have the right of way. It's on the smaller side streets where you need to yield to the person to your right that things get a little weird.

It's natural once you've learnt it -- throroughfare doesn't really matter, the street you're on is signed as having right of way or you have yield signs, otherwise always yield to the car from the right. No signage => yield right.

I'm still not sure who's got the right of way e.g. in US parking lots or unsigned back roads. The person going straight, I think? But that's not always clear depending on road topology. "Yield to the right" seems more well-defined, but maybe because I got used to it.

Small streets can be difficult but often in the U.K. you just get a thick dashed line across the road when you need to give way in a normal place. That’s usually sufficient to figure out which street takes priority over the other (intersections where the middle isn’t part of one of the roads are uncommon) and where to give way.

That's how it works, yes, but why is it strange and a little weird?

The weirdest part for me is that there is no reliable way to tell if the crossing street also has a stop sign (at least in CA). After 5 years of living in the US I still get annoyed about it.

I remember in Illinois seeing a little sign under the stop sign like "4 way", showing you that it was a 4 way stop. Here's a street view: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8659021,-87.6285001,3a,41.2y...

I don't really recall these in New York, but I went for a search on Street View, and we seem to do the same thing here: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6700018,-73.9955353,3a,75y,4...

It seems like that if cross traffic doesn't stop, the stop sign doesn't have a marker. If it does, it gets a tag like "ALL WAY". No idea if this is standardized or an artifact of my sampling, or if it varies between states.

(I had to really rack my brain to find a 4 way stop in NYC. Ultimately the satellite view was helpful, they seem to not paint crosswalks if traffic doesn't stop. Seems dangerous! People are going to cross those streets. But I digress.)

My driving instructor* ~20 years ago said that's the reason stop signs are hexagons – you can see it's a stop sign from the other side. Same for why yield signs are inverted triangles – the person who doesn't have that sign can see from its shape what it is.

*this was for an underage moped license

I think there's non-infrequently an "All Way" sign under the stop sign if the crossing street has one too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-way_stop But I'm not sure how common that is.

There (should) be a very small rectanglular sign right below the stop sign that says "4 way" meaning there are stops on all 4 corners. I've always thought these were way too small to notice and I wouldn't be surprised if they were often missing.

That is part of why the MUTCD requires that the hexagonal shape of the stop sign not be obscured from either side. That way, you have a clear visual reference if there is an hexagonal sign in the opposing directions.

In New Zealand, the paint markings on the road make it clear. Yellow line across the road for stop, white for give way. Examples here: https://www.nzta.govt.nz/roadcode/code-for-cycling/intersect...

Like any good UI, it isn’t something I could immediately recall, but it is something I mostly unconsciously notice when driving. You can also look for signs, but it isn’t as trustworthy.

The states I have lived in always as a “all-way” sign at the bottom of the stop signs to indicate if the crossing streets have stop sign as well

Is there a name for the logical fallacy that if an aspect of a system benefits a group, that the group must have planned said system aspect?

It's a constant thread amongst all conspiracy theorists: GW Bush BENEFITED from 9/11, therefore he must have had some hand in planning it. Tech monopolise BENEFITED from COVID, therefore it's a "plandemic". Fuel sellers BENEFIT from stop signs, therefore they coordinate putting more of them up.

Yes, they are called conspiracy theories. I don’t know if there is a more specific name, but I don’t think calling it a fallacy is correct as a fallacy means incorrect, while a conspiracy means it is unprovable/secret. Conspiracies can be false, but they can also be true with proper evidence and then it is called a scandal.

I think it’s a simple post hoc fallacy. Stop signs proliferated afterBig Oil gained a degree of power over Congress, therefore Big Oil must be part of the cause.

That said, there is precedent for traffic laws being set by fuel consumption concerns and there was industry pushback against it that led to its repeal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law

The difference between Drive 55 and the stop signs is that Drive 55 was enacted by a single legislative act, and stop signs proliferate due to a combination of state code, municipal code, civil engineering practices and limited imagination. Traffic circles are currently proliferating just as easy, and reduce fuel consumption.

it has a name, but not as a fallacy. cui bono, "who benefits?" in the law is suggested as a good place to look (for suspects, for responsible parties) because there's motive.

I agree with the other commentor that this relates to conspiracy theories, but I find that conspiracy theories are where people go when they have no evidence to support their premise. In other words, the ratio of alleged to likely conspiracy theories is really bad for theorists.

Stop signs’ utility in shutting up squeaky wheels or appeasing anti-car agitators are a simpler and more direct explanation.

You basically need them to enforce pedestrian crossings.

I grew up in an older suburb that made judicious use of yield signs (give right-away to pedestrians AND vehicles). I remember being told as a kid to always give the right-of-way to cars and only cross when the intersection was clear - Smart advice from my parents, because cars had no issue zipping thru the intersection without slowing down while I stood at the corner waiting to cross.

Less upfront cost, more longterm cost. You can make a huge grid of streets and just stop sign all of the intersections and avoid any unpleasant calculations of who should have right of way. This way, for the past 70-80 years or so, developers have been able to just ctrl-c ctrl-v mindless designs over greater land areas than city planners can keep up with.

These aren’t related. Simple street patterns do not require stop signs per se. If you have a bunch of four-way intersections, potentially two ways can have yield signs and two ways can have right of way.

Maybe most of Europe. In Greece, my experience was that they seem to throw them everywhere, even if they tend to be largely ignored. For intersections where they really want you to stop, they’ll have two or three stop signs spaced maybe 40–50 meters apart leading up to the intersection. You know, for emphasis I guess.

When I lived in Hamburg in Germany, there was an arterial on my way to work where cars definitely _did not_ stop for pedestrians. The street was 2 lanes wide with an spot to stand in the middle.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying, but the stop sign (around here) means you have to come to a full stop and yield to crossing traffic, which includes bikes, cars and other vehicles, but not pedestrians.

I know of precisely zero stop signs in the area I live, and have seen two stop signs in my lifetime in Norway.

America does seem to have an absolutely enormous number of stop signs. Here in the UK 99% of what would be a stop in the US is just an implicit yield - a road joining another road is a yield. Obviously it's a yield - you'd be mad not to yield - so no need for a sign.

That is like ... blowing my American mind. I'm imagining whole swathes of code in self driving cars that are just commented out before they deliver to the UK.

There are lots of rules that are implicit on European roads. You have to actually read the signs. And as an American, it really requires studying before attempting to drive there.

As an example, in Germany, the speed limit on 2-lane highways is (from memory, it's been 5 years) 100 kph. But when you enter a town, which is designated by a specific sign that tells you the name of the town, the speed limit drops to 50 kph. There is no sign that says "speed limit is now 50 kph." It is implicit from the sign saying you are entering that town. Upon leaving the town, there will be a "speed restriction removed" sign. This doesn't mean there's no speed limit, it means the speed restriction has been removed and your speed limit is back to 100 kph.

Yield or "give way" signs make tons of sense. Think of a small two lane road that crosses a four-lane highway. The cars on the larger road have the right of way and cars entering or crossing must give way/yield to that traffic. There's generally no need for a stop sign, but we as Americans are used to it and see it as the only way to do things.

For what is worth the same happens in Romania and, judging by other people commenting in here, in most of Europe. Around my parts of the continent (Bucharest) a stop sign is in place only if you really, really need to stop for the safety of traffic (usually to ensure better visibility, you see the perpendicular traffic better while you're at a complete stop).

More exactly the "need to stop for ensuring safety" has come first, followed by the Stop sign itself, while in the US it looks like the Stop sign has come first, no matter the actual "neediness" related to traffic safety.

An extremely-well-traveled travel photo-blogger I read sometimes, who has a thing for signs (among other things, like fire hydrants), noted that only one or two other countries in the world come anywhere close to the US when it comes to posting rules on things. He framed it as practically the defining feature of American cities and towns: signs with rules on them, everywhere.

A small road joining a larger road is also an implicit yield in America, but no one reads the bloody drivers manuals!

Same in Turkey, and I presume through most of continental Europe. Most stop signs were removed in late 90s and converted into either implicit yields (i.e. nothing, ‘don’t be stupid’ rule) or traffic lights. Right now they’re trialling allowing California style allowed right turn at red lights.

> Right now they're trialling allowing California style allowed right turn at red lights.

Sounds unwise - this is a fundamentally unsafe policy [1], and more people will die if it's implemented.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/002243...

> California style allowed right turn at red lights.

How are these different from other 'right turns on red' in the US ?

I find turning on red to be a pretty bad idea, because Americans rarely stop fully and look out for pedestrians. I think a majority of pedestrian accidents occurs on turn on reds/stops .

The US, for various reasons that primarily relate to privatized healthcare and a proliferation of lawyers, had absurdly high rates of lawsuits and liability around driving. Most road signs here are excessive for the purposes of making it as straightforward as possible to assign liability to a driver in the event of an acccident.

A prime example of this is the "No U-Turn" signs all over the US. People make U-turns at these spots all the time. The sign is really just there to ensure that any accident resulting from said U-turn is always, no matter what, the turner's fault in a legal sense.

Being allowed to turn right on red is the law in every US state. The only real exception is that it's banned in a few downtowns and, obviously, wherever a sign says otherwise.

Right on red is a bizarre murderous idea - why let cars cross a pedestrians' right of way?

How is that California-style? That's the general rule in USA/Canada (not sure about Mexico). Some dense cities like New York and Montreal forbid right-turns on red city-wide, but those are the exception.

There's a belief that stop signs will slow traffic. Instead, they'll often result in people flooring it between stops, making up for lost time or whatever.

Other traffic calming measures do more to slow drivers down and improve safety while potentially making the entire drive faster, or at least more pleasant and efficient due to a steady speed.

