Are cyclists blissfully self-absorbed or simply self-centred?

I asked this question earlier this week, when I was in Toronto helping my daughter and son-in-law make some fixes to their new house. Their house is right on the corner of a four-way stop in a tightly-packed suburban neighbourhood. Some traffic. A few kids in hot cars. The odd contractor barrelling along with a lot of lumber.

And lots of bikes.

Between jobs, I spent some time in the front yard and on the front porch, watching the bikes breeze through the intersection. I'm pretty confident that over three days, I did not see a bicycle stop for the stop sign. (In fact, a few cars breezed through the stop sign, as well.) Women with baskets of groceries. Guys on BMX bikes. A mom hauling a kid-trailer. A dad with an add-a-bike. Father and son on their separate bikes. You get the picture.

It's a four-way stop. I suppose the cyclists all thought the same thing, "I can see there's no one coming, and if there is someone coming, well, I'm on a bike, and he has to stop." At least, I hope they were thinking. Judging by the expressions, or lack thereof, on some of the faces, I wondered if they were thinking anything at all.

Comments

[Adam Glauser]

Personally, I like the idea of the "Idaho stop", where cyclists are allowed to treat stop signs as yield signs, and red lights as stop signs.

It seems much more practical and just as safe.

[Michael Druker]

I'd never heard of the "Idaho stop", but I agree with Adam at least about the stop signs. It is completely reckless to ride right through a stop sign regardless of vehicle, but slowing down to nearly zero and looking all ways on a bicycle provides assurance better than in a stopped car. (No pillars to obstruct your view and you have a closer view of the cross street.)

[Chris Beynon]

Cyclists not stopping at four-way stops is nothing new...You would think with all the cyclists not coming to complete stops at these intersections, there would be a lot more accidents than there actually are...The streets should be littered with human roadkill...
But in all your time sitting on the porch watching cyclists not stop at that Toronto intersection, you probably never saw any accidents...
That's because you're making an issue out of something that isn't really an issue...Here these people are living their lives in their neighbourhood riding bicycles and you come along and project your own "intersection morality" onto them...These people know what they're doing and they're not hurting anyone...
Leave them alone!!!

[Michael Druker]

That's a dangerous point of view, Chris. There can be a world of difference between "I don't see it happening" and "it doesn't happen to any significant degree". That same kind of reasoning can easily support getting rid of seatbelts, airbags, drunk driving laws.... People who speed know what they're doing and they're not hurting anyone... except when they are.

[John Spragge]

As a Toronto cyclist who does stop at four-ways, let me offer a word in defence of those who don't. A residential street close to my house runs about eight blocks between two major streets. It has six all-way stop intersections. That street doesn't need anywhere near that number of stop signs. It has them because residents wanted to make it inconvenient for motorists to use that street as a short cut, and because some motorists apparently don't know what to do at an "uncontrolled" intersection. From the city's point of view, installing a stop sign costs nothing; city counselors don't see the increased pollution or the added effort cyclists have to make. But that process results in a city where most, and I mean most, residential intersections have wholly unnecessary four-way stops. I believe Toronto traffic would improve if the city removed all the four-way stops that didn't serve a real need (such as streets with really poor sight lines where the traffic has to stop for safety). Failing that, I would suggest a change to the Highway Traffic Act to allow a new type of intersection control: pedestrians go, cyclists yield, drivers stop.