Cyclists and stop signs: Will someone come up with a constructive solution?

The controversy over cyclists failing to stop at stop signs has been swirling around the Austin cycling community the last few days, and we have certainly entered the fray and stirred the pot a bit ourselves. Things kind of came to a head with a Monday evening story by KVUE that many thought was pretty unfair. I called KVUE out on what I saw as sensationalism over good journalism.

In response, KVUE did a followup story Tuesday evening that should have been the story to start with. Rather than inflammatory comments from a cherry picked "cyclist on the street", this time KVUE interviewed APD about the law, quantified their survey of a Shoal Creek intersection, and interviewed someone (yours truly) about a possible solution to the problem. So clearly we have a problem.

The KVUE story reported that 61 % of the 64 riders they taped failed to stop or make a rolling stop at the intersection in question. The comments section of KVUE lit up in response to the story with 137 responses, mostly incredibly passionate and often irate statements from both sides.

The response from the cycling community has fallen into two categories: those that feel obeying the signs isn't necessary, essentially a harmless offense, and those who think you should just follow the law and stop giving cyclists a bad reputation. This back and forth creates kind of a conversational gridlock in the cycling community, and it appears the only solution offered is to continue doing what we are doing and expecting different results.

Background on the problem

The issue of failing to follow traffic signs and signals has been an ongoing issue on our city streets. I'll attempt to answer "why can't they just follow the law?"

I believe this issue stems from a couple of problems. First, bicycling law simply is not really covered in driver's education plus since you don't have to be licensed to ride a bike, there are people who ride who don't have a license (yes, there really are adults in Texas who do not have a driver's license.) In fact, City staff found ignorance of cycling law to be enough of an issue with Austin police that part of the Master Bike Plan recently passed included training for the entire APD on bicycle law. So you have people including the police ignorant of the law and people who see other cyclists treating stop signs as yields and most just follow along. This law has been inconsistently enforced in the past, and in fact I see cyclists fail to completely stop quiet frequently in front of police without ticketing. Of course, based on recent reports this may be changing.

Secondly, there is an issue inherent in this form of transportation. Since you are using your own power to move the vehicle and it takes much more energy to get the bike moving from a complete stop than from a slow coast, most cyclists try to avoid a complete stop as much as possible. I realize that that is not justification for failing to stop, but it is part of the reality.

Possible solutions: Real Education Programs or the Idaho Way?

As I mentioned in an earlier post, just ticketing people when there happens to be police around who are so inclined is a haphazard way of making our streets safer. By itself it's not very effective, and it does create some hostility in the community to the police. Currently, there are no fewer than a half dozen billboards in this town educating the public about seat belt laws. If seat belt laws which are repeatedly covered in driver's education and defensive driving classes need this kind of advertising, than bicycle laws need it all the more.

Again, the cycling community has multiple ways to reach people about this not limited to e-mail lists, club communication, and websites like ours. Those things don't cost anything, but we could do better. How about asking all the bike shops to put a brochure in the bag when customers make a purchase? Almost every event I participate in gives you a bag of goodies, coupons, and advertisements for other races at package pickup. How about a brochure on bike laws in the participant bag as well? Heck, just stand out at a high traffic cycling interaction or the hike and bike trail and give out warnings with more info on the law. This requires some work, but it will actually yield better responses and more compliance than just occasional ticketing.

Another possible solution I mentioned in the KVUE story is the Idaho Stop law. In Idaho, cyclists can treat stop signs as yield signs and stop lights as stop signs. This is not cart blanche to run intersections or to fail to properly yield right of way. In fact, the Idaho law and a similar law under consideration in Oregon actually increases the fines for failing to yield.

Some people in various threads have dismissed this as unsafe as well, but provide no empirical evidence to back up this assertion. In fact the only evidence we really have is that the Idaho law works since it's been on the books for 27 years with no elevated accidents or fatalities. Traffic laws are not written in stone, and we need to have the flexibility to try different options. They just might be better.

It may feel good to just say "follow the law," but it obviously isn't working. Most cyclists just don't come to a complete stop at stop signs. We can just keep doing the same thing and expect different results, or we can try something new. The goal should be safer streets, not punishing people who offend you. Let's keep the goal on the overall community good.

Elliott McFadden is the co-editor and a writer for Austin On Two Wheels, The Online Magazine of Austin Cycling Culture.