I think we're starting to recognize that, but it's a lot easier to toss up another sign than to move a curb, and stop signs are seen as less of an "anti-car" measure.

Stopping and start every block also burns more fuel, increases pollution (cars emit most when accelerating), increases brake and tire wear, and makes drivers more frustrated and aggressive.

Yup, it's an instance of warning fatigue.

They exist because of the usual bureaucratic CYA risk-avoidance. "We have to do something, this is something" and "If it saves just one life" and all that, even though the vast majority of stop signs never will. Or even the cumulative man-hours lost by stopping exceeds that one life.

I find it’s more of a convenient way for cynical or buffoonic politicians or bureaucrats to shut up squeaky wheels.

Nearly every last squeaky wheel requesting a stop sign is wanting a solution to something much more complex. Even though an unwarranted stop sign can’t solve the problem, it’s the cheapest and fastest way to solve the problem, so it’s chosen.

It's also the lowest-cost "something".

Installing speed control devices is expensive. Installing a sign is cheap.

When your roads are laid out in a neat grid, like many US cities and suburbs, a lack of stop signs encourages you to treat residential streets like shortcuts to avoid traffic lights. People who live in those residential areas don't want a ton of cars cutting through their neighborhood and would prefer that those cars took the main streets. One way to make it unattractive to drive through residential streets is to put a stop sign at every corner.

When I first moved to Seattle, the lack of stop signs in most residential neighborhoods blew my mind! But when I started biking to work, being able to just look both ways and breeze through without stopping was amazing.

Not sure if Seattle is still like this or if it was confined to specific neighborhoods (I lived in Leschi until 2018).

This is common in a lot of Seattle neighborhoods, but the custom doesn’t extend beyond the city limits. For the most part it just works, but when I’m in a car with someone not from the city I always need to inform the driver or they just expect right of way. I lived near one of these intersections and personally witnessed two collisions over ten years. Neither were serious. I think these intersections largely work as a custom, save for the people not already accustomed.

The stop signs haven’t changed (on that note we do have lots of traffic calming islands [1]) but we did get the “Idaho” stop in 2020.

[1]: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1hHn

The other thing I love about Seattle is that in a lot of places you could park on either side of the street facing either direction. Another one of those weird customs that people just seemed to go with

Seattle can do this with its much smaller neighborhood roads and their roundabouts.

Many other American cities with their much larger (new) suburban roads have cars driving at 30/40 mph in the neighborhood

It's still very common outside of the cores of highly urbanized neighborhoods. I generally like it, but sometimes the visibility isn't as well-maintained as it should be.

I've never heard an anti stop sign opinion before. I don't know what to think.

I've been saying this for a long time too. The VAST majority of stop-signs in the US should be replaced by yield signs. Also roundabouts are far superior, even many 4-way light intersections could be replaced with them.

It's not anti-stop sign. Stop signs absolutely have their place. The opinion is against the misuse of stop-signs, where other forms of traffic control are more effective.

Unfortunately a grid system lends itself to 4-way stop signs because two roads at a right angle are equal. In a tree-shaped road system (like in much of the world) you have a main road and a side road. The side road gives way.

Same here. No idea what the hell this thread is about. I've never thought there were too few stop signs or too many. They have never been a problem in my life. To me this is like having a strong opinion on the thickness of a street curb or something. Weird thread.

> I've never heard an anti stop sign opinion before. I don't know what to think.

It's literally how I learned to drive in Europe. They have right of way signs, not stop signs. You stop and wait if someone else has the right of way.

> , like slow or calm traffic.

Perhaps that depends on the context a little. My city has removed some lights in my neighborhood, in favor of 4-way stops, and traffic is much calmer. No more the gunning it to try to make it through the intersection when it's green or orange. It feels so much safer when on foot or biking.

Compared to what it was before, it's a real improvement.

I love all-way stops on intersections where all roads carry broadly equal traffic. They're just so efficient, and very low-tech. But I hate them on unequal intersections, where a yield on the smaller road makes more sense.

The only time I've ever not wanted a stop sign was because the intersection was so dangerous it should have had a stop light.

That may be an example of a warranted stop sign, which is unlike the vast majority that are going up today in cities.

I've seen fairly commonly in developing suburban scenarios something like "a through street with a new -- but very low-traffic -- intersection with a cross street". People are accustomed to driving fast on the through street, increasing the risks of the conflict at the intersection, but 99% of the time there is no conflict.

The easy solution that's often chosen is to add a stop sign to these intersections, but this tends to result in largely-unnecessary stopping and starting, which then tends to increase the number of conflicts (because the traffic on the through street tends to congest at the new stop rather than passing quickly through it).

A better solution would address the nature of the risk -- speed -- more directly. Traffic calming techniques like narrowing the road, or deflection (manufactured bends in the road or speed humps) would improve outcomes for all road users more than a stop sign that creates congestion (and therefore conflict).

I assume you mean "bicycle specific stop signs" and not all stop signs?

Bikes don't have blind spots while vehicles generally do

I mean all stop signs. I have yet to see a single city where the vast majority of stop-sign-controlled intersections couldn’t have been better served with yield signs.

Get rid of the vast majority of stop signs, and you’ve eliminated a huge amount of the problem this law seeks to solve.

I can’t imagine any of the stop signs here in Los Angeles being able to be replaced by yield signs.

They are almost all 4 way stops, with regular traffic in all directions. If you made it an uncontrolled intersection, or added a yield sign, the road with the yield sign would never get a chance to go.

In fact, there are a number of places along my route to my daughters school where I take a slightly longer way to avoid the intersections without a 4 way stop because I would end up sitting forever trying to turn if I went to one of them.

Is there data that you've read on this to back up your claims?

I know there's a push to replace stop lights and signs with traffic circles. But I haven't heard the same for residential stop signs. I've just read that they prefer to eliminate 4-ways stops because 3-ways are much safer..

You haven't been to Sherman Oaks.

What I have started doing is simply ignoring some stop signs. Will I eventually get a ticket?

Eventually, but it hasn't happened yet!

Unnecessary red turn arrows are my biggest complaint about driving in the bay area. This, coupled with multi minute light cycles greatly reduces intersection utilization, and doubles or triples all the commutes I've had. (East Bay, San Francisco, and South Silicon Valley don't have this issue.)

Stop signs seem to be the current solution to roads that promote unsafe/fast driving. It's been demonstrated that narrow, non-straight roads promote slower, safer driving. This is the opposite of how roads have been built in most US suburbs for years.

there's a similar issue with lanes. i grew up in a county with twisty mountain roads, and even in the flat valley areas roads tended to be more like a lane and a half wide rather than two. none of these roads had lanes painted and it was fine. if you saw someone coming and the road was too narrow, you both slowed down and eased past each other, and it's much safe to drive in the middle of the road on the twisty mountains, you just have to be situationally aware of oncoming traffic.

someone from the state saw and freaked out, and lanes were painted. they were too narrow and not safe, but they had lanes!

I'm constantly amazed at the amount of bad engineering traffic engineers come up with. For example, there's a street near downtown Denver that has a stop sign that has a blind 270 degree off-highway-ramp with no stop that racers frequent. You're expected to keep an eye on every other direction and hope you don't get blind sided while pausing at the stop sign by someone going over 100mph off the highway from someone you have to extremely uncomfortably look behind you and around cement blockers for.

Bad engineering won’t eliminate bad engineering.

That’s not a defense of civil engineering culture, which tends to farm lots of free money from unnecessary work with little value.

The stop signs everywhere are one example. Another I would cite is the end of my street, which was ADA compliant with a modern crosswalk, signals, etc. Unfortunately, the crosswalk lines and stop lines wore off, but the city DPW cannot just re-paint them… they need to spend ~$100k on a traffic study.

Would you feel the same if your child was killed at an intersection?

The biggest problem with driving in my opinion is that everyone is in a useless rush. Speeding, rolling through stop signs. Putting more wear on the vehicle, consuming more fuel, and adding more risk, all for the sake of getting home literally just a few minutes earlier. And once home what do most do? The same thing they were doing in the car: sitting on their ass.

This video is a great explainer: https://youtu.be/42oQN7fy_eM

Where I live (Arkansas) stop signs are being replaced by roundabouts.

Seems sensible to me.

Stop signs often are placed mainly as a reaction to a tragedy, as a speed control device (neighborhood residents complain about speed, so the city lowers it, then they complain some more so the city installs more stop signs), or as a device to give police officers probably cause for stopping drivers.

Speed control devices should be used instead, such as using curbs to narrow the street at intersections to just one lane's width.

> neighborhood residents complain about speed

Damn right they should complain about speed. Cars at high speed are just plain dangerous, and should slow down.

Streets are so dangerous here for non-drivers. There needs to be much uch ore complaining AFAIC.

> such as using curbs to narrow the street at intersections to just one lane'

That'd be great!

Sure, they are not ideal. They are there because changing road design for safety is expensive and not something that engineers in the US seem to understand how to do. Removing stop signs doesn't magically solve anything. Road design needs to be changed to keep things safe.

> Removing stop signs doesn't magically solve anything.

It sure does! Look at all the harms caused by unwarranted stop signs in my original post. Removing the vast majority of stop signs removes those harms, and since they couldn’t have solved any problem in the first place, their removal causes no novel, long term harm.

How would yield signs would be better for pedestrians and pedestrian safety?

Amen - we need traffic circles in most circumstances - not stop signs!!!

Yes, roundabouts make a lot of sense and I support them. However, how do you deal with the last mile?

For example, here is a stop sign. Would we convert this to a roundabout as well?

Maybe the problem is we have too many intersections?

https://www.google.com/maps/place/610+Martha+St,+Euless,+TX+...

