Canada

As a Dutch citizen: NO, stop at red!

Drivers will criticize cyclists while drivers themselves rarely stop for a right turn on red and rarely make a full stop at a stop sign

You gotta ask "Why do we need traffic lights?". The answer is "because of motor vehicles", so I don't think cyclists should be disadvantaged by something that is not required because of them.

Permission to exercise discretion does not mean cyclists will blindly roll through danger. No one is more aware of the risk of cycling in traffic than cyclists. Riding defensively is a necessary state of mind. A rule change will have no effect on that.

This whole discussion is a distraction. The real solution is to have proper cycling infrastructure. You don't need to reinterpret road signs if bikes have their own signs in their own protected lanes and protected crossings.

As someone that has been living in Montreal for the past four years, which locale this article brings up numerous times, and biking about 350/365 days a year, I have to highlight a couple things to readers not from Montreal, or maybe even from the other side of the pond:

• Canada doesn't know what yield signs are. Stop signs are on every corner, which are mostly handled as if they were yield signs, but maybe not even that. And this applies to all traffic, not just cyclists.
• Canada also doesn't know what "right has the right of way" is. In some European countries if you come to an intersection without a light, a yield or stop sign, you simply give way to the vehicle approaching from the right.
• The individual boroughs have a lot of disconnect between each other on how traffic is handled. While they are trying to have a unified approach, there's a lot of Balkanization.
• Much of the infra is dated. A remainder of design from the 60s and 70s that had patchwork applied to make it more livable. Things like green wave, automated traffic control or elevated pedestrian crossings and bicycle lanes at intersections are unheard of. Most lights are just set to a fixed cycle and have been operating like the same way for years.
• Intersections, especially with new developments, will have very sharp corners with narrow sidewalk, with greatly reduced visibility.

So that said, I rarely ever see the NYC courier style red-light skips between columns of cars by cyclists. Whenever I see that happen, it's trashy people that seem to have little regard for anything, even their own lives.
I do see cyclists regularly doing Idaho stops at full stop intersections, but it's the same as cars. I think this is a traffic design issue and not an issue with driving culture or cyclists in general. Stop signs are simply a bad design, and this has been elaborated on many times.

I also see a lot of people ride on the e-bike bixi fleet recklessly. They provide far too much speed assist with minimal effort. The same goes with the electric motor bikes with a throttle that somehow pass as e-bike just because they also have the option for pedal assist. However this is not a problem with the vehicles themselves, but rather the lack of education and handling. In most western European nations children are taught how to bike in traffic and adhere to traffic rules at an early age. I can attest to this as I have grown up in Germany, and in grade 4 elementary we had to get our Fahrrad Führerschein, which was basically an attestation of having a course completed, for children.

Nah, I didn't get to be a 67 year old cyclist by doing dumb things in downtown rush hour traffic. In any case, starting from all those intersections when the light turned green was great training for the velodrome. I was a mediocre track cyclist, but my standing start was pretty good, due to getting out of the saddle and getting up to speed as fast as possible every single commute.

Furthermore, the efficiency of cycling depends on maintaining speed.

That's some pretty specious logic. I would use less fuel if I didn't foolishly waste it stopping at red lights too.

The key is being predictable. As long as the law says cyclists have to stop and they don’t, they are being unpredictable, and put themselves at greater risk.

And the driver who inadvertently hits a non-stopping cyclist - someone who is already much smaller and less likely to be noticed in the first place - gets to spend the rest of their lives dealing with having hit (possibly maimed or killed) said cyclist.

It’s a bad idea. Idaho should never be cited as an example.

Basically (in a city below 50km/hr):

If a car runs a red light, the life at risk is someone else's.

If a bike runs a red light, the life at risk is their own.

So there is a difference.

As a Vancouverite, this is the state of things anyway. All stop signs are yield signs. All yield signs- actually there are no yield signs.

@otters_raft
Idaho stop!

In Québec, cyclists always say that driving laws do not apply to them, they never stop at STOP sign or a red lights, are on the road or the sidewalk instead of the cycle lanes, etc.

They are very dangerous as they respect nothing especially in suburbia. In Montreal sometimes they stop!!!!!!! because it's stop or die, mainly.

I think the lawmakers here are maybe not considering all of the consequences.

Yes a bike won't be able to cause as much damage to another biker or a vehicle if they don't stop at a stop sign and then hit one.

Especially when compared to a vehicle hitting another vehicle.

But those aren't the only two things at a stop sign or intersection. There are also pedestrians crossing the street, often with aight telling them that it is safe to do so. People with disabilities like blindness, people with children, etc.

What happens if there is a line of vehicles to the left of the bike lane blocking the view of the cyclist and they keep going straight since it's a three way intersection, no road on the right so no vehicles to even worry about, and then a mother with a baby in a carriage steps out from in front of the vehicle at the front?

Sure a bike won't do as much damage as a vehicle, but it can still certainly do a lot of damage in the right circumstances.

A car that runs a red light can cause serious or even fatal injuries. A cyclist, on the other hand, is unlikely to cause the same degree of damage.

But they can cause damage. So this direction of logic is faulty. If they argued that there would be less accidents with cyclists going through stop intersections then I would ask to see the data to validate that, but "the crashes won't be as bad" is ludicrous to ground this change on. And won't be as bad for whom? It's going to be bad for the cyclist certainly, but even if a fatal hit only creates a scratch on a car hood, does that mean it's okay?

I think the unfairness psychological factor is often underappreciated. People have a very strong aversion to unfairness and that's a part of reality no less than the real safety differences between cars and bikes running a stop sign. If we're to change the status quo, it needs to take that into account and make people feel things are fair. E.g. if stops signs are treated as yield signs on most of the back streets, maybe change them to yield signs. And/or make new signs that except some vehicles from full stop where really needed. And start enforcing the rules of the road instead of letting people make their own rules, which produces chaos, injury and death. If some rule turns out to be impractical, enforcing it would get people to vote for changing it.

E: The quantity of stop signs on small streets in TO is TOO DAMN HIGH!

Replace most of these:

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With those:

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I stopped reading anything from The Conversation a long time ago. Such and idiotic title doesn't encourage me to change that. Playing Frogger on a bike isn't a good way to survive.

The unfairness problem imo is a problem because many places don't have exclusions for bikes. I'm not Canadian so idk if that's true there.

Both cars and bikes have to obey the rules, even in situations where it is obvious that not obeying them would be better (for example running a red light in the middle of nowhere where you have clear visibility that there are no humans around).

And there are some rules that are obviously thought only for cars, so the bikes think that they can break them.

As a car this is seems as unfair because they can't break the rules even if they think there's no danger.

If the rule just says "this rule doesn't apply to bikes" imho it would be seen as fair-er by cars.

Bike how you want, but if you fail to follow the established rules for vehicles on the road and get injured, it’s totally on you.