And therein lies the problem with the Idaho Code. It’s also the problem with every other state’s laws. If everyone followed the law, everything would go fine. But people don’t.
I don’t.
I remember when I was a little kid, riding around the neighborhood on my red Huffy BMX with white, plastic wheel covers. I rode that thing from jump to jump all day during the summer. My mom used to tell me that I was supposed to ride on the sidewalk, then get off my bike and walk it across the street, but I didn’t care. I rode in the street, down alleys, hopped curbs from the sidewalk to the street, rode on whichever side of the street pleased me. The only rules for me were the limits of my Huffy’s white tires.
But I’m not a kid anymore. I realize that there are repercussions for my actions. And I understand that there are other people in the world other than me who are just as human as I am and have just as much right to the road.
Adult or child, riding a bike is still just as good an idea now as it ever was. Anyone can see that more and more people are taking to the streets on bicycles these days and this is a trend that’s unlikely to reverse given still-very-high gas prices, the increasing use of buzzwords like “green” and “sustainable” and America’s giant shift to the left this election. Bikes are hot right now. And they will get hotter. America will be increasingly confronted with the question of how to manage all these cyclists on the roads.
For my part, I’ve just been trying not to make things any worse. I still can’t force myself to stop at stop signs, but now I slow down and make damn sure that the coast is clear before I continue. I still run red lights if there’s no one around to see me, but I try not to make a show of it. I ride by the Idaho Code, essentially – and it works extremely well. I can still ride fast. I can still ride a purple track bike with no brakes and try to look like a badass. I just have to be considerate. And realize that people in cars are people too. They may not have figured out that they should be riding a bike and that they probably don’t have any good excuse to drive everywhere yet, but I’m not going to convince them by being a jackass. They have their reasons for driving and they deserve the same respect that anyone else on the road deserves.
As for the Idaho Code, I don’t think that legislators are ready for it yet. It sounds sort of extreme at this point. But as “traffic” becomes more and more comprised of bicycles, states will be increasingly compelled to reconsider their “traffic laws.”
Personally, I’m convinced. I’ve run 5,840 stop signs in the last year and I haven’t died or gotten a ticket once. If anything, riding by Idaho’s code has made me safer and more responsible. The law might tell me that I should behave like a car, but my common sense tells me that I when I pull up to an intersection in the middle of the night and no one is around, I might as well just roll right on through.
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In Milwaukee I am a huge fan of the ol' Right turn/U turn move. When approaching a red light simply turn right and pull a U eee shortly thereafter, and then make another right back onto the original street, continuing on my merry way. Now some do this, like you mentioned, only when they can't stop in time. But I find it to be a handy tool. Like in the instance of having to explain myself to a cop I would be able to lie about 'changing my mind.' Was going to destination 1 then decided on destination 2 instead. I think the cop would be more tolerant of a U eee than the dismissal of a red light. I have gotten pulled over in Milwaukee before for blowing the road rules. The sneaky cop car had been following me for blocks and blocks and by the time he decided to woop woop at me and 'pull me over' I had run 12 stop signs and 2 red lights. It was 7:45 am, and the sky was about to BURST with rain. I was running late for work. After all these excuses, he informed me that each ran stop sign is an $80 ticket, and each red light is like $150. So I had racked up a bill. Fortunately after I promised to stop, he let me go with a slap on the wrist. PHEW! I stopped for a couple blocks then went right back to my old antics. The truth of the matter is, that it's impossible to stop at every stop sign unless you're retarded. Unless there is some glitch in your cognitive thought pattern that makes you somehow ok with it. A glitch that inhibits reasoning. Any reasonable person on a bike blows that shit if possible.
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