How are intersections reduced? Closing them off with concrete blocks to create dead end streets? Creating more cul-de-sacs?

I certainly don't want a world where every residential street is a windy suburban-style affair that goes nowhere. That just entrenches car culture and makes it impossible to run efficient mass transit.

This intersection is big enough that you can just put a big concrete half-ball or a flowerbed in the middle, put up a bunch of signs that show how to use it, maybe add some plastic lane separators that ease cars into a right turn. That's it, a roundabout.

That should be a yield, not a stop sign! Preferably with a low 15-20MPH speed limit on a street that narrow.

This. I've seen a few small ones in residential areas in California and they prevent speeding because you need to slow down as you cannot go straight but still allow flow faster than stopping 5 times.

Maybe I need my mind opened but I can't imagine the space requirement for every side street intersection to become a traffic circle. Surely you're referring to intersections only between arterials?

Only on bigger roads. Not very safe for pedestrians.

Yeah I'm gonna go ahead and stay stopped on my bike at stop lights and stop signs. I'm not in such a rush that I would risk getting creamed by some drunk, tired, or impatient driver. I don't care what the law says, I don't trust people in cars. (and I find it annoying when I stop for a car, and then they tell me to go.... no dude, I want you to go, because I don't want to be in front of your car)

I wish new drivers were taught that making unexpected moves is a safety issue. Maybe they are-- it has been nearly 30 years since I had any drivers education. Given the wildly unexpected stuff I see other drivers doing, though, it doesn't seem like they are. (I guess this falls under the heading "defensive driving"...)

I assume assume all other drivers are drunk / sleeping / texting / etc. I'm very alert when I do anything conflicting with the "default" behavior other drivers. My suspicion of drivers goes up about 10X when I'm riding a bicycle on roads.

Point being: We've got a bike path here that crosses a fairly busy state route at the edge of a town. Drivers coming into town don't slow down (even though the speed limit changes way back at the city limits and well before the bike path crossing).

When I'm waiting to cross, invariably, some "do gooder" driver coming into town will stop and motion me on. Meanwhile some driver behind them, not expecting someone to be stopped in the road (and going too fast), ends up braking hard to get stopped. I'm not going to put myself in front of that.

The "do gooder" usually doesn't want to "take no for an answer", either, so I end up having to sit for much longer than if they'd just done the correct thing. In some cases I've even gotten exasperated gestures from drivers, apparently miffed that I didn't take advantage of their "charity".

(I'm actually surprised at the amount of squealing tires I've heard, given that anti-lock brakes are on virtually every car on the road.)

As a cyclist, when some driver waves at me to go contrary to the rules, I do something that looks like it's going to take 15 seconds or so like adjusting my helmet, pulling out my phone to check the time, etc. Seems to work with no fuss from the drivers who think they are doing me a favor.

Lots of negativity regarding someone trying to do something nice for you.

I believe that law takes it into account. If you approach the intersection and there is an approaching vehicle that has a reasonable chance to collide with you if you proceed, then - by definition - intersection is not clear and you are obliged to stop. Let alone the fact that in the absence of 4-way stop that vehicle may have the right of way.

If restricted visibility does not allow you to assess whether the intersection is clear - stopping always is also the right thing to do.

This is actually what this law is about. The difference between a cyclist at a stop sign and your average vehicle is visibility. Cyclists don't have blind spots the way cars & trucks do.

So if you can reasonably see that there is no immediate traffic, you don't have to wait at an intersection and risk hoping that another driver at a 4 way stop will respect the stop sign. This whole law is being called the "Colorado Safety Stop" but was initially called an Idaho stop [1][2]. It resulted in a 23% reduction in bicycle crashes in intersections with STOP signs only [3].

Even if you think the results are not intuitive, they are certainly backed by data. Making this a law just means cyclists won't be harassed by law enforcement for doing what is statistically known to be safer.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT_KdFCVEdc

[3] https://www.bikede.org/delaware-yield-crash-data/#page-conte...

I am confused by how an impatient driver would put you in danger with this law… the law says that you should treat stop signs as yield signs, which means if there is already a car stopped ready to go forward, you would have to let them go first anyway to yield to them.

I find the whole "you go" thing annoying too. Someone in a vehicle can simply modulate their acceleration pedal and be out of there in a few seconds. Getting out of an intersection with a bike isn't as quick.

In states where right of way is codified and well defined in law, generally, "you go" is a ticketable offense (you are instructing someone to break the law, technically, by telling someone else to violate right of way). Additionally, as I once saw it noted, "By not taking your right of way, you are not being courteous, you're being unpredictable."

Also, it's hard to see through windshields. When you're not sure if that was a wave or a weird reflection, you err on the side of caution.

The correct term for this behavior is "nicehole."

If it’s for commuting then yes, it makes sense that exercise isn’t the goal.

But if this is recreational exercise based biking then stopping and starting are perfect additions to the bike workout regimen!

If you can't assess an intersection at 5 mph with good visibility on a bike then that seems wise.

Cycling should be for people of all ages, skill levels, and risk tolerances. I don't think it's sensible to be snarky to someone because you judge them to be taking too many precautions for their safety.

Please do! It's a choice to yield at stop sign, stop at lights - you shouldn't feel any pressure to do so.

I've been cycling in urban environments for 20+ years, and the only time I've been hit by a car was when I was rear ended at a stop sign. There's also been a half dozen or so other times where I've heard cars come to a quick stop behind me, or that I've pulled into the crosswalk to avoid being hit.

I was literally "rear-ended" by an 18 wheeler at an intersection in downtown Chicago. Orleans and Grand iirc.

The guy had pulled up so close to my back wheel, and then "forgot" I was there. When the green turned, he immediately impacted my back wheel.

I was able to exit the bike in the brief second between that tap and when he seriously hit the gas. My bike proceeded to be crushed by the semi along with all my electronics in my bag strapped to the back. I was so lucky to get off the bike (admittedly I was incensed that someone had bumped me and I was about to get into a fight with the person), if I had tried to stay on that bike I would've definitely died!

Being rear-ended is one of the most common accidents for cyclists and motorcycles. When I rode in California, it was less of an issue because I was between cars side to side, not front to back. I felt much safer there than I do in Iowa where I'm forced to queue behind cars and hope the people behind me see me and stop for me. That combined with the much shortened riding season means drivers also aren't as aware of motorcycles and cyclists as they are in areas where people ride year round. I literally rode everywhere in SoCal. It was my primary means of transportation. I ended up getting rid of my motorcycle not long after I moved back to Iowa because of those safety reasons.

The only other time I really got hurt was when a very aggressive driver (again downtown chicago)( became incensed that I was riding in the car lane (no bike lane) and got within inches of my back wheel and started honking like crazy, scaring the shit out of me and causing me to slam into the curb and fly off my bike.

Both were accidents I made while a newb biker, I became a lot more "seasoned" after these two events and became a way more defensive biker

In many cases it is safest for a cyclist to get through an intersection as quickly as possible. Many times I have waited at red lights at empty intersections, only to have a bunch of cars come up and stop at the intersection while I was waiting. That is a much riskier situation than if I had just stopped briefly and proceeded through while empty.

Visibility can be partially obstructed for drivers at an intersection due to surrounding cars. This can create a situation where a car that is stopped 5 cars behind me, or is coming from the opposite direction, might not be able to see me. The risk is compounded at intersections with multiple lanes, where visibility is further decreased, and I may need to wait in the middle lane due to the presence of a dedicated turning lane.

The act of just starting a bicycle from a full stop also increases risk. I wear pedals that require me to unclip when stopping, and clip my feet in again when starting. This can take a couple seconds (I don’t always get it on the first attempt), during which time my maneuverability is severely limited, and I may need to look down at my feet for a moment instead of watching other cars in the intersection. Even for people using flat pedals, it can require more effort to turn the pedals when stopped vs. moving slowly, which decreases maneuverability and increases time spent in the intersection. Riders are also more likely to wobble when starting from a full stop.

So it’s not really about saving time, although that is certainly a nice benefit, but rather about improving safety for cyclists.

This is my experience as well! On several occasions, when going straight in an intersection, I’ve almost been hit by left turning cars with drivers who haven’t seen me until last second.

Coming to a full stop and then slowly crossing the intersection puts you at way more danger than clearing the roads as you approach and rolling through. I like to get out of harms way as soon as I can.

Just like when I'm on my motorcycle, I like to pass cars on the highway, not chill next to them waiting for them to merge into me. Keep moving and limit your time spent in dangerous situations.

> Yeah I'm gonna go ahead and stay stopped on my bike at stop lights and stop signs.

Premised by a false dichotomy. There are more choices than 1. harm and 2. servile obedience to signs.

I think the dangerous situation this is trying to fix is when drivers turning right fail to see you stopped there, ready to go straight. Drivers are usually looking left or ahead when turning right, and often fail to look right. I’ve been hit this way myself. Being able to legally go straight on those reds would help a lot.

The alternative, which does help, is to wait in line behind a car, but often drivers dislike this more (have been shouted at for this as well).

> wait in line behind a car, but often drivers dislike this more

Yes, it can also cause you to miss the light or be in the intersection when red, if it is a quick one and the driver up front is not paying attention, since the bike can't accelerate as quickly from the stop. But I will do this, if it seems safer for the intersection. It's all contextual…

There's lots of stop lights that won't change until a car is over the magnetic sensor. This means staying stopped at the light on a bike will never get you the green (until some car pulls up anyway, but where I live that can be a long time).

You can get around this sometimes with a bunch of strong magnets stuck to your lower bracket, but only sometimes and it depends on the sensors' calibrations.

