I’ve been doing the Idaho Stop on my bike since long before it had a name.
A stop sign means yield, and a stop light means pause. (Picture from Streetsblog NYC.)
The idea is for the cyclist to have their head on a swivel, practicing what I call “visible invisibility.” I don’t want to hang around a corner, because Georgia allows right turns on red. If there’s no cross-traffic I go. If there is cross traffic I stop, sometimes when a car is not yet at the intersection. I then wave stopped cars through the signs, and some drivers are surprised.
I’m not looking for trouble. I’m trying to avoid it.
So far, it’s worked. Over the last 50 years I’ve had more car accidents than bicycle accidents. I’m still riding at 70. It’s just that now I’m on an e-bike.
Trouble is, this won’t work for everyone. Most cyclists haven’t been riding for 50 years. Cars go very, very fast. They can also do an Idaho stop. They may not stop at all.
When this happens, people can die. Car heads blame the cyclist.
This makes the Idaho Stop controversial. You can tell when a Car Head has entered a chat. They’ll demand “all bikes must follow all traffic laws.” Never mind stop signs every 100 feet. Never mind that they’re at the bottom of a hill, by a cul de sac hardly anyone uses. These exist because speeding cars are a problem stopping bikes won’t solve.
Slow Your Roll
Stop signs, speed bumps and other forms of “traffic calming” are designed to slow down cars. It’s a car’s speed, along with its driver’s heedlessness, that requires traffic calming.
Almost four decades ago, I launched a petition to put speed bumps on the 1,000-foot road where I live. A study indicated two would work. Some Car Head neighbors, men I truly respected, opposed them utterly. We compromised on one, near the center of the block.
The need for them is now obvious. I often see cars tearing around the corner, passing my home at 40 mph, then hitting the brakes before speeding up to 40 mph again. Sometimes they don’t even slow down. They just fly over the thing. They don’t see the kids playing along the road, or the cars trying to get out of driveways. They only see their desire to go fast.
This has led to vigilante traffic calming. Neighbors will park on the street, even when they have driveways. There are lawn trucks and delivery trucks that often make ours a one-lane road, sometimes a no-lane road. On my bike I zoom around these obstacles, waving hello to the drivers. Cars must crawl past or stop entirely.
A bike doesn’t need that speed bump. It doesn’t need the stop sign at the end of the street. I slow down, check both ways, then continue. I also avoid going north, past the MARTA station, because that corner doesn’t have a sign and cars blast through it at 55, even though the road narrows at both ends, forcing them back to 25.
Three Trains Running
The optimal solution, in the age of E-Transport, is to have three separate paths and three different speed limits. Current limits of 40 or even 65 mph work on wide roads and Interstate Highways, where bikes and other e-transport shouldn’t be allowed. A bike path should have a speed limit of 15-20, enforced wherever there are pedestrians sharing the path. Optimally, bikes and pedestrians have separate paths along those wide roads.
This is what makes the Netherlands safer than America. Three paths for vehicles that normally travel at three different speeds. Where the path is shared, you default to the slower speed. Pedestrians always have right of way, then bikes (or e-bikes), then cars. It’s because cars are dangerous to bikes, and bikes are dangerous to people on foot.
These rules are vital as more people use E-Transport, which is cheaper, cleaner, and frankly more fun than driving a car. When I went out on my bike over Atlanta’s streets 10 years ago, I was alone. Now I’m never alone. There are regular bikes, cargo bikes, both with and without kids, there are scooters, both upright and seated, there are even people my age riding e-trikes. It’s market demand that’s changing our urban infrastructure, and drivers need to get used to it.
Meanwhile, Opa Fiets will keep doing the Idaho stop.
