Ignoring that my country doesn’t allow Idaho Stops, or that my Provincial Government wants to actively kill cyclists by removing safe cycling infrastructure, I’ve always wondered if there’s a reason why cyclists aren’t allowed to simply ride through an intersection like the one in the photo.
I’m talking about the right side, where the bike lane could extend through the intersection without interfering with other vehicles, including those that are turning left.
This would not only keep those stops safer (clears the cyclist out of the intersection), but would just make sense from a transportation efficiency standpoint.
Is there something I’m missing, or do cyclists have to stop only because motorists would take a tantrum if they weren’t required to?
I can imagine any reasonably size truck, semi etc turning left may need to use the bike lane to avoid clipping the front of a vehicle in the lane coming through from the other way. That portion (the passenger side of the semi) of the road would be in a massive blind spot for the driver, so they’d probably be relying on bikes to have stopped according to the standard rules of the road.
Probably a pretty rare scenario, and easy enough for a cyclist to see and avoid, but rules are built around worst case scenarios, not most frequent scenarios.
I can imagine any reasonably size truck, semi etc turning left may need to use the bike lane to avoid clipping the front of a vehicle in the lane coming through from the other way.
That’s a reasonable concern. In areas where large trucks are expected to turn, you’d see traffic lights (not stop signs). At least, that’s what I’ve noticed, since the intersections themselves need to be large enough to accommodate large trucks like that.
But three ways in areas where you’d only expect small vehicles are very common around here, and stopping doesn’t make sense.
Really, we just need to permit the Idaho Stop so a question like this one becomes irrelevant. 😂
Idaho Stop is permitted at every location lacking a police officer. I see perhaps 2 in 10 not Idahoeing in my part of TO. The TO maneuver is, look for cars, look for police, if neither is present, proceed through the stop sign. I stop these days because I’m riding electric assist and starting from a stop isn’t that big of a deal and I don’t have to pay as much attention this way.
I’ll be honest, I use an Idaho Stop at some very specific intersections (with red lights) near me. I’ve been stranded at some of these lights for 10+ minutes, simply because they don’t change for cyclists. Even when they signal yellow, and you expect your light to turn green, it’ll continue as red when it detects that no cars are there.
It’s a form of subtle discrimination against anyone who isn’t in a car, and if the way is clear, I’m going through it.