Point being, this change does have some practical benefits if you have to deal with such traffic lights - running the red in sight of the wrong cop is no longer a concern.

I've had the same thing happen with smaller motorcycles, so I can imagine it's a huge problem for bicyclists.

From what I read the law stems from exactly that, though I don't fully see it either. Most bikers get slammed while they're waiting at intersections by drunk, tired, or impatient drivers. This gets them through more quickly.

This doesn't change anything in situations where you're considering being a meat sack against a metal box.

This is great for slow roads and neighborhoods - where many people prefer to be riding their bikes anyways.

The idea is that if the bicyclist doesn't see any cars, they can go. If a bicyclist is not able to see a car irrespective of the driver's condition, they probably should not be on the roadway.

It's very often safer to cross during a red light when you don't have to do so with a bunch of cars. Often the intersection is empty. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Somehow I don't believe that you come to a full stop same as cars every time at every intersection with a stop sign or red light. Maybe it's just that I've just never seen a bike do it at intersections where an Idaho stop would be safe enough, so I'm extrapolating from that.

I don't think that's what the OP is saying re: simultaneous stopping.

In my experience drivers with the right-of-way will yield to cyclists, unpredictably, because they think they're being courteous. I see this at road crossings and intersections all the time. The driver has the right-of-way but they'll be "helpful" and try to let the cyclist go first.

The linked Safety Stop Fact Sheet [0] in the article says this

"The most recent data we have...indicates that in that time frame 72.2% of reported crashes between bicyclists and drivers took place at intersections or were "intersection related." When bicyclists are able to get out of the intersection and away from that conflict zone before a potential crash can even occur their safety improves.

I guess that I see some logic in that statement. For example, if you are a cyclist who has to stop at a red light and a car comes up that is turning right I know that sometimes creates a hairy situation if there is not a dedicated turn lane and the car might try to turn in front of you. Is it all instances like that that they are trying to prevent or is it something else. Most of the issues I have when cycling are cars turning off a road and not looking for someone in the bike lane which I think would qualify as "intersection related" but I don't think this would solve that issue. Not saying its a bad idea, but I'm still struggling to see the full logic of it.

[0] https://www.bicyclecolorado.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/S...

> Not saying its a bad idea, but I'm still struggling to see the full logic of it.

If you don't have to stop at an intersection, you get through the intersection much faster and are therefore in less danger. This is true for all vehicles but especially true of bicycles, which don't always accelerate as fast.

Here's a video demonstration https://youtu.be/42oQN7fy_eM?t=71

The video gives a great explanation and demonstration of the problem and solution. At first I was thinking "Now bicyclists are allowed to not follow the rules of the road?" After watching the video, it makes much more sense and I'm on board with it.

That link was very helpful, thank you. I should have expected it to be the excellent Not Just Bikes channel.

> For example, if you are a cyclist who has to stop at a red light and a car comes up that is turning right I know that sometimes creates a hairy situation if there is not a dedicated turn lane and the car might try to turn in front of you.

As a cyclist, in these scenarios I put my bike in the center of the lane ahead of the vehicle. That way there is zero uncertainty about who proceeds first.

Besides intersections, uncertainty between drivers and cyclists is the most dangerous thing to cyclists, IMO. Clear signaling and cycling behaviors that remove that uncertainty help a lot in my experience. (I'll even give vehicles hand signals when I cross intersections when _running_ just to make sure.) Eye contact is very important as well.

The bike lane that suddenly doubles as a right turn lane always makes me nervous, but having said that ... I haven't ever actually had an accident with one.

I get far more nervous at my area's predilection for putting the left-turn arrow and the pedestrian crosswalk cycle at the same time.

You seem to be incentivizing drivers to run over pedestrians.

I've been hit four times on a bike, and every time it was by someone making a right turn into a busy road too focused on traffic to look for cyclists.

Luckily the speeds were low enough it was more of a bump every time, but still, enough to put me on the ground

There's a very pragmatic aspect to this that isn't being covered, but for me is the big one: lots of lights don't change until a large metalic object goes over the in-road sensor. Bikes don't really trigger them. So you have to run the red either way, now at least it's not ticketable if a cop on a bad day sees you do it (safely of course).

>For example, if you are a cyclist who has to stop at a red ligh

Just to be clear, this law does not change the requirement for bicyclists to stop at red lights. Red lights become stop signs, stop signs become yield signs.

But they don't have to remain at the stop light if it's clear, so it does change the circumstances. Now a cyclist can get through the intersection without having to wait for the signal to change if it's safe (a judgement call they make based on what they can see and know). This means they will be gone before the circumstance described in the part of the quote that you dropped:

> For example, if you are a cyclist who has to stop at a red light and a car comes up that is turning right I know that sometimes creates a hairy situation if there is not a dedicated turn lane and the car might try to turn in front of you. [emphasis added]

This will help to create or maintain separation between cars and bicycles at intersections (in theory).

> Not saying its a bad idea, but I'm still struggling to see the full logic of it.

You don't have to see the full logic of it! There's data collected and analyzed by people who have studied the problem!

I can't tell if this is meant in jest or seriously, please could you point to a source for your claim that there is data analyzed by people who've studied the problem? (Genuinely asking - I'd love to visualize the data).

IMO, this is the most dangerous mindset of the 21st century, so far.

You're advocating a form of feudalism, only the key differentiator is "expertise" rather than land ownership or the ability to field an army.

Any time somebody says something like "Trust us, plebs. We're the experts." I know I should, in fact, not trust that person.

I think it is simply, intersections are the most dangerous place for a cyclist to be.

This new law reduces the amount of time cyclists spend at an intersection.

I don't see how spending less time in an intersection guarantees better safety. Can it really only be about how long you're in an intersection and not what is done while you're there?

Isn't this like trying to make a dangerous aircraft seem safer by only flying it 100 mi at a time? The number of successful flights would skyrocket while the baseline crash count stays about the same.

I do not see any logic here. They took a metric, in this case the location of accidents, and correlated it to a solution with no evidence that the solution (exiting the intersection as soon as possible) will actually improve things.

I could just as easily claim that the problem is what cyclists are doing in intersections, not the length of time they are there. There is more than one axis here. In my experience (I have lived in CO for 35 years) cyclists already assume that they do not need to stop and treat stop signs and some stop lights as yield signs. Does their data take into account if the cyclist in these accidents were actually following the letter of the law in the first place?

Good to see this common-sense law spreading.

"The Myth of the Scofflaw Cyclist" (https://washcycle.typepad.com/home/2008/07/the-myth-of-the.h...) highlights why this issue provokes such strong emotion from drivers:

> Running a red light is so dangerous for cars that it isn't just illegal, it's taboo. You're breaking a social construct. That means people find it objectionable and abhorrent. So if education is needed, maybe it's needed to explain why it's safer for cyclists to do it than for drivers.

As a cyclist the main reason I treat stop signs as yield signs is because the bicycle tips over if I come to a complete stop. The physics are really optimized to keep going. Clipless pedals really force you to make a decision -- am I going to stop, or am I going to coast through. Maybe this is a poor design for a world where stop signs exist, but that's how it is.

(As an aside, for all of these bridges with instructions like "cyclists dismount", I think we should make car drivers do the same thing. Put in neutral and push it. It's for your own safety!)

I've got to be honest. I live in SF and up in the Oakland Hills and ride a bicycle, commute via motorcycle, and use my SUV the rest of the time so I've got a nice cross-section of motorist interactions. The truth is that most people are nice on the road, easily adapt to other peoples' mistakes, and for the most part are doing the best they can.

On my bicycle, people will slow down to arrive at a stop a little later than me to give me right of way. On my motorcycle, folks will give me room to lane split easily. In my car, people will let me into the lane. An example of this is the time I was on CA-13 going South and when you come off CA-24 going West, you know that the on-ramp rapidly becomes an exit-only. The guy in front of me clearly didn't realize right off the bat (or he'd have merged early) so I slowed so that when he made the inevitable late attempt to merge he would have room. People do that for me too.

Given that my experiences are so different from Internet people's view of the road as some sort of general warzone, I can only conclude that most real-world people experience the road as what I see it: a shared space that we can collaboratively make less unpleasant. And also, that this so-called cyclist-driver animosity which I have only rarely experienced (and never actually on the PCH despite that being where I make drivers' lives most hard).

In practice, I treat stops as yields in the SF Bay Area and life is fine. Everyone is cool. I have to conclude that the people angry about other drivers are over-represented on the Internet.

Living in Oakland (lower Rockridge), I completely agree with you, Rene. I'm encouraged by the common courtesy of drivers as well as bicyclists. On our street, there's a mix of cars, bicycles, scooters, skateboarders, and pedestrians. Cooperation, collaboration, and courtesy make for a happy street life.

I've had a similar experience in southern California. Probably the most dangerous thing I've encountered when biking to work is when a well-intentioned driver who has the right of way will stop anyways to make it easier for me to turn (which in general is much appreciated but when there's 2 lanes and a larger vehicle stops in the right lane to help me make a left turn it can be hard to see if the other lane is clear). I know it only takes one jerk/drunk/texter to ruin your day but I haven't run into that yet.

It has been only one day since a bicyclist was assaulted by a hit-and-run driver in Oakland. Life is not fine for cyclists in Oakland.

https://www.reddit.com/r/oakland/comments/u3quif/oakland_bic...

To be clear, the “assault” you are referencing was the hit and run. Cops attributed to unsafe speed. Has absolutely nothing to do with the cooperation we’re talking about here.

Anyhow there is nuance here indeed. I have lived, biked, walked, and driven a car I own extensively in Oakland for over four years - it really is better than other places, with regard to the cooperation cited upthread! And also, I encountered my first aggressive-toward-bikes driver here the other day. Clearly, norms and safety are all relative. Oakland has room for improvement.

