Comment by mikekchar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikekchar | Hacker News Reader

I haven't driven a car in many years and cycle pretty much everywhere. I'm not sure why anyone would advocate not stopping at a stop sign. They are there for a reason. When I'm riding, I'm usually doing about 30 kph. Hitting a pedestrian at that speed is going to do some serious damage, both to the pedestrian and to me. Hitting something more solid like a car would be extremely bad for me and my bike.

One of the things that has gotten better over the years (especially in Europe) is that car drivers are starting to take cyclists seriously. They are legitimate vehicles on the road. When I was cycling in the UK, I was amazed at how courteous drivers were. Even on back roads, people would patiently wait behind me until the road was wide enough to pass. Often they would smile and wave after they passed me. Not everyone is like that, obviously, but this kind of mutual respect is what you want to go for.

IMHO this idea is a huge step backwards if enacted. What are the counter arguments (the article was quite vague on the details)?

You won't be allowed to roll through a stop sign at 30kph.

Yielding in this context, means slowing down, and going very slowly through the stop-sign, assuming its nobody else's turn to go. Every cyclist I've seen pretty much does this already if nobody is around. But the current law is that you must come to a complete stop, even if nobody is around, before going.

Same thing most cars do, at least where I live. If there's no cross traffic, nobody comes to a complete dead stop at a stop sign.

Hmmm... I admit that I rarely put my foot down if there is no traffic, so I suppose I am rolling through. If that's what's being described, then I suppose it makes some sense. I've been surprised a few times in my life and even when I thought I was going slowly enough to stop, it wasn't the case. Now, I am pretty careful at stop signs. I haven't really been able to see a good description of what "treat a stop sign as a yield sign" means in practical terms, though. "If you hit something or got hit, then you did it wrong" doesn't seem to be a great way to proceed ;-)

The primary difference with respect to San Francisco is that every single residential intersection has a 4-way stop. This is quite different from the UK where (as far as my experience goes living in London for three years) the 4-way stop is almost unknown, instead you either get a preference to the busier road or a roundabout/mini-roundabout/micro-roundabout.

1. Yielding means going relatively slowly through the stop, probably <= 15 kph. At that speed, it's relatively safe to go through. And of course you have to yield to pedestrians still.

2. This has been implemented in Idaho already with no ill effects, and Paris is implementing a variant: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop

3. You have cause and effect backwards. Treating bikes as legitimate road users, with corresponding infrastructure, is what causes cyclists to respect the rules. People don't respect systems that ignore them.

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