also he is comparing to the total population to come up with .004%... how many of that total population are active motorists?

Establishing someone was speeding after an accident isn't that tough...

Of course, there is a difference in how much they were speeding and how easy small amounts of speeding are to detect...

Never the less. Your cited report just supports my statement that even speeding does not result in world ending calamity that someone claimed I was stating. Like blowing intersections it is simply an act that increases risk...

It actually was a straw man. You turned his argument into something more far reaching than it was. In fact, he didn't even make an argument he simply made a small counter point and you turned that into a wide reaching statement.

Right, I corrected my post a moment after I posted.

The only location (that I am aware of) that raises speed limits in response to speeding is Kalifornia. Not what many would call a rational state.

Expecting vehicle operators to obey the rules is not unrealistic. Understanding that people will not always do so and that enforcement of those rules is necessary is realistic. The enforcement should be proportional to the problem, since we do not have unlimited enforcement resources.

The idaho law was pushed by a cyclist (who happened to be a judge) who didn't think the law should apply to his kind of people...

No I didn't. I rephrased what I thought he said as a question... Since much of his original quote was snarky, I wanted to be sure if he was serious or not...

Most. It's like 90%.

Don't know the answer. But even if its only a third (which I would guess is about right) that raises the percentage to 0.012%, still hardly the huge amount implied...

Almost a decade ago I wrote this paper on making signals detect bikes, due to my frustration over signals that wouldn't detect me:
http://www.humantransport.org/bicycl.../detection.htm

Since then, most of the signals that didn't detect my bikes now do. The city's traffic engineers read my paper and took it to heart, and over time they took over maintenance from the state of many of the signals that gave me trouble.

If a signal is clearly defective, I will proceed like it's a stop sign after waiting long enough to make sure it's defective. This isn't ignoring the signal law; this is simply doing what any other driver would do if the infrastructure were clearly broken and unusable as encountered.

You know you can make a mistake and not become wrong about everything you've ever said? You don't have to be defensive. I think you garner a fair bit of respect by simply being here and having these opinions. Maybe not from everyone here, but we aren't the whole world (far from it).

You rephrased wrong, from my point of view and his. Then you argued against it. Straw man.

Not being defensive, simply don't agree. I don't think a question can ever be a straw man... But the point is not worth debating, particularly since it isn't related to the issue (Idaho stops) at hand.

I think you missed the point of my statement you quoted. The judgment concerned whether a particular cyclist not stopping complied with the law or not, by a police officer (and later the court). It would be based upon conditions and speed.

Judging whether a intersection is safe to proceed through is a different issue.

In the areas I am familiar, such an action would at the very least be considered a defense against prosecution for running such a signal, though it doesn't apply to stop signs. In fact, at least in terms of a broken signal, that is what they test for in my state.

myrridin, you are one speedy poster. I deleted that comment immediately after posting, you crazy keyboard ninja! My browser hiccuped and thought that page three was the last page, then when I responded, it showed me that there were two more pages. I deleted my post (just in case someone had already said the exact same thing) and was reading the next two pages, only to find you had caught my un-post in the few seconds between birth and death. Props.

But hey, since you responded, here's your answer. There is no question of determining fault or lawbreaking in an action if the law is changed to render the action legal. If a cop sees someone procede through an intersection controlled by yield signage, or a roundabout, they don't have to determine fault unless there is an accident.

I agree 100%. However we live in a world where we have to work with limited resources, and these proper methods of speed/flow control are significantly more expensive than simple lines and signs. So we have reached a point where the misuse of the stop sign is essentially universal, and reversing it is going to be very slow and very, very expensive.

I view the idaho law as a very cheap and immediate temporary solution to this problem which can be implemented now, while we work in the background to advocate for proper physical control devices. And despite the made up scenarios marched out here, it has proven to NOT cause mayhem and increased injuries in the municipalities where the law has been passed.

