I looked up the cited street in street view- there are stop signs in all 4 directions. I look forward to the full accident report, but from the evidence available it sounds like the cyclist didn’t stop at the sign appropriately.
As someone who bikes on 17th street regularly, cyclists rarely stop completely. Most treat it as a yield (myself included) because it's a pain to start+stop at every stop sign.
But it's on the rider to make sure you're on the same page as the other drivers at the intersection, which some bikers don't and just blow through it without checking.
But it's on the rider to make sure you're on the same page as the other drivers at the intersection, which some bikers don't and just blow through it without checking.
I've seen this behaviour a lot. Several times I (walking) came up to a 4-way stop, stopped there briefly to see the cars in the other direction slow and stop, and then started to cross and nearly got hit by a cyclist who seemed to have not seen the stop sign at all.
Harder to do when the driver of the vehicle is not a human being you can make eye contact with, and the human operator isn't interested in maintaining safe and attentive authority over the vehicle that they are responsible for.
Is your town in California? Cuz that would be hella illegal for their front windows and windshields to be tinted to the point you can’t even see their faces.
It’s barely enforced, and I believe that in most major California cities they can’t pull you over for it now, but can give you a ticket if there’s another reason for the stop. The majority of cars I see that are under ~5 years old on California roads have illegal tint.
If cyclists go through without coming to a complete stop (like 99% of drivers, complete stop means the wheels are not turning and the speedometer says "0") and gets hit, the cyclist/pedestrian dies.
If a car ignores signals, the cyclist/pedestrian still dies.
These are not the same modes of traffic, and forcing everyone on earth to bend to the behaviors of the most dangerous mode of transportation is insanity.
If you choose to blow through the stop sign because it "looks safe", you should bear the full responsibility for that decision. (I say this as an avid cyclist who sometimes blows through stop signs.)
Why do I only see this phrase when someone is blaming cyclists? I bike everywhere but I'm not an "avid cyclist", it's just a tool for getting around. What is there to be "avid" about?
I suspect it's from people who think of cycling primarily as a sport or pastime, not a practical mode of transport.
>If you choose to blow through the stop sign because it "looks safe", you should bear the full responsibility for that decision
This is the "you're holding it wrong" mindset, where something doesn't work right, and people are blamed for not contorting themselves around it. If it looks safe, but isn't safe, then that's a problem with the road, not the people who use it. It should be redesigned.
4-way stop signs are stupid, there are better alternatives like roundabouts. UK and Europe have hardly any stop signs.
> 4-way stop signs are stupid, there are better alternatives like roundabouts. UK and Europe have hardly any stop signs.
wholeheartedly agree, and just in general there are too many stop signs in the US;
but what's needed for cars going at 40-50 Mph is different than what's needed for cyclists who have the time to look both ways without necessarily having to come to a full stop (just like pedestrians crossing the road at places other than a crosswalk).
How is it a pain to stop in a car? Does your foot hurt from pressing the brake pedal and then the accelerator? I don't get it - it takes actual, not-insignificant effort to start riding a bike after a full stop, unlike a car, even when it has a manual transmission. I'm guessing that is why there are jurisdictions that introduce laws allowing cyclists to skip the full stop.
It's also a side effect of very bad urban design. I bike in the Netherlands and don't know if I've _ever_ seen a stop sign here. Traffic signals, sure, but not stop signs.
Cities in Europe are much smaller and more compact than US cities. And while there's no stop sign, you still have to yield to traffic from your right if there's no sign whatsoever. And specifically, dutch cities tend to have winding narrow streets where you can't speed up too much.
Stop signs are put in places where I guess a yield sign proved to be dangerous to traffic?
Insisting that a bicycle needs to follow the same procedures as a 3000lb internal combustion engine driven vehicle is madness. The vast majority of car laws are completely inappropriate for bicycles. Bicycles are much smaller, go much slower, can stop much faster, etc.
I get what you’re saying but as a cyclist totally disagree. The problem I see at least while I was in SF, cyclists generally believed since they were riding a bike, they had the right of way in all scenarios. I still have vivid memories of almost smoking a cyclist while on my motorcycle only for them to be mad at me when I tried to explain to them that zipping in between lines of cars will get them run over. If you are to mingle bicycle son the same roads as cars, they need to follow the same rules.
> don't make up excuses why you should break the laws just because they are inconvenient to you
I tend to agree, and obey the speed limit and come to a stop at stop signs when driving. I get passed by other drivers, sometimes dangerously, often illegally, several times a week.
