It turns out cyclists actually should roll through stop signs. Here’s why
It turns out cyclists actually should roll through stop signs. Here’s why
When it comes to greening up our transportation systems and reducing the massive carbon footprint left by our daily commutes,...
I do not live in an Idaho stop state, but I do it regularly.
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which is pretty obvious for a vehicle that works largely by maintaining momentum
All vehicles benefit from momentum. Stopping and starting is huge energy suck, except in vehicles with braking recovery systems in which case it's only a less bad energy inefficiency. Braking energy capture is never 100% efficient.
This logic ("muh momentum!") can be used by every conveyance to justify rolling through stop signage.
There is a difference between a vehicle you have to power with your own muscles and a vehicle that you power by moving your big toe on the gas pedal. of course they all benefit from momentum, but I'd much rather have to come to a complete stop and then start up again in a car.
No sympathy for the environment, huh?
With drivers decelerating and stopping at lights, then revving up to move quickly when lights go green, peak particle concentration was found to be 29 times higher than that during free-flowing traffic conditions. (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/02/why-traffic-lights-are-pollution-hotspots/)
In a city the size of Atlanta, 269,000 tons of CO2 emissions could be prevented, equivalent to the CO2 absorbed by a forest 3.3 times the size of Atlanta, according to Inrix. (https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1135482_poorly-timed-traffic-lights-add-to-greenhouse-gas-emissions-here-s-an-estimate-of-how-much)
That latter article is talking about how many tons of CO2 could be reduced just by better optimizing traffic in the city so that fewer cars hit red lights.
No argument, getting rid of cars would have the biggest positive impact, but failing that, optimizing lights for cars, while not helping cyclist safety, would be a much better investment if we want to reduce pollution. Idaho stops for cyclists from the OP post would actually be detrimental to the environment based on the conclusions from the study: that allowing it makes drivers more cautious, implying more full stops, more time idling, and more CO2 produced per car trip.
Roundabouts.
+100 on roundabouts. We have not nearly enough in the US, although they're becoming more popular. A little troublesome for cyclists, though, because cars never stop. It's a worst-case situation for bikes.
I live in Minneapolis, which is graced with 98 miles of bike lanes and 101 miles of off-street bikeways and trails. When industry turned from blue to more white collar last century, they tore out all of the old railway lines and converted it to paths. It's the most incredible bicycling in the US, bar none. "Share the road" isn't an issue, because you can get nearly anywhere in the greater metropolitan Twin Cities in dedicated bike paths, often without ever having to share a street with cars, except to cross.
I'm in a closed suburban neighborhood; within two miles are still farms and horses. Yet I can get on my bike, ride 5 blocks through the neighborhood (OK, with cars for that part), get on a Rail Line (they're still mostly named after the rail lines they used to be), ride to a park, through it, onto another line, and all the way up into the nearest town 5 miles away to an organic grocery store. I have to cross 1 road on that entire line, and along a road-ajacent bike path for a half mile. And I could ride all the way across the Cities to a suburb on the far side - 47 miles - on dedicated bike paths. Some of those are bike lanes, but still; I've lived here for 7 years now, and it still blows my mind. The network is truly incredible, and something to be proud of. Most of the native cyclists, from the online bitching I read, have no clue how good they have it.
Many cyclists here - the spandex & clip-shoe types, still ride on the road with the cars, even when there's a perfectly good, paved bike lane next to them; I chalk that up to basic Midwestern passive-aggressiveness, but I'll grant that maybe there's a good reason for it.
Anyway, that kind of strayed off the topic of round-abouts, but if you're a cyclist, Minneapolis is one of the best cities in the world in which to live.
As long as they are done correctly. I've seen many new roundabouts that are two lanes wide and allow people in the middle lane to turn out of the roundabout. Only the outer lane should turn out, otherwise there's essentially a stop sign because you never know what the other cars are going to do.
I would love, love love to see more roundabouts here, there's a lot of inertia against them though.
I was talking from the perspective of the effort involved in a full stop on a bike vs a car. You seem to be taking the position that cyclists doing an Idaho stop will never stop or look around, that it should all be on car drivers to avoid oblivious idiot cyclists who will ride out in front of them without warning. I guarantee you any of those states that have this law will still find the cyclist at fault if they run a red light and get clobbered.
If you want to change the topic and talk about whether I have "sympathy for the environment", I also drive an EV. I replaced my gas furnace with a heat pump. I ride my bike instead of driving a car for most of my <10mile trips. Having the ability to roll a stop sign or proceed through a red light when it's clear has nothing to do with any of those things.
OK, let's look at only the effort, then.
"Effort" is energy. Whether on a bike, in an EV, or in an ICE vehicle, it takes energy to stop and then accelerate. The arguments in favor of Idaho stops applies equally to all vehicles: if the study does prove it increases safety by making drivers more paranoid - and it's not clear that it does, as others have pointed out - then it applies equally to all conveyances. Drivers being more careful at stops because anyone else could be legally rolling through a stop sign applies whether it's a bicyclist or a semi truck. If the argument is about less energy use, then the argument is even stronger for cars because it's far more energy expensive for them to come to a complete stop than it is for a bicycle.
Basically, if Idaho stops are good for bikes, they're even better for cars. If they're legal for bikes, they should be equally legal for cars. But the study is flawed, and before we legalize rolling stops or drive-through-red legal, we'd need far more, and better, studies.
As an aside, we now know that you're going to burn about the same calories whether exercising or not. Calories not burnt in exercise get used by the body to produce fat and to overdrive expensive biological processes, contributing to disease. The difference in total energy consumed through reduced food intake by legalizing rolling stops is negligible; it'd have almost zero environmental impact.
That's a lot of words to say, "I don't want someone on a bicycle to get something that makes their life a little easier. In fact, cars should get it and not bikes!"
Oh sweet, I didn't realise a 8 thousand pound truck was self propelled. Exactly the same thing, for sure.
It takes less fuel to keep it going than to start it going. What point are you even trying to make?
That they are mad.
That the amount of effort it takes to move a bicycle is more than a motor vehicle?