For example, I’ll take Oakland over adjacent Berkeley hands down. Berkeley people (drivers, cyclists, pedestrians, everyone) are bimodal (unpredictable!) between “excessively polite” and “horribly impatient”. And Berkeley cops are busy bodies, they’re pedantic with both drivers and cyclists (while Oakland cops ignore both, but have always been respectful when driving nearby to me walking or on my bike). And Berkeley’s transportation politics are far more dysfunctional than Oakland’s - see how Oakland will put a protected bike lane on San Pablo, but Berkeley refuses [1]. Stuff like this make us Oakland cyclists grateful to live in Oakland.

There’s also the median driving behavior in a geography that matters. Bay Area drivers are pretty terrible all around, and Oakland is as bad as anywhere. But that’s not specific to bikes, it harms everyone. See the Molcajete (good burritos btw) parklet that was destroyed last week [2]. Bad driving in general isn’t a bike issue, it’s an everyone issue.

[1] https://oaklandside.org/2022/02/17/san-pablo-avenue-corridor...

[2] https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/Oakland-restaurant-parkl...

There are a lot of stop signs I've come across that should be yield signs. The main problem is that most Americans don't seem to understand how yield signs work (ie. when there is another car there first it's a stop sign for you).

If they could better train people, they could replace most stop signs with yield signs, and it would be better for bikes, cars, and the planet.

> most Americans don't seem to understand how yield signs work

I'm not sure people even agree on how stop signs work.

Imagine this scenario:

Car A arrives at a 4-way stop sign, intending to turn left.

1 second later, Car B arrives from the opposite direction, intending to continue straight.

Who gets to cross the intersection first? Is it:

A) Car A because they arrived at the intersection earlier, or

B) Car B because, after stopping, they are continuing straight, and thus are not required to yield to a car that's turning?

My solution to this conundrum is to anticipate the opposing straight driver's arrival, and match it. I.e. try to arrive at the intersection simultaneously and a beat later so we can then both go at the same time, with them continuing straight and me turning left behind them.

Or, I might get there a bit faster so It's crystal clear that I was first and I can get my turn over with while they're still coming to a stop.

But that gray area in between is no good, for the reason you say: people don't agree on the order of operations. Better to avoid it entirely.

Good point. Legally Car A of course, but people definitely follow B more often than not.

Whoever is brave enough or impatient enough or aggressive enough to go first is how it seems to play out. This is a good thing in my opinion, because I really don't like sitting in a stalemate where my way of doing things (I'm usually in camp A) conflicts with their way and no one is brave enough to just go. So now you have a full intersection of cars with cars behind them and someone (maybe me) is going to get impatient and just go (usually at the exact second the other person decides the same thing).

So I tend to be more aggressive and just start out slowly ready if the other person does the same thing if I perceive it to be "my turn".

Car A. FIFO.

This and don't even get me started about the cars coming up a freeway on-ramp that seem to think the yield sign is for the people already on the road. :/

I moved to the states from Ukraine, and I must say that I love intersection with 2 stops and find it very strange that lots of the proposals in comments section is to get rid of stop signs.

When I was driving in Kyiv (that has eu-style rules, with most of things covered by signs like yield, main road etc) last year, I missed it so much. The things like yield sign, main road or absence of signs at all, expecting that if you have obstacle on the right you should give way are just not working in places with high traffic and low culture of driving. There is a chance that you will just sit and wait because NOBODY will let you go as you should yield by the rules, when, in case of 2 stops, I could go much earlier.

> The bill defines “low speed conveyances” in Colorado law. These are small profile, low-speed vehicles that people use for transportation and recreation, including bicycles and electric bicycles, electric scooters (not including mopeds), and wheelchairs.

I think including electric bicycles in this is unwise. In a typical commute, they average the same speeds as motorcycles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM8Xli2KTzI

Interesting video. I learned from the comments that in the US, the maximum assisted speed for something to still be considered an "electric bicycle" is 28mph, ≃ 45kmh [0]. Bikes that can go this fast are actually not allowed on bike paths.

45kmh is a good amount less than the max speed the video quotes for his ebike at 60kmh, though of course that could be because he was riding downhill.

[0] https://himiwaybike.com/blogs/news/ebike-speed-limit-in-the-...

I wish my state would introduce the "treat a red light as a stop sign". I've wasted way too much time waiting for a red light that won't change until a car shows up and trips the sensor.

You might look to see whether there is a law on the books that allows you to "proceed cautiously" or similar language, after a certain amount of time without it changing. (It's probably intended for cars at lights that are malfunctioning, but to my mind it should apply.)

Isn't this commonly known as an Idaho Stop? Why is it being rebranded for Colorado? Seems like a weird way to market your state.

As a European, it's very amusing how some people in the US treat safety features as state-owned brands, that other states can infringe on :)

For four decades Idaho was the only state that allowed bicyclists to treat stop signs as yields and stop lights as a stop-and-then-yield, so it was the easiest way to refer to the concept.

We're finally seeing some sanity, but most of the states have refused to adopt the "stop light is a stop and then yield."

Turning left at an intersection when there's no dedicated turning lane is known as a New Jersey left because no one in the South does it...and it's fucking infuriating.

It would be weirder to pass a law in Colorado called the Idaho Stop Law

It is, and Colorado has previous legislation (from ~4y ago?) _permitting_ individual counties to allow the Idaho Stop; as I recall they call it such by name there. Hard to pull in search, since everything's swamped with this new, more comprehensive legislation.

Question: when does anyone have "right of way" at a red light? The rest of the intersection will have green lights. Certainly they have right of way over those facing red lights. So when can a bicycle ever proceed through a red light?

>>This new law means that when an intersection is clear and they already have the right of way, bicyclists ages 15 and older may now treat stop signs as yield signs and treat stop lights as stop signs.

This law also seems rather self-defeating. If you are taken out by a car/bus/truck then evidently the intersection was not "clear", you shouldnt have proceeded and are at fault for the accident. Maybe cops will be handing out fewer tickets to bicycles? Was that ever really a problem?

>Maybe cops will be handing out fewer tickets to bicycles? Was that ever really a problem?

yes, it definitely is a problem. cops will stake out intersections just to give tickets to cyclists who roll through a stop sign when there's literally no other cars in sight. also, other drivers will get all high-and-mighty about cyclists breaking the law for rolling a stop sign when there's no cars for miles on the cross street. if this law can prevent that, it's a good thing.

Such a common sense law. Too bad we have a dingbat in charge of California https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/10/19/bicyclists-treat-stop....

Other than on extremely busy highways or similar, not sure why there were laws against this in the first place. But glad they fixed it. I can’t recall ever riding a bike and stopping for just a stop sign on residential roads.

I once saw a cyclist scream at another cyclist "you have to stop" when the other cyclist didn't stop at a residential four-way stop sign intersection. IMO there wasn't any kind of safety threat.

Just an anecdote but it was pretty disturbing tbh, because the guy seemed absolutely enraged that another cyclist wasn't car-ing hard enough.

"Cyclists flagrantly violating traffic laws" is probably one of the most prevalent anti-bike rhetoric tools used by drivers to justify ill behavior towards cyclists.

So, I can absolutely understand a cyclist getting upset with another for flagrantly violating a traffic law. It's unfortunate that this is where this situation has evolved to, but I think it's a lot more understandable (and nuanced) than "cyclist wasn't car-ing hard enough."

I get out of sorts when other cyclists break the law. How can we cyclists ask drivers to obey the law, to protect us, if we won't even do it ourselves?

I did just that to a cyclist who role through a stop sign, causing a car that I had stopped for to have to stop mid turn to avoid the cyclist. Sure, stopping completely randomly isn't necessary, but a lot of cyclists take the cycle-through-stop thing far too far and assume that they also have priority, irrespective of the state of other rode users.

I can relate to the desire to self-police among cyclists, though it sounds like this person was road raging as well. I often hear complaints from people who only drive cars that cyclists (as if they’re a monolith) are recklessly inconsiderate, and it hurts me knowing how hard I personally try to ride responsibly.

Not the same but I've gotten tickets in NYC for running red lights on a bike. I bet there are a lot of laws in place where bikes are treated exactly the same as automobiles.

In California you can get a DUI on a bicycle, because bicycles are defined as "vehicles" in the state vehicle code. It's the stuff of legend in bicycle-heavy college towns like Davis.

Really? That's amazing - how does that happen? You just happen to do it right in front of a cop who then flags you down?

To head off a whole lot of fallacious assertions, personal anecdotes, and so on:

https://cyclingfallacies.com

Specifically, the page about red-light running, which if you scroll down lists numerous sources showing people on bicycles do not break traffic laws more than drivers: https://cyclingfallacies.com/en/11/people-break-the-rules-wh...

People think cyclists break traffic laws more because cyclists are a minority outgroup, and like any other minority outgroup, negative behavior and attributes are exaggerated. A whole slew of observational biases come into play.

The absolute favorite thing drivers love to shriek about is cyclists not obeying stop signs and stop lights. Except that in urban cities, the most common cause of crashes is usually doorings and "hooks" - where the driver passes a cyclist, while braking and turning - something that is almost impossible to avoid because a car can out-turn and out-brake someone on a bike, and the situation was initiated by the driver. Doorings? You can tell people "ride outside the door zone" but that usually ends up subjecting you to all sorts of abuse by drivers, including "punish passes", which turn into collisions when drivers misjudge the distance and hit the cyclist instead.

The amount of hatred drivers have for people on bicycles is astounding. Even people like the head of the British Automobile Association described the attitude drivers have as being similar to racism: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/11/16/cyclists-abuse-r...

