Four-way Stops and the Idaho Stop

 No photo today.  I'm just rambling.  For some reason, four-way stops seem to be the only point of anxiety I experience bicycling around Santa Fe, and every work day, on the way home, we make a left turn through one of them, near a hospital and a school, so perhaps people are more distracted than usual. I have had a bad urge to slow to a near-stop and then try to rush through if there is a car in some other lane that is also approaching the stop, in order to get out of that car's way, so that driver does not have to wait as long, while I come to a full stop, put my foot down, and then get under way again.  Unfortunately, my wife is often just behind me, so my effectively doing an Idaho stop, means she is faced with either following me through the intersection or coming to a stop herself, and letting the car that was approaching go.  As you might expect, that is not the way to marital harmony, and occasionally, the car that was approaching at the same time I was approaching, takes the same tack, and there we are in the intersection together.  So I try to always come to a full stop, put my foot down, make certain no cars are going out of turn and then proceed.  (See John Prine's "The Accident" for a full account of the four-way stop dilemma.)

Yesterday's bicycle ride home was just one of those days.  It's in the mid-nineties, so it's just not pleasant to be out.  They were doing road work down the road from our jobs, so we had to take a detour with all the automobile drivers, down some narrow dirt roads with all the attendant dust.  When we approached the four-way intersection, we were arriving after the automobiles at the other three signs.  This particular stop is just two, two-lane roads crossing, so it shouldn't be that difficult.  I always head to the left side of the lane when I'm making a left turn, (as I was taught in League Cycling Instructor school).  So my wife and I pull up, side by side, stop and put our feet down.  The two cars in the cross-street go; the car opposite us goes, and we start our left turn through the intersection.  But then, the car that was behind the car opposite, just continues through the stop sign without stopping, heading right for me.  She braked and threw up her hands in that way that motorists do when they almost hit you, as if to indicate "I'm not even touching the car. It wasn't me."  My wife, involuntarily she tells me, screamed "What the fuck!?"  The lady yelled something back.  I couldn't really hear her, but I think she was saying it was her turn.  It clearly wasn't.  The only thing I can think is that she had already stopped behind the lead car before we stopped, so maybe she had a little brain hiccup that told her that she stopped before we stopped, she had a right to go first, even though she wasn't stopped first at the stop sign. I forgive her. I'm not completely immune to brain hiccups myself. 

Normally, I should say, drivers here are invariably polite.  We'll often arrive second at a four-way stop, put our feet down, and the driver who reached the intersection before us waves us through.  I have to say I appreciate the kindness, but I find that behavior very irritating in its own way.  It is the following of the traffic laws to the letter that keeps us all safe together out there on the road.  And often, I'll be slowing down for the stop sign, to make sure the car gets to go first, because otherwise, I will have a car behind me, on a narrow road, with no room to pass.  I would much rather have the driver go first in those situations, and occasionally, I'll end up in a "no, no, you go first standoff."

I mentioned that occasionally I do an Idaho stop, treating the stop sign more like a yield sign, but I was one of the few cycling advocates I know of that opposed the passing of the Idaho Stop law in New Mexico.  I have not quite understood why the claim is made that treating the stop signs as yield signs and the red lights as stop signs makes bicyclists any safer.  (I would say that I can trigger 99% of the stop lights in this city.  It is simply a matter of knowing where to park.)  The argument that cyclists already do the Idaho Stop does not seem to be a good one, even if I, on occasion, do it.  There are some cyclists that don't even bother breaking cadence when they come to stop sign or red light, and yes, I have been known to lose my shit and yell at those people.  Once I was parked at a red light, waiting for it to turn, and a bicyclist pedaled right past me into the intersection.  I yelled "stop!", and he screeched to a halt and looked back. "It's a red light" I shouted at him.  He sneered at me and continued on.

I do not know if it is related to the passing of the Idaho Stop law, but we've been almost hit by other bicyclists at a much greater frequency than we've had run-ins with cars.  At the same four-way stop in the incident above, one day we were approaching the stop sign, and a car was approaching on our left, with a bicyclist following behind it.  The car stopped; we stopped; the car went through the intersection; I started to pull out, and the bicyclist almost slammed into me, not having even slowed for the stop sign.  Maybe, since they were pulling in alongside the car when it started to go, the bicyclist saw themselves as an extension of the car.  It was the same "what the fuck!?" sort of situation, though I don't think anyone shouted in that incident.

And just last weekend, we were approaching a different four-way stop behind a car while a group of a dozen or so bicyclists was approaching from the other side.  The car stopped and went.  We stopped and signaled our left turn, but as we started to make our left turn, the oncoming bicyclists plowed right through the intersection, again without even slowing, or any eye contact, or any other sort of communication about what was happening in the intersection.

So, I think the long and short of my rambling here is that I find drivers, in general, to be more polite to bicyclists and more mindful of traffic law, than other bicyclists.  It is true, however, that a car hitting a bicyclist has more potential for harm than a bicyclist hitting another bicyclist.  But please, fellow cyclists out there, remember the four way stops are all about taking turns.  What's going on in those cyclists' brains? It's probably one of those things I'll never know.