I would have sympathy for driver complaints about cyclists who ignore inconvenient traffic laws if drivers were any more law-abiding.
If you want to drive faster, fine, change the speed limit. But don't just ignore laws you find inconvenient!
confine the bikes to the bike lanes, then don't build bike lanes (or build awful ones) and finally you'll be free of those pesky bikes! finally the cars will have the road all by themselves.
The law is a complete stop in California, not a 3 second stop.
And yeah, anyone rolling through stop signs shouldn't be driving. In cities that actually enforce traffic laws, you can get your license suspended for it.
And since this is about (semi-) autonomous vehicles, in this case, lets not also forget the release of FSD that specifically allowed you to run stop signs.
It really bothers me that the laws don't reflect real life. It gives the authorities the ability to harass whoever they like for violating laws that are routinely ignored until a cop wants to start something. That's not okay.
I find plenty of rules of the road annoying, whether I'm in a car, on a bicycle or pedestrian. This "Oh, well, it's annoying so we don't do that" is BS.
I used to yield at stop signs early on while cycling, but after I was hit by a car who ran a stop sign, I switched to coming to a complete stop at every stop sign, ensuring no cars were about to run their stop signs, then going. Self preservation is more important than maintaining a little bit of momentum.
A fun bonus for this method is it seems to annoy the cars behind you even more when you actually come to complete stops, even though all drivers complain that cyclists don’t stop at stop signs.
Looking at the intersection [1], what a badly designed mess it is! You have 2 bike lanes disappearing into the intersection without any sort of protection.
Cars can be parked right up to the ped crossings, potentially obscuring what is happening. Looks like a death trap to me.
At a minimum, raising the crossings so that cars have to slow down, and having no parking zones in front the crossings would improve the situation by a lot.
Humans make mistakes all the time, intersections should be designed to accommodate that.
They haven't started enforcing it because you can only issue warnings if people park close to the crosswalk until next year - specifically because most drivers don't know about the law.
And the law actually states that local authorities can come up with their own distance rules instead.
> They haven't started enforcing it because you can only issue warnings if people park close to the crosswalk until next year - specifically because most drivers don't know about the law.
OK, I see that now:
(4) Prior to January 1, 2025, jurisdictions may only issue a warning, and shall not issue a citation, for a violation unless the violation occurs in an area marked using paint or a sign.
But honestly I often see cars stopped (waiting, not parked) in red zones and have never seen them get a ticket or even asked to move on.
> And the law actually states that local authorities can come up with their own distance rules instead.
I didn't know this!
(B) Notwithstanding subparagraph (A), a local authority may establish a different distance if both of the following requirements are met:
(i) A local authority establishes the different distance by ordinance that includes a finding that the different distance is justified by established traffic safety standards.
(ii) A local authority has marked the different distance at the intersection using paint or a sign.
I wonder whether (n)(1)(B)(i) is, in practice, a high bar.
I doubt the bar is particularly high and the onus is on the city to create signs/paint curbs to indicate if it's longer or shorter.
As it stands, if there's a red curb or parking prohibition sign already next to a crosswalk, it dictates distance - whether longer or shorter - and there are a lot of intersections with those already that are much shorter than 20 feet - like where fire hydrants often are. If SF doesn't repaint/resign those, then nothing happens.
It's only for unpainted/unsigned areas where the 20 ft rule comes into place.
Outside areas with dedicated parking enforcement patrols, do police actually issue tickets for parking within distance of thing?
I ask because, here in Indianapolis, on my heavily-trafficked mixed residential/commercial street, drivers routinely ignore both painted curbs and painted parallel parking space markers for days at a time and seem to be rarely, if ever, ticketed for doing so.
Cyclists are far from the only ones who don't stop at stop signs appropriately. Stand on a street corner sometime and count the cars that come to a full stop. I'd be shocked if you find more than 20% do. Which is all well and good as far as I'm concerned as long as people are paying attention and it doesn't cause an accident.
But if cars that take no physical effort of the driver to get moving again aren't expected to come to a full stop, it seems unfair to expect that of bikes. Of course if you blow through an intersection full speed without looking all bets are off and you probably get what you deserve, but I chafe at the bar being set at a "full stop or it was your fault" way of thinking, especially when the cyclist has so much more to lose.
The more important thing is yielding. I've very rarely seen a car fail to yield at a stop sign, but people on bikes or e-scooters do it all the time. They even hit peds sometimes.
