Idaho Stop for Cyclists? Drivers Already Do It!

Oh The Urbanity! · 33K views · 2021 · 4:22

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Transit, cities & urban planningexplainer

Why Hacker News recommends it

Linked in threads on the Idaho and Colorado safety stop as evidence that drivers already roll stop signs.

What it is

A short urbanism video presenting original observations of how drivers treat stop signs, to argue that cyclists rolling through them under an Idaho stop is no different. It filmed intersections in Ottawa.

Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2022 to 2023.

What Hacker News said

Recommends joshlemer · 2022-11 · on “Idaho Stop”

I'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't blocked by an other car. This twitter video exemplifies it pretty well [LINK] We just take for granted that cars will blast through stop signs at a pretty high speed (maybe 10 - 20 km/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 spe

Cites ThatGeoGuy · 2022-04 · on “The Colorado Safety Stop is the law of the land”

This is actually what this law is about. The difference between a cyclist at a stop sign and your average vehicle is visibility. Cyclists don't have blind spots the way cars & trucks do. So if you can reasonably see that there is no immediate traffic, you don't have to wait at an intersection and risk hoping that another driver at a 4 way stop will respect the stop sign. This whole law is being called the "Colorado Safety Stop" but was initially called an Idaho stop [1][2]. It resulted in a 23% reduction in bicycle crashes in intersections with STOP signs only [3]. Even if you think the results are not intuitive, they are certainly backed by data. Making this a law just means cyclists won't

Cites ryukafalz · 2023-06 · on “U.S. pedestrian deaths reach a 40-year high”

It's not as comprehensive as you're probably looking for, but I saw a video a while back with some observations on this in Ottawa: [this video]