<story><title>Idaho Stop</title><url>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>SamBam</author><text>This seems designed to start a bicycle argument.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ll go ahead and present the cyclist&amp;#x27;s view, and try not to get flamed:&lt;p&gt;A cyclist&amp;#x27;s head is much closer to the end of their vehicle, and they have a much more unobstructed view around them. By the time they are a few feet from the stop sign, they can already see much further down the street than a driver in a car could. This means it&amp;#x27;s easier to assess safety and make a snap decision to keep going. Coming to a complete stop doesn&amp;#x27;t really add any more safety.&lt;p&gt;Further, while accidents that harm pedestrians do certainly happen, and shouldn&amp;#x27;t be minimized, the vast majority of the time the biggest danger to a cyclist is themselves. Cars kill people every day, so it is reasonable that they be held to a higher standard. If you started out with a bicycle-only intersection with a yield sign, and then started allowing cars through, wouldn&amp;#x27;t you want to increase the safety of that intersection by requiring a stop?&lt;p&gt;As a final thought, most red lights in America could probably be stop signs or yield signs. The UK has been working towards this (with roundabouts too) and in general roads are safer when you require drivers to think and make decisions. I think much of car drivers&amp;#x27; anger towards cyclists treating red lights as stop signs is not so much the safety aspect as a feeling of unfairness that &lt;i&gt;they&lt;/i&gt; are stuck at the light while the cyclist checks the road and then bikes through.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>joshlemer</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ll also add that the anger of motorists towards cyclists rolling through stop signs is completely irrational when you take into consideration that approximately 100% of motorists also run through almost all stop signs, so long as they aren&amp;#x27;t blocked by an other car.&lt;p&gt;This twitter video exemplifies it pretty well &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;toddnickel&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1560358628707618816&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;toddnickel&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1560358628707618816&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;We just take for granted that cars will blast through stop signs at a pretty high speed (maybe 10 - 20 km&amp;#x2F;h?). But when we see a cyclist do it, for some reason there seems to be some sort of optical or logical illusion that makes it stick out to us more. If you look at the speed these cars are going at, a lot of them are probably actually going at around the full cruising speed of a casual cyclist. So, considering most cyclists would actually slow down somewhat to roll through a stop sign, they&amp;#x27;re probably actually going faster.&lt;p&gt;Oh the Urbanity! Recently had a great episode on this as well &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;HT_KdFCVEdc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;HT_KdFCVEdc&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Idaho Stop</title><url>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>SamBam</author><text>This seems designed to start a bicycle argument.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ll go ahead and present the cyclist&amp;#x27;s view, and try not to get flamed:&lt;p&gt;A cyclist&amp;#x27;s head is much closer to the end of their vehicle, and they have a much more unobstructed view around them. By the time they are a few feet from the stop sign, they can already see much further down the street than a driver in a car could. This means it&amp;#x27;s easier to assess safety and make a snap decision to keep going. Coming to a complete stop doesn&amp;#x27;t really add any more safety.&lt;p&gt;Further, while accidents that harm pedestrians do certainly happen, and shouldn&amp;#x27;t be minimized, the vast majority of the time the biggest danger to a cyclist is themselves. Cars kill people every day, so it is reasonable that they be held to a higher standard. If you started out with a bicycle-only intersection with a yield sign, and then started allowing cars through, wouldn&amp;#x27;t you want to increase the safety of that intersection by requiring a stop?&lt;p&gt;As a final thought, most red lights in America could probably be stop signs or yield signs. The UK has been working towards this (with roundabouts too) and in general roads are safer when you require drivers to think and make decisions. I think much of car drivers&amp;#x27; anger towards cyclists treating red lights as stop signs is not so much the safety aspect as a feeling of unfairness that &lt;i&gt;they&lt;/i&gt; are stuck at the light while the cyclist checks the road and then bikes through.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kazinator</author><text>I will make it more technical: a cyclist doesn&amp;#x27;t have an windshield A-pillar blocking part of their view.&lt;p&gt;When two vehicles approach an intersection, if they do so at the same speed (including same variation in speed, like both decelerating), the relative view angle from one vehicle to the other stays the same. It&amp;#x27;s possible for another road user to be entirely hidden behind a driver&amp;#x27;s A pillar during an approach to the intersection. In spite of several glances in that direction, it is possible to fail to spot the other vehicle. A proper stop is the only sure thing.</text></comment>