Rolling through stop signs while cycling is generally appropriate (and is the law in more enlightened places). In California it may be illegal, but so is a car exceeding the speed limit, and few would excuse Waymo for hitting one of those.
Rolling is usually slow enough to stop on a dime from my experience. The problem is cyclists who continue at full speed and then decide to react last second.
And I am willing to concede that on a bike, as long as you are just slow rolling and not impinging on the right of way such that it confuses other drivers, it's fine. But I have also seen plenty of cyclists who slow roll into the middle of the lane and then act indignant when they get honked at for blocking traffic; At that point, there's very little difference from having just blown through the intersection at full speed.
Yes there is a hostility between drivers and bikers and bikers and cars, where they both build up resentment and settled for this hostile middle ground where they both treat the others poorly.
Not to mention plenty of people in both are just dumb or ignorant of their surroundings
> Just to nitpick a little, let's use the word cyclists, not bikers
Humans are capable of gleaning from context.
> I feel that bikers actually obey traffic signs more than cyclists do.
Motorcycles have completely different traffic laws, both legally and socially... so yes they would follow car style traffic rules more closely than a cyclist.
Cyclists are just dangerous and until we look at statistics we can’t assume that AI does worse than humans in protecting cyclists. As a driver, it took me many years to get into the habit of shoulder checking when turning right from the right lane. I always have my turning signal but to cyclists it doesn’t mean much, they will always try to pass me on the right on the intersection. Cyclists sometimes behave as though they are pedestrians and other times they behave as vehicles, depending on what is convenient. Or that may just be me trying to rationalize their erratic behavior. There are no traffic lights or signs for cyclists.
> As a driver, it took me many years to get into the habit of shoulder checking when turning right from the right lane
If you weren't already doing it all along, that's kind of on you. It's literally on the driving test. I've been hit walking in a crosswalk by a driver who didn't check over their shoulder as I came up behind them while they were stopped. No injuries luckily.
I want to take a kinder view of your comment than some of the other replies currently, in that there's a kernel of truth in what you say. I would rephrase it though, in that it's not that cyclists are inherently dangerous, it's more that mixing modes of transport that have vastly varying capabilities is dangerous. Any time you have vehicles of vastly variable mass and capabilities sharing a road, it's inherently more dangerous than if they were to be separated.
That goes for cars and bikes, and cars and pedestrians, and bikes and pedestrians.
If you are turning across a curbside bike lane then you need to yield. A bike lane is a traffic lane, you need to wait for it to be clear before turning, and yes, you need to check your shoulder on roads with bike lanes.
> I always have my turning signal but to cyclists it doesn’t mean much, they will always try to pass me on the right on the intersection
I suspect you aren't merging into the bike lane when turning right and leaving space for a cyclist to pass you on the right. I've seen many drivers make that mistake. As a cyclist I never pass cars on the right in this situation because drivers don't check.
You are supposed to merge into the bike lane before turning. It's in the DMV handbook. The painted bike lane becomes a dotted line close to the intersection for precisely that reason.
This varies state-by-state. In Oregon the bike lane is not a turning lane, and the locals will express their displeasure if you use it as such. We have bike boxes and lots of no-right-turn-on-red signs instead.
Directly? Don't know that I have. But just a few days ago I saw someone that had to slam on their brakes to avoid hitting a cyclist that did not have right of way through an intersection, slide off the road into a tree. I don't know if they were injured physically, but the financial damage was probably not insignificant.
Nope. The numbers of people killed or seriously injured in road collisions that don't involve motor vehicles are absolutely tiny. Motorists are dangerous, cyclists are not.
> Cyclists sometimes behave as though they are pedestrians and other times they behave as vehicles, depending on what is convenient.
And? Is that somehow bad? This seems to be a common motorist talking point, but I've never understood what it's supposed to imply.
> And? Is that somehow bad? This seems to be a common motorist talking point, but I've never understood what it's supposed to imply.
Yes, it can be very bad. Drivers not being predictable is a big cause of car crashes. I was always taught that when driving, don't be nice, be predictable. It's also a large part of defensive driving. A cyclist that is sometimes acting like a vehicle, and at other times as a pedestrian is not nearly as predictable.
Cyclists act like cyclists, and are more or less predictable when treated as such. Cyclists are not vehicles, and it doesn't make sense to insist they behave like vehicles. The theory of vehicular cycling was one of the worst things to happen to the development of a safe cycling community in America.
> Cyclists act like cyclists, and are more or less predictable when treated as such.
