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by shuckles 868 days ago
No it’s not. AB122 passed the legislature to legalize the California roll for cyclists, because coming to a full stop at a stop sign makes no sense for riders with high visibility. Newsom vetoed it for stupid culture war reasons. It’s a law that doesn’t make sense so it’s not a big issue if it isn’t followed.
4 comments

I'm a cyclist and support these types of laws. But I could imagine someone making the same case for a car (or a motorcycle?). You can have high visibility and come towards a 4-way stop in the middle of nowhere and there's not another car in sight. It doesn't really make sense. For cycling of course it's super annoying to lose your momentum.
I see cars in the city roll through stop signs all the time, but I never heard of a bicyclist killing someone while blasting through a stop sign. The difference between bicycles and cars is based on the potential for harm.
Considering:

> annoying

Vs

excess CO2 from engines (does not matter if electric or not, as efficiency is still a thing to consider) after a full stop,

would it make more sense to make cyclists to yield always and not cars?

Failure to yield is a separate question from should they be required to stop if nobody is present.
> because coming to a full stop at a stop sign makes no sense for riders with high visibility.

For anyone wondering why I give an explanation here[0]. The tldr is you need to move to be safe and it is harder to get a bike moving than it is a car. It's best to contextualize any such arguments around the operations that go into operating the vehicle and cars and bikes have a lot of differences. Those differences are why cars are more popular (Sure, more energy but motor vs legs. If you want to make the argument that it is easier for a bike you better not get frustrated when a bike is slow to get to speed when you're behind them at a stoplight or stop-sign).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39298376

The comment you link to has been flagged.
Thanks for the notice, I'm not too concerned though. I didn't violate any rules. People must be upset that I made an argument that it can be safer to not come to a full and complete stop. But I'm not making the argument that it is safe to blindly blow throw an intersection either. Given the comments I'm seeing, it appears that it is difficult to differentiate these two things.
California roll != failure to yield. I swear some in here would argue water isn’t wet and the sky isn’t blue…