Bicyclist stop sign law changes re-introduced

50th 2nd regular session (2012) HB2221. This is (i think) an exact copy of the bill from last year; which was a tweak to the original try in 2009.

HEARING SCHEDULED 1/26/2012 at 9AM by the House Transportation committee. All video is archived, in case you miss it live, you can also view the 3/4/2009 hearing at the archive — it’s kind of interesting.

BILL PASSES out of the Transportation Committee 1/26/2012, on an 8-2 vote. It was passed “DP” (do pass. i.e. passed without any amendment). If you didn’t see it live, you can catch it on archived, but it looks like there is a day or two delay…

Prima Facia

I haven’t paid any attention to this up until now (and it was in the bill since it was first introduced in 2009), and perhaps I should have because it looks to be a serious flaw. The bill as written automatically places bicyclists in a weaker legal position if they become involved in a collision with a motorist who also has a stop. This should be addressed an corrected so that bicyclists aren’t assumed to be liable in such a situation (liability should be assigned according to what actions the bicyclist and driver took, not just that a bicycle is a bicycle). I’m not sure if the Idaho approach, see 49-720, fixes this or not. I would think it does. They made a separate statute in the bicycling chapter; it doesn’t piggy-back on the yield-sign law.

There’s also some confusion at 4-way (all-way) stops.

Do drivers stop at stop signs?

I thought this was completely non-controversial. We all know that a full stop is required (for bicyclists, too, by the way) by law, always,  and that there is no wiggle room. Do drivers slow down? Yes, often. Do they make a full stop? Rarely.

Or rather, it completely depends on traffic — if there is conflicting traffic they do (usually) stop; otherwise RARELY. Here is a brief clip where 1 driver stopped (well, almost, but I’ll give it to him) to yield to cross-traffic, and then the next SIX rolled through without stopping:

If that’s too short for you, here is a longer clip that I didn’t even bother to count — the story is exactly the same; DRIVERS RARELY STOP AT STOP SIGNS.

For the technically curious: there is no (marked) crosswalk in this direction, nor is there a painted stop line, here is the statute regarding stop signs: §28-855.

Why do they do it?

See Stop Sign Compliance for discussion and links to some social research studies that offer some explanations. In social research, it is referred to as an example of a “folk crime” (dubbed so apparently by H. L. Ross in 1961, see Traffic Law Violation: A Folk Crime, 8 Social Problems 232).

The more direct explanation is people (drivers and cyclists are people, after all!) act in ways that they perceive as rational and reasonable, and pay scant attention to the letter of the law.

Do drivers stop before making a Right Turn on Red?

It is the same story. Here’s a clip in case you are interested (sorry, but you’ll have to skip in about 40 seconds in order to be able to see the traffic signal).

Do bicyclists run Red Lights?

Here is an interesting published article that goes along along with the compliance theme  from AAP: Riding through red lights: The rate, characteristics and risk factors of non-compliant urban commuter cyclists, via a posting at www.roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/motorists-front-of-judea-what-have-the-cyclists-ever-done-for-us/

Bicycle Stop Sign changes proposed

Dead again

Arizona Road Cycling news Mar 2,2011 is reporting that the bill is dead for this session.

2011; 50th 1st regular session Update

The same bill is back HB2130 (2011, 50th 1st regular session), except that the exception for bicyclists would only apply when they are aged 16 or older. This was to address (appease?) some concerns that arose at the committee hearing in 2009.

Original article written for 2009; 49th 1st regular session

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 »

“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?