In October, California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill intended to make streets more welcoming for cyclists.
Assembly Bill 122 would have enabled cyclists to treat stop signs as yields, allowing them to slow at the signs and proceed with caution if no cars or pedestrians were present. The pilot program would have ended Jan. 1, 2028, at which time the Legislature could decide to make it permanent.
In his veto message, Newsom cited safety as a primary reason for the veto.
“While I share the author's intent to increase bicyclist safety, I am concerned this bill will have the opposite effect,” Newsom wrote. “The approach in AB 122 may be especially concerning for children, who may not know how to judge vehicle speeds or exercise the necessary caution to yield to traffic when appropriate.”
Newsom also cited an increase in “fatalities and serious injuries” since 2010, and noted that since 2014, there have been 3,059 crashes involving bicycles at intersections “in which the primary collision factor was failure to stop at a stop sign.”
But many Bay Area cyclists disagree with Newsom’s decision, and some say he misinterpreted the collision data. Others, cyclists and drivers among them, think the bill would have only encouraged more reckless behavior.
Walk down most Bay Area streets and you can see that many cyclists disregard the current traffic safety law that requires them to come to a complete stop at stop signs. Rather, they currently enact what AB 122 would have penned into law — treating stop signs as yields.
Many cyclists interviewed for the story admitted to as much, and they said that citing cyclists for such an infraction only increases the risk for mispolicing.
“They’re getting in the way of making it legal to be safe,” said Alex Lantsberg, a San Francisco cyclist.
Lantsberg said stopping at stop signs is in fact more dangerous for cyclists, who become “sitting ducks” in the face of “a 4,000-pound death machine.”
“You don’t want to lose the momentum of moving through a stop sign. It’ll turn people off from cycling,” he said. “I also think it’s safer for cyclists to maintain momentum and get away from cars.”
“A flesh and blood human on a 20-pound rolling triangle is much more at risk than a person in a steel-encased La-Z-Boy,” he added.
The “Idaho stop” — or treating stop signs as yield signs — is not unprecedented. Already, a handful of states, including Delaware, Oregon, Idaho, Washington, Colorado, Arkansas, Utah, Oklahoma and North Dakota, have passed similar legislation that enables cyclists to do so.
And according to Warren Wells, the policy and planning director for the Marin County Bicycle Coalition, “No one has passed this law that I'm aware of and then rolled it back. There hasn’t been some huge upswing in bicycle crashes or injuries in those states. From what we hear as advocates, it’s working fine.”
Wells said there’s reason to approach the figures Newsom cited in his veto message with “some skepticism.”
For one, he said bicyclists are often presumed guilty, especially if there is a fatal crash. This is not necessarily the case in more bike-friendly countries, such as the Netherlands.
“That’s a tough thing because if only one person is left alive after a crash, and it’s the driver, not many will own up to being the one at fault,” Wells said. “It’s hard for bicyclists to speak up for themselves.”
He also said police in America tend to have a “windshield perspective,” in which they “view things from the perspective of a driver because most of them are drivers.”
Wells noted that the unfriendly culture toward cyclists in the country sometimes results in cyclists engaging in unlawful behavior, as well.
“Because of how challenging and frankly unpleasant biking is in America, many people ride on the sidewalk because that’s the only place they feel safe, for example,” he said.
In conclusion, Wells said there is a “truly troubling rise in crashes involving cyclists, but I think [Newsom’s] argument is undermined by the success of this law in other neighboring countries and states.”
Some municipalities have taken the matter of cyclists yielding at stop signs into their own hands. In Berkeley, for example, the city council decided to deprioritize enforcement against the Idaho stop in 2019 following a series of ticketing along the busy bicycle route Milvia Street.
“We couldn’t take it off the books, it's in the vehicle code as a thing police can enforce,” Ben Gerhardstein with Walk Bike Berkeley told SFGATE. “But we as a city can decide that’s not an appropriate use of our resources.”
“We weren’t arguing folks acting recklessly should be above the law, but if there is enforcement around reckless behavior, we'd like to see a diversion program set up to educate folks,” Gerhardstein said.
He said the city should not be penalizing people financially, but “help them understand through a diversion program, education or community service.”
Not everyone is on the side of the cyclists, however. Many noted that cyclists already do not follow the letter of the law when it comes to stop signs.
“While it is admirable that legislators in Sacramento are paying attention to their bicyclist constituencies, the bill seems to codify an existing norm that most Bay Area bicyclists already follow,” Gabriel Moran, a driver from Moraga, said. “Until bicyclists at large develop a stronger grasp of traffic laws (namely the obligation to stop at stop signs), I do not think action should be taken by members of the state Assembly. Moreover I don’t think traffic cops are filling any ticket quotas by disproportionately penalizing bicyclists blowing through stop signs.”
John Park, who said he walks, bikes and drives, recounts an incident when he was pushing a stroller through a crosswalk at Golden Gate Park’s Music Concourse when a “bicyclist in spandex didn’t even slow down.”
“I had to pull the stroller back to avoid a collision,” he said. “... It seemed intentional.”
Park said he’s routinely been “narrowly missed at a crosswalk by a bicyclist going downhill.”
“As a driver, I stop at an intersection, and while in the middle, a bicyclist goes through,” he said.
He noted that “intentional disregard for others in the intersection” is common among cyclists, and that a bill allowing Idaho stops “would only be safe if the vast majority of bicyclists carefully regarded stop sign bills in the first place.”
“A law that protects that would take that discretion to cite out of the equation and could encourage more reckless behavior,” he concluded.
Stacey Randecker, a cyclist from San Francisco, said she herself has seen cyclists “blow through intersections,” and it “takes my breath away.”
But the vast majority, she noted, observe safety precautions and only cross an intersection after they’ve “stopped, looked and listened.”
She said AB 122 is bigger than the Idaho stop and is more about changing people’s perception of alternative modes of transit that do not rely on greenhouse gases.
“If they’re serious about changing the way people move through the state, Vision Zero or fighting climate change, they need to make it easier for people on foot and on bikes,” she said.
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Most Bay Area cyclists do it. Why is it illegal? - SFGate
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