The title is a bit clickbait-y. I went into this one feeling strongly opposed it. Afterwards I’m still not sure, but I get that there’s some nuance to it.
Relevance:
In Québec and other parts of Canada, discussions are underway to adopt such regulations.
Author: Steve Lorteau | Long-Term Appointment Law Professor, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
Excerpts:
Interactions between different users on roads are often a source of frustration, the most prominent being those between motorists and cyclists.
For example, many motorists are frustrated when they see bicycles cross an intersection without coming to a complete stop, which drivers are required to do.
As a professor of law at the University of Ottawa who specializes in urban law issues, I have studied various regulatory approaches that have been adopted around the world, each with different advantages and disadvantages.
The uniform application of traffic rules may seem fair, but in reality, it can create a false sense of equality.
On the one hand, the risks associated with different modes of transport are incommensurate. A car that runs a red light can cause serious or even fatal injuries. A cyclist, on the other hand, is unlikely to cause the same degree of damage.
Furthermore, the efficiency of cycling depends on maintaining speed. Having to stop completely over and over discourages people from cycling, despite its many benefits for health, the environment and traffic flow.
Treating two such different modes of transport the same way, therefore, amounts to implicitly favouring cars, something akin to imposing the same speed limit on pedestrians and trucks.
Since 1982, cyclists in Idaho have been able to treat a stop sign as a yield sign and a red light as a stop sign. Several American states (such as Arkansas, Colorado, and Oregon) and countries, such as France and Belgium, have adopted similar regulations.
In Québec and other parts of Canada, discussions are underway to adopt such regulations.
It’s important to note that the goal of the Idaho stop rule is not to legalize chaos on the roads. Cyclists must still yield to cars ahead of them at stop signs, as well as to pedestrians at all times, and may only enter the intersection when it is clear.
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When traffic infrastructure is geared toward you and your safety, it’s easy and natural to follow the rules. If the traffic infrastructure is designed to make life convenient for car drivers while neglecting cyclists’ safety, don’t expect them to respect the rules over their own judgement.
Cool and when they get hit don’t blame the car drivers like they always do.
Do you get mad if a pedestrian jay-walks across the street? A bike running a light after determining it’s clear is closer to a pedestrian jay-walking than a car running a light.
From my perspective, you are saying “the cyclist got hit by a car. But he didn’t act perfectly within the rules that weren’t designed with his safety in mind. Therefore, it’s his fault and not the one driving tons of metal at high speeds.”
This isn’t an individual problem, it’s an infrastructure problem. In Amsterdam where it’s so safe they don’t even bother with helmets, they follow the rules. In a place with unsafe cycling infrastructure, only the most risk-tolerant will ride. And they will act more recklessly while ignoring road rules that aren’t built for them. As infrastructure improved, more people will start riding that don’t want to act recklessly and people will want to act within rules that were made for them.
Absolutely.
I’m fine with a simple yield on a stop sign, as long as you respect vehicle priority. But at a red light, you have to stop. It’s for everybody’s safey. Especially in a city.
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Yeah as long as you slow down a bit to check if there’s incoming cars or pedestrians you’re fine.
The headline is misleading to what is actually being proposed; the Idaho stop means treating stop signs as yields, and red lights as stops.
In a lot of place around the world where a green light needed to be triggered by metalic object, then the rule is really : Stop at red, only go when it’s safe. Else you will wait forever. In Netherland, the development favour cyclist and pedestrian so it’s best to follow the existing rule, as the experience is already smooth.
As a Canadian citizen,read the article before posting irrelevant nonsense.
Also, make a substantive point, you being Dutch is not a substantive point.
No stop at red? Okay!
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You do realize I was making a joke, right? I’m well aware commas have meanings and I respect traffic laws.
This whole discussion is a distraction. The real solution is to have proper cycling infrastructure. You don’t need to reinterpret road signs if bikes have their own signs in their own protected lanes and protected crossings.
Permission to exercise discretion does not mean cyclists will blindly roll through danger. No one is more aware of the risk of cycling in traffic than cyclists. Riding defensively is a necessary state of mind. A rule change will have no effect on that.
The rule change has nothing to do with making cyclists safer. It makes the cyclists’ current behaviour legal and predictable to everyone.
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The key is being predictable. As long as the law says cyclists have to stop and they don’t, they are being unpredictable, and put themselves at greater risk.
And the driver who inadvertently hits a non-stopping cyclist - someone who is already much smaller and less likely to be noticed in the first place - gets to spend the rest of their lives dealing with having hit (possibly maimed or killed) said cyclist.