There's also the ever-popular self-loathing bicyclist who loves to criticize and victim-blame other cyclists. It may come as a surprise, but victim-blaming by members of a group is done as a psychological self defense mechanism. Being struck by a driver is something that by and large you have no control over; cyclists obeying the law, riding prudently, in a straight line, on a straight road, wearing high-visibility clothing, etc still get plowed into. That's scary, so people invent reasons why the victim was at fault - reasons that coincide with steps the victim-blamer takes that they think protects them.

Thanks for all of this.

Regarding the point on similarity for racism, spending years as a commuter cyclist, where I was frequently forced to the margins of the road, gave me a much deeper appreciation for marginalized people of all sorts. Some people were nice, many people were oblivious and/or didn't give a shit, and some people were hostile and dangerous. Not because of anything more than me living my life a little differently than them. Those visceral experiences made it much easier for me to empathize with people in other outgroups.

The page discouraging the use of helmets is a wild take: https://cyclingfallacies.com/en/29/people-should-wear-helmet...

They cherry pick data (often decades old) from specific countries/regions to try to apply their claim that "A high rate of helmet use is a sign that the authorities have failed to design well for cycling" at a global level.

Which of the thirty references in that article do you feel are "cherry picking"?

What is your justification for dismissing data because it is "decades old"?

...particularly given that in the US, especially by the federal government, claims of "80%" helmet efficacy are based on one study of ER patients done in the early eighties?

Most cyclists are drivers as well. I often wonder how safe they are as drivers. Do they do all of the things as drivers that they themselves as cyclists insist drivers must do? Certainly not, in the case of the people I've seen on this very site saying that drivers should never take their eyes off the road (even to check a mirror apparently) or that they should never drive above walking speed lest someone jump out from behind a street light or mailbox in front of them. "If you hit someone it means you were driving too fast" is the usual version, ignoring these kinds of realities. Even without such hyperbole, I doubt that the bike bros I see every day on the path near my house are all that much mellower once they get behind the wheel. They're not interested in what's right or fair. They're just using the very real safety issues involving bikes to rationalize their preexisting sense of entitlement.

treat stop lights as stop signs

This seems like a great way to get cyclists run over.

Cyclists have extensive practice in avoiding getting hit by cars, so I expect there will be little difference in cyclist injuries from this change.

It's counter-intuitive, but the data [0][1] is quite clear that laws like these significantly improve safety for bicyclists. I found this video [2] useful in understanding what might be going on.

[0] https://www.bikede.org/delaware-yield-crash-data/#page-conte... ("All reported injury crashes involving bicycles at stop sign controlled intersections dropped 23% in the 30 months after adopting the Safety Stop compared to 30 months prior to adoption")

[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/18WEQdDpxSmgETZBFPh5iO8LGAL9... ("In year after adopting the “Idaho Stop,” crashes between bicyclists and motorists fell 14.5%, and Boise was 30-60% safer on a bicycle compared to similarly sized cities")

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42oQN7fy_eM

This is already in effect in Idaho. In my experience, the cyclists that ride dangerously do so regardless of this rule.

Sure, but at least an innocent driver is less likely to get arrested if the cyclist was breaking the law.

In NYC most cyclists seem to already do this.

As stop signs? Usually as yields or as green lights, surely?

Self resolving problem?

I like explaining this as “bikes don’t have to stop for no one”. Upon hearing that people are usually momentarily affronted by the apparent insolence, then realize I mean it literally and laugh.

Yeah, except that pedestrians exist. By both law and convention in most places, they (we) do have right of way over bikes. Horses are often given precedence over both, where that's relevant. Being on a bike doesn't make you king of all roads, sidewalks, and other paths.

You misunderstand. :) The phrase is a play on words that literally means if “no one” is there you don’t have to stop for them. It’s a contrapositive description of yielding—the point being precisely to counter the common misconception (and ensuing outrage) that such laws do confer higher right-of-way to cyclists.

If a bike can safely yield, then this seems to imply that visibility is good enough to see coming cars. Wouldn't it then be safe for cars to treat it as a yield as well, especially if we consider that a car could likely clear the intersection more quickly than bike (aka the visibility distances needed for a bike to safely treat it as a yield are greater than for a car since they potentially spend more time in the intersection due to slower speed)?

Not really; in that case the stop sign should just be a yield sign. That's the point of this law: the margin where an action is safe enough is vastly different between bikes and cars. A car and a bike travelling at the same speed will cause vastly different amounts of harm on impacting the same object. The absolute time to emergency stop is different, thus the required reaction time. And so on.

"A car and a bike travelling at the same speed will cause vastly different amounts of harm on impacting the same object."

Theoretically, then the bike should be stopping. Two cars colliding at 15 mph is less dangerous than a bike hitting or being hit by a car at 15 mph. I doubt the stopping distances are that much different (probably 20 vs 30 feet).

"in that case the stop sign should just be a yield sign."

Well, most stop signs could just be yield signs. Looks like they're doing that for bikes. Would be nice if they do that for cars too.

The major hangups are that cars are inherently more likely to cause a collision and are significantly deadlier if a collision occurs. They have a much larger hitbox, they weigh several tons, they cannot maneuver easily and rapidly, they have visibility obstructions (like the A-block), and the internal environment of a car has potential distractions that take their attention off of the street. By contrast, bicycles are small, weigh an order of magnitude less, have no blind spots, and can execute dramatic maneuvers to avoid collisions. Cyclists should have the option but not the obligation to exercise additional restraint at intersections because their risk profile is dramatically different.

Stop signs are so common in North America because they serve as "bolted-on" traffic calming, which is necessary to force drivers to proceed at safe speeds and pay attention to their environment. In addition to vehicles within the intersection, you also have to look for people crossing at the crosswalks, and dedicated bicycle crossings if the intersection is so enlightened as to have them.

Your friendly reminder that we almost got this law in California and Newsom vetoed it.

https://www.planetizen.com/news/2021/10/114932-jaywalking-id...

Not only did he veto it, he veto'd it "for the children"

Feel like many bicyclists already act like this is the law regardless of the right of way. Anecdotal of course but around me they just blow through stop signs like they have permanent right of way. Especially the groups riding together in the mornings. Totally ignore all rules of the road.

You should reconsider your windshield bias.

There is loads of data that shows people on bikes break laws at the same or lower rate than people in cars, and unlike drivers, they rarely kill people.

Here's a few to start with:

https://daily.jstor.org/are-cyclists-reckless-lawbreakers/

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/01/03/study-cyclists-dont-b...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2019/05/10/cyclists...

https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/next/study-drivers-...

Couple of quick points, never in anyway compared the rate of law breaking in my post. Pretty sure I specified my post was anecdotal. I really don't care what stats say, I care that around me large groups of bicyclists blow through stop signs while I am taking my kids to school in the morning. I understand you have a cause to push but I'm not the guy you should be pushing it at. I'm just some middle aged dude trying to get his kids to school safely without running anyone over.

For sure. The reason they are changing the law is that the law makes sense for cars, not bikes. I'd suggest spending some time cycling in your area; you'll discover that most cyclists are not "Totally ignore all rules of the road", but instead have reasonable and sensible behaviors that are just different from what make sense for cars.

Because when you have good visibility and momentum, it’s much safer to get through and away from an intersection than to come to a stop, put your foot down, and get moving again. The traffic laws are made for automobiles, but it’s great to see Colorado recognizing the difference.

I hear what you are saying but if the people driving the cars expect you to stop and they go based on the belief that the bicyclists will follow the law and stop then its just a recipe for disaster. Now if the law is changed then the drivers expectations should change as well and all will be well. Until then though one group is breaking the law and the other is not in these specific scenarios. With that said many people drive like fools anyway.

If 'less time in the intersection' is actually safer, wouldn't it be safer for cars too?

Yeah, I agree that this will probably bring a lot of cyclists into compliance with the law (and hopefully reduce injury and death as more cyclists take advantage of the newly permitted behavior!)

Yeah, fast heay things and slow light things don't mix well together in flows. The fast things have to stop being fast to stop from obliterating the slow things.

If you think of a hypothetical situation where 50% of the road things are slow then there's not much benefit to being able to go fast.

Where is the tipping point?

Absolutely, most bicyclists in the area where I live almost never actually stop at stop signs and would even make hand gestures if a stopped car does not yield to them when they zoom through.

This law makes a lot of sense to me, having been off and on a bike commuter. But I wonder if its sensibility depends on a variety of circumstances. A lot of non-cyclist drivers complain about exactly these behaviors, but in my experience it’s helped both to keep me safe on the road (typically climbing a steep hill, where a hard stop would make starting again less stable) and to let traffic continue to flow. I’m not sure I’d feel the same way in a flatter city with larger roads. Or with heavier car traffic in areas with more obstruction of view.

This is an infrastructure design problem that can't be solved by simply trying to change behavior. We have to change how we design streets and roads so they are more pedestrian and cyclist friendly. See here: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/3/1/whats-a-stroad-...

I haven't ridden through Woodside, CA in a few years, but their ultra-rich residents came to hate the flocks of bicyclists who go through there every weekend (because the scenery is so awesome).

So they pressured the cops to crack down, and on organized rides we were always told "in Woodside, come to a complete stop, and put a foot down on the pavement."

From the headline, that's what I was afraid this was. What a relief.

I found this article to be very useful in taking stronger ownership of my own safety as a bicyclist: https://iamtraffic.org/engineering/behaviors-and-risk/

Have they coupled this new law with the money and resources necessary for cyclist and motorist education?

Without a public education campaign, drivers will not know this has changed and will interact dangerously with cyclists at intersections.

I would say 80% of cyclists in Denver did this anyway, so at least there the education is well under way!

