If we were going to exempt one group from these rules, the logical one would be pedestrians, who are the least dangerous group to other users, not people going much faster on metal contraptions. Traffic lights and signs are how we organize urban movement, so that it can proceed safely. To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please consider disabling your ad-blocker to allow ads on Grist. “We don’t perceive any concern or threat on the part of pedestrians” from the Idaho stop, he says. Jeff Miller, president of the Alliance for Biking & Walking, argues that because bicyclists can more easily see and hear pedestrians than drivers can, rules designed for cars should not necessarily apply to bikes. Once it’s going, the bike’s own momentum carries it forward, so it requires much less energy.” (Of course, if we made traffic laws primarily about physical efficiency instead of safety, we’d all be roadkill.) Unlike a car, getting a bike started from a standstill requires a lot of energy from the rider. In a recent, widely read article in Vox, Joseph Stromberg compellingly laid out the case, drawing on the authority of physics: “So many cyclists do these things … because they make sense, in terms of the energy expended by a cyclist as he or she rides. The idea has been picking up steam for the last few years in local blogs from San Francisco to New York, thanks partly to this oddly popular video. This is called the “Idaho stop.” Legal only in Idaho and a few towns in Colorado, it also allows bikes to roll slowly through stop signs, treating them essentially as yield signs. Sometimes, it zips frighteningly close.īut some cycling advocates argue that we should make it legal for bikes to go through a red light, after stopping to check that there are no oncoming cars and pedestrians. Far more often, though, I’ve been legally walking across a street and had a bike roll through the crosswalk, forcing me to freeze in mid-intersection as it breaks the law and crosses my path. All of us who ride bikes know the feeling of not wanting to stop completely at an intersection when there’s no one coming.
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