It’s a bad idea. Idaho should never be cited as an example.
As a driver, I want to know what to expect from bike riders. Having them follow the same rules on the road cars do just makes sense.
If cyclists are allowed to run stops, it better damn well go hand in hand with a requirement that they wear a fuck ton of hi vis and lights, and that if there is an accident between a car and a cyclist when the cyclist is running a stop, the driver bears zero responsibility.
The proposed change sounds plenty predictable. A car needs to stop at stop signs, and if you’re stopped, then you can also start again without worrying about bikes because you have right of way. At a red light, bikes have to come to a full stop, which gives them time to check if a car is coming or not. A car wouldn’t have to worry about this at all.
Edit: It just occurred to me that you can have an intersection where the bike is faced with a stop sign but the car isn’t. That would indeed be a problem if the biker doesn’t come to a stop. Not enough time to react to a car charging past.
What the fuck are you talking about?
How is treating a stop sign like a yield sign no predictable? You do realize that we have yield signs and people predictably follow them every single day right?
As long as the law says cyclists have to stop
It’s important to note that the goal of the Idaho stop rule is not to legalize chaos on the roads. Cyclists must still yield to cars ahead of them at stop signs, as well as to pedestrians at all times, and may only enter the intersection when it is clear.
As someone that has been living in Montreal for the past four years, which locale this article brings up numerous times, and biking about 350/365 days a year, I have to highlight a couple things to readers not from Montreal, or maybe even from the other side of the pond:
- Canada doesn’t know what yield signs are. Stop signs are on every corner, which are mostly handled as if they were yield signs, but maybe not even that. And this applies to all traffic, not just cyclists.
- Canada also doesn’t know what “right has the right of way” is. In some European countries if you come to an intersection without a light, a yield or stop sign, you simply give way to the vehicle approaching from the right.
- The individual boroughs have a lot of disconnect between each other on how traffic is handled. While they are trying to have a unified approach, there’s a lot of Balkanization.
- Much of the infra is dated. A remainder of design from the 60s and 70s that had patchwork applied to make it more livable. Things like green wave, automated traffic control or elevated pedestrian crossings and bicycle lanes at intersections are unheard of. Most lights are just set to a fixed cycle and have been operating like the same way for years.
- Intersections, especially with new developments, will have very sharp corners with narrow sidewalk, with greatly reduced visibility.
So that said, I rarely ever see the NYC courier style red-light skips between columns of cars by cyclists. Whenever I see that happen, it’s trashy people that seem to have little regard for anything, even their own lives.
I do see cyclists regularly doing Idaho stops at full stop intersections, but it’s the same as cars. I think this is a traffic design issue and not an issue with driving culture or cyclists in general. Stop signs are simply a bad design, and this has been elaborated on many times.I also see a lot of people ride on the e-bike bixi fleet recklessly. They provide far too much speed assist with minimal effort. The same goes with the electric motor bikes with a throttle that somehow pass as e-bike just because they also have the option for pedal assist. However this is not a problem with the vehicles themselves, but rather the lack of education and handling. In most western European nations children are taught how to bike in traffic and adhere to traffic rules at an early age. I can attest to this as I have grown up in Germany, and in grade 4 elementary we had to get our Fahrrad Führerschein, which was basically an attestation of having a course completed, for children.
Canada also doesn’t know what “right has the right of way” is. In some European countries if you come to an intersection without a light, a yield or stop sign, you simply give way to the vehicle approaching from the right.
Coming to Canada from Europe some decades ago, this was a shock. The “whoever stops first has the right of way” is so much worse, it’s not even funny. It requires much more attention, visibiltiy, consensus, to negotiate a simple intersection… It’s crazy. In practice, half the time people end up sitting and waiting for the other to go. The othe half, the more impatient people just go first.
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In Québec, cyclists always say that driving laws do not apply to them, they never stop at STOP sign or a red lights, are on the road or the sidewalk instead of the cycle lanes, etc.
They are very dangerous as they respect nothing especially in suburbia. In Montreal sometimes they stop!!! because it’s stop or die, mainly.
As a cyclist, I agree. Not all cyclists are like this, but a great majority are. These cyclists are a threat to everyone. Pedestrians, other cyclists, and themselves.
As a pedestrian, I’ve been hit several times on De Maisonneuve Ouest’s bike path while crossing at an intersection because a cyclist ran a red light into crossing pedesrians. As a cyclist, I’ve also had near miss collisions and have been pushed aside by assholes in leotards that want to go fast during rush hour when the path is full on Rachel. Absolute lack of consideration for others. The mentality needs to change.