I don't think it makes a difference for cars at intersections. It only gives cyclist additional options if the cyclist already has right of way.

You don't have the right of way on a red light.

Imagine believing that a car driver expects someone to stop at a stop sign. Literally 100% of American drivers, without any exceptions, already do the "Idaho Stop" at every intersection. They just don't want to own up to that.

and treat stop lights as stop signs.

There is no info on this in the article, but it seems like a really bad idea.

Only the most pressing matters...

I feel intense hatred for this law & look forward to finding ways to punish bikers for taking advantage of it

this is the first i've heard of cyclists having to obey any traffic laws of any kind. But then again, I live in Arkansas.

Can we write a law where cyclists cant ride on a main thoroughfare when there's a perfectly good side street a block away?

The amount of times I've seen traffic backed up for miles behind one exercise man, on a MAIN ROAD, when there's a perfectly good barely used road, literally ONE BLOCK away.

I'm all for being considerate of bicyclists but that goes both ways.

I'm surprised the law already doesn't handle that case. In Minnesota cyclists are treated as normal vehicular traffic with a handful of exceptions, and one of those exceptions is that the cyclist cannot unnecessarily impede traffic flow. (The language of the Minnesota law as written was obviously written with the scenario you describe in mind.)

Bicyclists have places to go and those places are often, disproportionately even, on the "main road". Asking cyclists to bike at least two blocks out of their way is not reasonable. Also often those side roads have uncontrolled crossings of other busy roads which makes traversing them practically impossible.

The real question is why a car, which can effortlessly stop, go, and turn without any exertion whatsoever on the part of the driver, is permitted on the shortest route. Since it's so easy for a driver to detour to a side road, the main roads should be reserved for bicyclists and pedestrians exclusively.

Roads are made with a speed limit specifically matched for cars.

Bikes cannot achieve that speed limit.

So your thought is to slow down hundreds of thousands of cars which the road was made for... in order for cyclists not to be inconvenienced?

Side streets rarely have bike lanes, have more 4-way stops, randomly appear/disappear and have terrible potholes for road bikes.

People act as if american side-streets aren't designed in an actively hostile manner for traffic calming that makes biking really difficult.

Most importantly, most cyclists are using google maps like the rest of us, and google sends us on the main street. So, that's where we go.

So cyclists would rather inconvenience hundreds of people down to 5 mph than deal with some inconvenience themselves.

That side street is probably full of stop signs? We don't go out of our way to ride on busy roads.

So slow down hundreds of people to 5 miles an hour..... versus stopping at a few stop signs...

cyclist mentality is very interesting.

why don't you go to the perfectly good barely used road one block away? bikes have a right to the road too

You're right! Bikes have a right to the road! Feel free to hop on the interstate! Don't let those 18 wheelers push you around! Let natural selection do its job!

These kinds of annoyances are almost always an infrastructure problem, as the Dutch have shown. If you correctly separate modes of transit according to speed on a high enough density of route links, blockages like this are eliminated. It's possible that those side streets are not optimal for their journey. You seem to be assuming that person on a bicycle was traveling for recreational purposes and not necessarily transiting from point to point.

The goal of their transit is irrelevant.

Riding on a main road and slowing down hundreds of people by orders of magnitude is an jerk move.

These folks know exactly what they're doing. I've worked with one of them -- he saw it as a plus that he's slowing down drivers and blocking traffic and would cycle in a way that made it impossible to pass him. He framed it as environmental activism.

It's the cyclist equivalent of rolling coal.

In more than one other sub-thread here, people have offered variants on the theory that some drivers are hostile toward cyclists and/or more likely to notice cyclist transgressions because those cyclists constitute an out-group and that's what we always do with out-groups. "Treating them differently just because they choose to live a bit differently" is the most recent version I saw.

Well, that cuts both ways. A certain subset of cyclists treat anyone in a car, or indeed not on a bike, as an out-group. They notice transgressions more, deny the out-group's right to do what they're doing, etc. It's not activism. Positive change is not the goal. It's just venting their own unresolved anger and frustration. If the putative cause of their complaint disappeared, they'd miss it ... and then they'd find a new "cause" to be anti-social about.

I also have this complaint. Where I live there are miles and miles of closed-access bike trails. The state spent loads of money turning old railbeds into trails specifically for pedestrians and bicycles.

But those aren't good enough for the exercise man. He has to ride on the winding, hilly, full-of-blindspots roads where cars routinely are doing 45+. More than once I've nearly gone into the ditch because exercise man was in the middle of the road over the crest of a hill. (I separate people who are commuting on their bikes from the ones that are clearing doing it for recreation).

I'm all for biking - it's great for your body and the environment but I question those that choose to co-mingle with cars when there are other options. In a collision between 250 pounds of bike + human vs a ton of plastic and steel...the ton of plastic and steel is going to win pretty much every time.

You must live in Colorado? Or someplace like it.

Excercise man rides on roads that are already dangerous for cars: roads with no shoulder, windy, high elevation, icy, huge drops on either side.

Excercise man makes that situation much more dangerous.

I'm rarely upset when I see an excercise man was inured in the newspaper.

sounds like you were driving quite unsafely when you nearly went into the ditch, i'd slow down on such roads

> This new law means that when an intersection is clear and they already have the right of way, bicyclists ages 15 and older may now treat stop signs as yield signs and treat stop lights as stop signs.

Can someone explain? This, to me, says that bikes can enter a road with ongoing traffic. Yes, it says "when an intersection is clear", which could mean anything ore, more than likely, used irresponsibly. And treating red lights like stop signs also makes no sense. It all sounds like a formula for carnage.

I lack context, which is why I am asking for an explanation.

What problem is this solving? Were cyclists getting killed waiting at stop signs and red lights? If so, the law now allows them to potential ride right in front of moving vehicles? Is that better? How?

> Can someone explain? This, to me, says that bikes can enter a road with ongoing traffic. Yes, it says "when an intersection is clear", which could mean anything ore, more than likely, used irresponsibly. And treating red lights like stop signs also makes no sense. It all sounds like a formula for carnage.

By clear, they probably mean clear of existing or oncoming traffic. Basically, no one is around, which happens a lot. Cyclists aren't trying to get killed, in fact quite the opposite. Allowing them to assess the situation and continue without stopping means they can spend less time in the intersection, which is a dangerous place to be. They still have judgement they need to use.

> What problem is this solving? Were cyclists getting killed waiting at stop signs and red lights? If so, the law now allows them to potential ride right in front of moving vehicles? Is that better? How?

Yes they were and are being killed in intersections. They are still not permitted to simply ride in front of moving vehicles, they have to treat stops and red lights as yields, similar to yields when driving. Blame can still be placed on the person that was supposed to yield if they cause a crash.

I think you need to actually read up on the law and the reasons for its existence, because it sounds like you're coming at this from a worst case scenario where there aren't rules. There are still rules and parties can still be at fault. This isn't some "anything goes and we'll see what happens" type of law, not at all.

You're not "asking for an explanation."

You haven't made the slightest effort to educate yourself on the basic facts of the matter, are still dismissing everything based on pure personal incredulity, and constructing wild strawman arguments.

Not only is your pitiful interpretation of what I wrote wrong, it is precisely how you destroy any potential for constructive conversation, understanding and learning. Brilliant.

The reason why cars hit cyclists is not for lack of understanding laws.

It's for lack of giving a damn.

Rolling-coal dude is not even going to tap the brakes running over you because there's zero penalty for killing you.

Until people start going to prison for coming within 3 feet of cyclists, let alone hitting and killing them, nothing is going to change.

I used to bike to work daily in Manhattan for years—rain or shine for two hours or more daily.

Drivers really don’t want to hit you. It’s a headache even if the driver doesn’t get charged, and experience bears this out; it’s also not enough.

What kept me alive while weaving through traffic with zero incident was going on two facts: I’m much harder to spot than another car; I’m as good as dead if I put myself in certain split-second-decision situations.

So I biked assuming the cars don’t see me until I’m certain they did. Constant split second adjustments and verifying on my part.

It was one-part thrilling and one-part exhausting.

Based on this experience I see way too many cyclists making questionable choices.

The real option for the regular cyclists is to make separate, cyclist-friendly roads but there doesn’t seem to be any appetite for this; and there would be idiots riding with heavy, fully motorized bikes that police wouldn’t be able to catch.

* Edit. I do not "roll coal". I thought it was a term for driving a car.

I'm both a rolling-coal dude and ride a bicycle in NYC. I'm extremely careful when driving a car around cyclists. The last thing I would ever want to do is injure someone on foot, bike, or in a car.

I would take it most people care and a few do not.

Can you say more about this world view? I'm experiencing a bit of cognitive dissonance. To me, this is like saying, "I actively pour motor oil into the ocean, but I would never intentionally harm someone."

Your reply is confusing to the point where maybe there's a misunderstanding of the definition.

Rolling-coal is illegally bypassing the exhaust on a vehicle, it's illegal everywhere in the tri-state area, it's illegal in the whole country because it's a federal law (Clean Air Act, no tampering with exhaust) that states cannot override.

So you are simultaneously confessing to committing crimes while insisting you respect other people? Something isn't meshing there.

Question for you, why would you ever roll coal?

I get the idea that we feel the social contract is getting a little frayed, but it seems like a pretty long way from Death Race 2000 ... I am still pretty sure there aren't many people on the road for whom the criminal sanction is the factor that's stopping them mowing down other road users.

This should extend to all pedestrians as well.

Right - in most of the country our infrastructure and laws exist to basically only serve cars (most notably the idea of "jaywalking"). Glad steps are being taken in the interest of non-car transportation options.

