i understand you're being snarky, or perhaps willfully defiant/facetiously ignorant despite your common-sense understanding of the difference, and you probably are a bicyclist, but a car that slows to an almost-stop is much different than a bicycle that just completely blows through it at full-speed without even slowing down, which is pretty much what all bikes do here in southern california.
where I live, anyone who pays attention realizes that most bicyclists are either casual, ignorant weekend riders or very serious road bikers who just simply don't give two shits about the law. commuters who follow the law are VERY rare.
I'm not trying to be snarky -- I rarely see cars stop for stop signs; I normally see cyclists slow down at stop signs, and I rarely see any cyclists completely blow through them. (I also rarely see cars completely blow through stop signs.)
My common-sense understanding of the difference is that a cyclist can more readily hear what is happening near an intersection, has fewer visual obstacles to see what is near an intersection, and is often already moving slower than a car. That makes me feel that a cyclist rolling through a stop sign is far less dangerous than a car doing the same.
My experience has been in SF/Oakland/Berkeley.
Anyway, the reason I added that link in the earlier comment was to illustrate my frustration with the "all cyclists break laws all the time, they need to be safer like cars" fable -- the article links to a study that found that by 1996, only 1% of cars stopped at the stop sign being observed. Of course there are cyclists who break laws, but there are far more drivers who break laws, and they are the more dangerous offenders.
Interesting... I've noticed your username above several rather anti-social comments in several different threads over the last day or so. I wonder why.
/Meta
To be honest, I don't think alxndr was being snarky. I see plenty of drivers plow through stop signs at 5-10 mph. I also see plenty of people on bikes plow through stop signs at 5-10 mph. Both are in the wrong, but the fact that the person on the bike was going the same speed before the stop-sign doesn't seem hugely relevant to me. What does seem relevant is that plowing through at 5-10 mph in a car is far more likely to injure or kill a pedestrian or cyclists than doing so in a car, for simple reasons of mass and vehicle width.
Frankly, your little rant sounds like the self-serving justification I usually hear from several of my friends and relatives for raging at cyclists. Those friends and relatives are among the least courteous and defensive (that is to say, the most dangerous towards other drivers and cyclists around them) drivers I've ridden with. I hope for your sake and mine that you are not like that.
http://www.cyclelicio.us/2013/stop-sign-compliance-temecula-...