Despite others' desperate attempts to make it seem important, the population of Boise has very little to do with any of this.

Agreed - but even so, with so many alternative side street routes, I am a firm believer that we should do what we can to encourage usage of these rather than try to squeeze motorists and cyclists onto shared busy arteries unnecessarily.

Unfortunately in almost every town, we have purposefully converted most side routes into inconvenient routes in order to push vehicles onto the arterials - and we have done so largely through the use of stop signs. Bicycles are the one vehicle that should NOT be encouraged to travel along the busiest roads, but we have created very few incentives to avoid this. We need to create more.

They do have to determine "fault" or a better way to explain it, they need to be able to articulate and prove that an improper yield occurred if they issue a traffic violation.

Traffic control devices exist to prevent collisions and other accidents. Since human beings tend to not think the rules apply to them, enforcement such as ticketing is needed to provide some incentive to obey those rules.

20% of the US population is under 15.... another 1/8 of the population is over 65.

So that 90% figure is false.

25% of the population is under 18... and many states issue provisional licenses with limited driving privileges for those motorists between 16 and 18... so while these folks are drivers, they have limited access to both cars and the privilege to drive.

Clearly somewhere in the 75-80% of the total population is more likely for the total active driving population.... and that is assuming drivers over 65 continue driving.

Become more aware...

http://www.aaafoundation.org/pdf/HarshaHedlund.pdf
http://www.mit.edu/~jfc/laws.html

There are countless resources on the web to show that other states also use the 85% rule for establishing speeds...

I thought this MI brochure however sort of summed it all up. http://www.rcocweb.org/Commuters/Speed.pdf

I bet they still ride in personal autos.... So they're at full risk of being on the speeding side of a speed induced collision.

point well taken... so should we consider .004% of the population expendable?

I believe I've been told by DOT workers in NE that we use it. As I understand it; it's a highway thing, not a city thing. Well, except when we build highways in cities.

I can't find my copy, but I read a study conducted by CALTRANS in the eighties that showed that raising the speed limit because of the 85% principal resulted in increases in average speeds. In fact, I remember a push to prevent measurements of speeds to avoid such issues.

A key element in your Michigan brochure is the need for a traffic/engineering study to determine if raising the speed represents a safety concern. In effect, the 85% rule is a blanket change (which I believe it was in Kalifornia).

I still maintain that basing laws on what people will do anyway, makes no sense. The only justification for any traffic law is to promote/facilitate public safety. We may not choose to enforce the law but that doesn't mean we should adjust them to make unsafe (or if you prefer less safe) behavior legal.

Actually we DO pretty much base laws on "what people do anyway..." The repeal of the prohibition of alcohol is a classic example.

So, you're arguing that the police will have a harder time figuring out if some failed to yield if a stop sign is not present? I'm pretty sure that the police are able to establish whether or not a vehicle properly yielded the right of way without the presence of stop signs. Sure, it's pretty clear cut if a vehicle doesn't stop at a stop sign. It's also pretty clear cut whether or not a vehicle yielded the right of way.

So I don't see how, say, replacing stop signs at a two way stop with yield signs will make enforcement more difficult. Or how replacing four way stops with roundabouts will confuse the police.

No, what I am saying is that if cyclists are allowed to roll through a stop sign, the police/court will have a harder time ticketing those cyclists that then do not bother to slow down when blasting through the stop signs. The presumptive nature of the law that a vehicle must come to a complete stop makes the issue a boolean one. The Idaho law introduces an analog component.

The issue with treating the stop sign as a yield sign is what constitutes slow enough? From what I've seen (granted limited experience) the tickets issued for failure to yield were based upon the lack of brake lights on the car, meaning they did not attempt to slow before proceeding. Determining if a cyclist has slowed and what is slow enough presents a problem for the courts/cops. Further I would suspect that the Boise cops got the message from the cyclist, er... I mean activist judge, that failure to stop (or now yield) citations to cyclists would not be viewed favorably...