Except drivers don't even need to know about this law. As long as bikers know, they will improve their safety

I'm not sure I see the point. Is bicycling so hard that the extra burden of having to stop at a stop sign and then get back up to speed stopping people from bicycling?

For a long time I thought "A bicycle is vehicle" is common sense and completely workable, and it is the law of the land in most places although judges and the police are often ignorant. (e.g. I see bicycle cops riding in groups on the sidewalk on the wrong side of the street three across... I'd have no trouble with them doing anything to get to an active crime scene or chase a suspect but they should be setting a good example otherwise.)

As it is bicycle activists seem to think everybody is responsible for the safety of cyclists except the cyclists.

I see at least four reasons this is the reasonable policy - Bicyclists:

* have a much better communication with their surroundings: unimpeded sight lines, and typically less sheltered from surrounding sounds

* suffer more risk and do less damage in a collision

* lose momentum in stopping that must be spent getting back up to speed - as to the significance of that last point, it affects the speed at which you arrive and the exertion you expend doing so - you can look to the preferential user experience of electric bikes as an example of how different cost/benefit energy/velocity trade-off influence use patterns

Finally, it is in society's interest to incentivize bicycles over cars, as they exhibit far fewer costs on society, in the form of parking, pollution, and physical violence.

> lose momentum in stopping that must be spent getting back up to speed - as to the significance of that last point, it affects the speed at which you arrive and the exertion you expend doing so

Actually this is significant for a different reason. Starting up again slowly means you're slowly crawling through an intersection, and intersections are the most dangerous places to be.

The article and provided information answers all of your questions. The point is to get the cyclist out of a danger zone as fast as possible.

Why make this legal statewide?

Intersections are by far the most dangerous locations for bicyclists, in Colorado and elsewhere. The most recent data we have from the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), which is comprehensive for the state from 2017-2019, indicates that in that time frame 72.2% of reported crashes between bicyclists and drivers took place at intersections or were "intersection related." When bicyclists are able to get out of the intersection and away from that conflict zone before a potential crash can even occur their safety improves.

The Safety Stop is safer for bicyclists and motorists alike. Research shows that the Safety Stop:

● Reduces interactions between motorists and bicyclists in intersections.

● Reduces crashes in intersections.

● Increases the visibility of bicyclists in the intersection.

● Reduces the number of bicyclist-only injuries associated with starting and stopping on a bicycle.

"I'm not sure I see the point." "Is bicycling so hard..." ... "bicycle activists seem to think everybody is responsible for the safety of cyclists except the cyclists."

You see how you brought a level of animosity towards this relatively benign measure to increase cyclist safety? Yeah, that's why stuff like this is important. People with a "cars first" mentality have no appreciation for the vulnerability of cyclists and often go out of their way to ridicule them.

Despite the predominantly helpful info in your comment, you are also making assumptions about the parent commenter having an animosity and "cars first" mentality that may not be accurate or justified. See their comment elsewhere in the thread:

> I've been riding bikes in the city since I was 6 years old.

Stop signs are designed for cars - because of the built in obstructions to their sight lines (e.g. pillars, trim, maybe passengers) that a cyclist doesn’t have, the speed at which cars approach the intersection (much faster, so less time to look, plan and react), etc.

But the issue for the bike (apart from the fact that stop signs mostly aren’t necessary even when they are for cars) is that it takes much longer for a cyclist to take off, so they spend longer on what you could call the ‘danger zone’ of the intersection (where they are crossing the path of traffic) if they have to stop.

I used to ride my bicycle to work most days. I like to ride. I am all for "a bicycle is a vehicle", but I still think this adjustment makes sense.

Being able to treat a stoplight like a stop sign is great. It's pretty common for stoplight sensors to not detect bicycles. It's also common for polite folks in cars to stop far enough behind a bicycle that their cars don't get sensed. It's not a good feeling to sit on the sensor loop, watching the walk lights cycle and reset, knowing that if you don't run a red or walk out of the intersection, you'll be stuck.

As for treating a stop sign like a yield sign, I agree with a lot of other posters who come citing sources: bicycles move slower and are at a lot of risk from cars coming up from behind. It's not about the extra effort to get started (though in a hilly place, I could see that being a problem for some riders).

As a cyclist, bike safety is hard. You're squishable and very aware of it, surrounded by big, fast, solid cars whose drivers often aren't paying close attention.

As a driver, bike safety is hard. A lot of drivers get weird around bikes (e.g., they yield the right-of-way when they shouldn't). Cyclists often aren't well-trained in the rules of the road. And the rules of the road often force bikes and cars to intersect in ways that aren't ideal.

So I think making it clear that yes, bikes are vehicles, but making a few exceptions to improve safety by reducing the chance of bicycles getting unintentionally hit from behind--seems like a win to me!

Prior to Oregon's passing of a similar law, I lawfully stopped at a 4-way intersection on my normal bike commute home and was rear-ended by a car who "didn't see me" and was presumably planning to blow through the intersection. Given my experience, I see laws like this as a safety thing rather than a "reduce the physical burden" thing.

I'm a big believer in letting different conveyances enjoy their superpowers. Cars can transport you at 80mph with a cage and climate control, motorcycles can lane split and filter, and bicycles have better environmental awareness (importantly because they are slow and can hear) and are less likely to cause serious injury or property damage so they can ride where cars and motorcycles cannot.

They're not the same and we don't have to give them exactly the same rules. In fact, we never have.

> Is bicycling so hard that the extra burden of having to stop at a stop sign and then get back up to speed stopping people from bicycling?

yes, along with other safety considerations.

>For a long time I thought "A bicycle is vehicle" is common sense and completely workable

no, the "vehicular cycling" doctrine is terrible. bicycles are obviously not the same kind of thing as motor vehicles; treating them the same is a foolish consistency. in countries that recognize this fact (netherlands, denmark), cycling is many times more common and far safer than in the US.

>As it is bicycle activists seem to think everybody is responsible for the safety of cyclists except the cyclists.

pilots of heavier and faster moving vehicles have a greater propensity for harm and therefore should take greater responsibility for the safety of more vulnerable road users.

To answer your "question," no, probably not, but it's harder work than a cyclist needs or deserves to put in, since the whole reason society decided stop signs and signals were needed in the first place is because they noticed all the collisions of larger vehicles that were harder to stop and did orders of magnitude more damage when they would hit things. If none of those are around, things are pretty safe.

Not all vehicles are equal. Bicycles pollute less, are quieter, safer for pedestrians, cause less road wear. They should be given preferential treatment over cars in places where people live and gather.

In places where bikes are common, cars should yield to bikes.

In a purely moral dimension, it's hard to disagree. On the other hand from an environmental perspective the best thing to do with a car is to get it up to speed as soon as possible and keep it there to the journey's end. Cars that repeatedly slow and idle use their resources (brakes, fuel, etc.) less efficiently, and emit worse fumes. This is of course somewhat mitigated with electric cars, but not entirely.

On bike or foot, I especially hate to see the one last car in a line slow, stop, and wait for me. It would be less polite perhaps but big-picture preferable for them to just keep rolling.

Stop signs are located based on traffic studies of automobiles. They aren't necessarily appropriate for bikes.

Of course bikes coexist with those automobiles but other comments parallel to mine talk about some of the factors that differ from cars (e.g. open sight lines).

I don’t see the point because it my experience this is how bicyclists behave and always have. I’ve rarely ever seen one stop at a stop sign, they always coast through. As a rider myself I’ve done this but I can control my speed leading up so as to time it with the other traffic and cause minimal disruption. I’m also usually very clearly waving someone by and indicate given right of way as most drivers freeze at an intersection with a bike. It’s like the pedestrian rules apply and they have right of way by default with not other rules but that just cogs everything up. Anyways, I’m for a unified approach. Educating and changing people’s behaviors is going to be the most difficult part of this. Signing in a new law is the starting line and they seem to thing they reached the finish line.

> As it is bicycle activists seem to think everybody is responsible for the safety of cyclists except the cyclists.

As it is, car activists seem to think that everybody is responsible for the hazard their chosen mode of operation imposes on the safety of less dangerous road users except for car drivers.

I think a lot of people might be confused by the term "car activists" because the car, as well as the attitude permitting its dominance, is so pervasive in the status quo, and passive/active support for the status quo doesn't register as activism in everyone's mind.

So to be clear: The U.S. is a country where, in many many places, the "car activists" won and successfully channeled untold billions and billions of dollars into imposing their ideology. The U.S. has built incredible amounts of roads, highways, parking lots, and interchanges exclusively for cars, which it has done at great expense by taking on debt and bulldozing existing neighborhoods. It has lax police enforcement and penalties for injuries and fatalities caused by motorists. It has tons of laws requiring businesses and housing to make accommodations for cars. And society passively tolerates the environmental, noise, and visual pollution cars cause, as well as the congestion they create and the people that they kill.

In college I raced bicycles on a team, and I would go out riding through the large city that I lived in all the time without problem. I think the issue is both sides don’t respect each other.

Drivers pass way too close, and treat cyclist like an annoyance. I see so many people online complaining about cyclist riding in the middle of the road. They do that so the cars will not blow past them closely pushing them off the road.

As for the cyclists, I think a lot of them have a mentality of invincibility, and they don’t think traffic laws apply to them.

A bicycle is a vehicle, and both cyclist and drivers should treat each other as if they are vehicles on the road and obey all laws.

Not only do many cyclists not think traffic laws apply to them, but where they have to share with pedestrians many display the same disregard for the safety of pedestrians that they claim drivers show towards them.

try riding a bike in the city regularly and then you will understand.

I've been riding bikes in the city since I was 6 years old. I was taught to obey the traffic laws and be respectful to other people who use the road although it seems like I'm the only one.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com