Why Cyclists Love The “Idaho Stop”

When cyclists do a “rolling stop” at an intersection, it can — counterintuitively — make everyone safer

Yeah, I’ve done it.

I’ve broken the law while cycling around NYC.

It’s most often around stop signs and red lights. If I’m cycling up to a stop sign, I’ll check to see if there are any cars or pedestrians arriving in cross traffic. If there aren’t, I’ll do a “rolling stop”: I slow down while I verify things are safe, but roll on through the intersection. I do it carefully — but I’m breaking the law, right?

I do something similar, sometimes, at red lights. I come to a full stop … but if there aren’t any cars or pedestrians approaching in cross traffic? I slowly go through the red light.

Again: Breaking the law! Cyclists are vehicles, and as vehicles they’re bound to obey the rules of the road.

Why do we cyclists behave like this?

It’s mostly because we don’t like to lose momentum. Once a bike is in motion, it takes little effort to keep going. It’s a supremely efficient way to get around. But when you have to stop, and push off from zero? That requires a big thrust of energy. Personally, I often perversely enjoy that hard-ass zero-start; I ride a bike partly to get exercise, after all. But there’s no denying it’s nice to keep rolling along, and preserve momentum. So we cyclists do a lot of “rolling stops”.

The other reason we behave this way, though, is that stop signs and stop lights were designed for cars — and thus do not quite make sense for cyclists (or pedestrians, for that matter). The stop-sign/stop-light regimen was created a century ago largely to regulate the movement of heavy automobiles, which were new and terrifyingly dangerous due to their massive weight. But pedestrians in many cities intuit that when they’re walking around town, we pose no such risk of slaughtering someone else with trivial ease. So we pedestrians, too, break the law all the time — we jaywalk constantly, merrily ignoring stop signs and lights if there’s no immediate oncoming traffic. Technically, jaywalking in NYC is illegal, right? But…