“Idaho Stop” bill re-introduced

Stop-as-yield has been reintroduced.

49th Leg, 2nd Regular Session; HB2633 ( text of HB2633). Its been assigned to the House TI (Transportation and Infrastructure) committee. It’s hard for me to imagine Chairman Biggs letting this bill go anywhere.

You can review articles and background materials from the last session here.

Stop Sign Compliance

In conjunction with the “Bikes Safe at Stop Sign” bill recently introduced in the Arizona legislature, I began to wonder more generally about stop signs in general (all traffic, not just bicycles). Read the rest of this entry »

Why I support “Bikes safe at stop signs”

See Stop sign compliance for links to the present laws, and Bicycle stop sign changes proposed for the pending legislation.

There are a couple of serious objections to allowing bicyclists to legally roll through stop signs that should be considered:

1) Same Roads – Same Rights – Same Rules (SRSRSR). I find this argument specious at best and disastrous at worst. SRSRSR may be useful as a teaching aid, slogan, or PR position but simply does not, and can not, work as a legal position. In Bicycles are not motor vehicles and why it matters I explain why as a practical matter cyclists would be banned outright from most roads were we to actually be subjected to the same rules. There are a myriad of other, lesser, examples; pacelineing would be illegal, bikes would be required to have lights (24×7, not just at night), horns, and so forth, cyclists would have to be licensed, and thus children wouldn’t be allowed to ride bicycles (16″ or more wheelsize), bikes would require insurance and registration stickers (BLT, bicycle license tax, anyone?), there would be no riding on sidewalks statewide, nor would parking be allowed on sidewalks (I guess I would definitely have to get a kickstand).  §28-735, the “3-foot passing law” would have to be repealed.

Beyond the issue at hand, as a matter of consistency, advocacy of any sort of bicycle lane would have to be disavowed — “Same Roads”, remember?

2) Safety; my own feeling is simply that the cyclist’s self-preservation instinct is stronger than any law, and as such changing the law won’t cause any (additional) problems.

Beyond just feeling, my review of traffic engineering literature indicates that the problem at stop signs isn’t one of strict compliance, but rather one of driver-error, see Stop sign compliance for references.

Also, we have an actual example in the state of Idaho. In reply to queries about the law’s impact on safety Mark McNeese said “No impact; nothing changed; current behavior was just legalized”. His full comments are below. Boise and its metro area have populations of around 200,000 and 600,000 respectively. By comparison, Tucson is about 500,000 / 1,000,000, and Phoenix is even larger. Still, it’s hard to claim that Idaho’s almost 3 decades of real-world experience is irrelevant. Read the rest of this entry »

Bicycle Legislation Introduced

Roundup of legislation in Arizona affecting bicyclists, spring 2009 (49th 1st Regular Session):

1) HB2479 “Bikes safe at stop signs”. See Bicycle Stop Sign changes proposed and Why I support “Bikes safe at stop sign”.

• Military Affairs and Public Safety Committee hearing scheduled for Wed March 4th.
• Failed (3 for, 5 against — which was omniously strictly party-line. Patterson, a Democrat, backed it. Every Republican voted against.) to pass committee. The bill was amended to apply to only ages 16 and older. The hearing was pretty interesting; discussion of HB2479 went on for over an hour(!). I watched it on the internet, that worked really well –from what i can tell, you can only see it in real time, i.e. there is no archive. There was open skepticism that police in Tucson are issuing tickets to cyclists just because they “did not put both feet down”, there was further skepticism that such a citation would hold up in court “even in Pima county” (that got some chuckles), Patterson replied that judges tend to defer to police officers. When asked to support the claim that “hundreds” of these citations were being issued by TPD, Rep Patterson explained that he asked but that TPD does not keep records by bike vs. motorist. But the bottom line is that not one of these non-foot-putter-downers materialized to corroborate these claims. Another committeman (Seel?) quoted state ofIdaho Bike coordinator McNesse (out of context, in my opinion) to make it sound as though McNeese is against the stop-as-yield law — he is not.  Rep Barnes (i think) said something encouraging in effect: “I sense anti-cyclists sentiments and I don’t share them… we need to work to make cycling safer (in other areas)”
• Hearing on Oregon’s stop-as-yield bill soon. They have been through this before, twice even, and I expect one of these times it will stick.

2) HB2546 “motor vehicles; bicycles; operation requirements”. Contains a bunch of things. It contains several of the same elements of HB2503 (46th 1st regular session, you MUST “change sessions” FIRST before clicking the link) that died in 2003.

• As of mid-March, the bill looks dead. It never made it to hearing. It is “stuck” in the transportation committee. The bill’s main sponsor, Nancy Young-Wright, is not optimistic for this session.

3) HB2394 and SB1082 (identical) “technical correction; overtaking bicycles” is some wording changes to the existing §28-735(C). Seeing as how HB2546, above, seeks to completely replace 28-735(C), might this be a problem?

Bicycle Stop Sign changes proposed

a la Idaho. The “Bikes Safe at Stop Sign” bill has been introduced in the Arizona Legislature; you can follow it here: HB2479 (2009, 49th 1st regular session). The bill will make its debut on March 4 before the Military Affairs and Public Safety (MAPS) committee. Read the rest of this entry »