Nah, I didn’t get to be a 67 year old cyclist by doing dumb things in downtown rush hour traffic. In any case, starting from all those intersections when the light turned green was great training for the velodrome. I was a mediocre track cyclist, but my standing start was pretty good, due to getting out of the saddle and getting up to speed as fast as possible every single commute.
Congrats, your personal preferences for fitness are not valid arguments for policy changes.
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As a Vancouverite, this is the state of things anyway. All stop signs are yield signs. All yield signs- actually there are no yield signs.
I think the unfairness psychological factor is often underappreciated. People have a very strong aversion to unfairness and that’s a part of reality no less than the real safety differences between cars and bikes running a stop sign. If we’re to change the status quo, it needs to take that into account and make people feel things are fair. E.g. if stops signs are treated as yield signs on most of the back streets, maybe change them to yield signs. And/or make new signs that except some vehicles from full stop where really needed. And start enforcing the rules of the road instead of letting people make their own rules, which produces chaos, injury and death. If some rule turns out to be impractical, enforcing it would get people to vote for changing it.
E: The quantity of stop signs on small streets in TO is TOO DAMN HIGH!
There are different rules for transport truck drivers, and there are different rules for pedestrians. Treating people who decided to go to the store in their 2 ton portable living room, that’s 3ft off the ground, with four reclining seats, and separated completely from the outside world by a bubble, the exact same as the guy walking or on a 30 lb bike is fucking asinine.
That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m saying that any diffetrnce in treatment must be clear and well signed. Not based on personal judgment and interpretation of one signage or another. And I do think we have to be separated from vehicle traffic in physical ways. Fuck vehicular cycling (just coming off of NJB’s video) 😄
This was a dumb title OP.
Literally everyone in this thread didn’t read the article, didn’t comprehend what the Idaho stop rules are, and is just in here nonsensically bitching about cyclists getting run over thinking this rule will allow them to blow through all intersections willy nilly.
I think the lawmakers here are maybe not considering all of the consequences.
Yes a bike won’t be able to cause as much damage to another biker or a vehicle if they don’t stop at a stop sign and then hit one.
Especially when compared to a vehicle hitting another vehicle.
But those aren’t the only two things at a stop sign or intersection. There are also pedestrians crossing the street, often with aight telling them that it is safe to do so. People with disabilities like blindness, people with children, etc.
What happens if there is a line of vehicles to the left of the bike lane blocking the view of the cyclist and they keep going straight since it’s a three way intersection, no road on the right so no vehicles to even worry about, and then a mother with a baby in a carriage steps out from in front of the vehicle at the front?
Sure a bike won’t do as much damage as a vehicle, but it can still certainly do a lot of damage in the right circumstances.
Did you read the article?
It does not allow cyclists to blow through stop signs. It requires them to treat them as yield signs, which means slowing down and yielding the right of way is someone else is going the other way.
I assumed reason to have bikes follow signs at intersections is to try and prevent cars that try to avoid them end causing a fatal accident to someone else. Predictable behavior I assumed reduces chances of accidents due to unknown variables causing large vehicles to suddenly make eradict maneuvers endangering other vehicles and pedestrians.
A car that runs a red light can cause serious or even fatal injuries. A cyclist, on the other hand, is unlikely to cause the same degree of damage.
But they can cause damage. So this direction of logic is faulty. If they argued that there would be less accidents with cyclists going through stop intersections then I would ask to see the data to validate that, but “the crashes won’t be as bad” is ludicrous to ground this change on. And won’t be as bad for whom? It’s going to be bad for the cyclist certainly, but even if a fatal hit only creates a scratch on a car hood, does that mean it’s okay?
How is this faulty? The degree of damage is incredibly relevant. We don’t make everything that could ever cause damage illegal, because we have nothing left. Laws are a balancing act of pros and cons to society.
A car has far less visibility (they are inside a box with a few windows) will will do far more damage if they hit someone. A cyclist has dramatically better visibility (they have basically an unobstructed 180° view) and especially when going slow is very unlikely to cause significant damage (posing risk of significant harm only the the most frail and elderly).
If not requiring complete stops for cyclists leads to 1% more cyclists on the road (because their travel is easier) it almost certainly causes less harm overall due to how dangerous cars are and also their indirect health effects (both inactivity when driving and the pollution).
So no, the logic isn’t faulty at all and probably one of the most important arguments.