Except when they ignore stop signs and blow through an intersection when it's not their turn, causing a car that has the right of way and is already in the intersection to slam on their brakes to try to avoid killing the cyclist, resulting in the car losing traction due to the weather conditions and to slide into a tree. Saw it happen in front of my eyes just a few days ago.
Or when to avoid stopping behind a car that was already in the turn lane in front of them, they hop up on the sidewalk and then cut off the car via the sidewalk, nearly running down several pedestrians. That one was earlier this afternoon.
Cyclists and pedestrians are not the same, and should not be treated the same, or interchangeably. I agree that the way that infrastructure is set up right now is terrible for cyclists. But it is how things are right now, and ignoring that is silly. It's not at all that different from how having pedestrians and cyclists sharing the same roadway is also not the best of ideas.
But in addition, you know those signs they have up on the side of the road, the "Share the Road" ones? Sharing goes both ways.
Cyclists are no less predictable than motorists if you pay attention. I could give a litany of bad behaviour I've seen too, and the best available statistics say that motorists both break the law more often and cause vastly more deaths and serious injuries.
A shared space doesn't mean you're entitled to bringing an armoured, deadly machine into that space and expect others to take equal responsibility for the danger your machine is imposing.
Roundabouts are rare in the US. Four-way stops are far more common. If the authorities find a particular one to be too dangerous, they would normally install traffic lights rather than replace it with a roundabout.
No, you can also have a mini roundabout, which is a white circle painted on the road. Maybe slightly raised but with no kerb so you can just drive over it. Yield to anybody in the junction and yield to the right (we drive on the left).
Very common in the UK instead of stop signs at intersections. Stop signs are only in rare places where a hedge or other environment prevents you from being able to see and yield to approaching traffic while approaching the junction. Even in that case there would never be a four way stop.
IIRC Vigo, in Galicia (Spain) struck me as a case of a decently dense city that used roundabouts at relatively compact intersections in the city center, along one street at least: https://maps.app.goo.gl/CwZYypxT5SjBr1QE7?g_st=ic
Usually in european countries when there are stop signs, they only apply to smaller streets/roads that connect to larger prioritary roads/streets. If we want equal level of priority for all directions we either use, traffic lights, roundabouts were usually the one already engaged in the roundabout has priority over people connecting to it or use priority from your right (default priority in France for example unless specified).
i think cyclists should have equal share of the road and should be protected but for whatever reason cyclists in SF seem to think the rules don't apply to only them and will get militant if you breath the wrong way.
If Waymo's description was accurate it wasn't blind when they entered the intersection. Waymo and the truck stopped at a 4-way intersection traveling opposite directions. Both entered the intersection going straight. In the meanwhile the bicycle entered from the cross street behind the truck, himself blind to what was occurring in the intersection.
We'll have to wait for more information to see if that description is accurate, but the car's action was a legal and safe thing to do based on the description given.
> but at least I wouldn't be turning while blind.
There is nothing in the article suggesting that the waymo was turning.
Edit: Nevermind I was visualizing the direction of cross traffic incorrectly. The cyclist's lane would have been to the left and closest to the Waymo, which means that the truck must have already been in the intersection when the Waymo started moving if it was obscuring the bike.
So either the Waymo got to the intersection later than the black truck and tried to sneak in a crossing, or they both got there at the same time but the Waymo came to a complete stop and then proceeded while the truck performed a rolling stop, or something similar.
That's a much fuzzier situation and will depend a lot more on details not being shared.
Sounds like the gov did the right thing. Cyclists shouldn't get special privileges. They're operating a vehicle on the roadway just like everyone else. Drivers of other types of vehicles shouldn't also have to remember special rules just for cyclists.
> Drivers of other types of vehicles shouldn't also have to remember special rules just for cyclists.
Drivers of any vehicle should learn all of the rules they need to drive safely and legally. It's not like there's a hundred different types of vehicles on the road. There's some special rules for trucks and motorcycles and bicycles and that's about it.
Plus, travel by bicycle is a net positive for society and I strongly support incentivizing it, including through preferential laws (even though I almost never do it myself).
An easy position to hold when it's physically impossible for a cyclist to harm you in your steel cage but you can kill them on a whim by slightly turning a wheel.
All road users do have different rules for using the road: peds, cycles, scooters, motorcycles, cars, cargo trucks, buses, trams, etc. all have specific rules applying to them.
Setting aside the fact that the bill that proposed this was vetoed, a yield sign does not mean "don't stop." Yield means "yield." If there is other traffic that has the right of way you are obligated to stop before entering the intersection.
