Colorado Just Passed a Law Letting Cyclists Run Stop Signs. Your State Should Be Next.

It’s time to legalize a practice that many cyclists already use.

Richard B. Levine/Levine Roberts/Zuma

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

If you’re a frequent bike rider, odds are, when you roll up to a stop sign on an empty street, you don’t always actually stop. Instead, you might slow down, look both ways, and then continue pedaling. At a red light, you might stop, and, if the coast is clear, continue on your way before the light turns green.

This practice—in which bicyclists treat a stop sign as a yield and a red light as a stop sign—is known as the Idaho stop. This week, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed a law authorizing the Idaho stop, making the Centennial State one of a small but growing number to pass similar laws in recent years.

Although Idaho pioneered the practice in 1982, it wasn’t until 2017 that another state, Delaware, followed suit. (Delaware permits treating a stop as a yield, but not treating a red light as a stop.) Since then, the movement to legalize the Idaho stop has been gaining traction, with Arkansas, Oregon, Washington, Utah, North Dakota, and Oklahoma each passing their own versions of the law.

The Idaho stop isn’t just a matter of convenience for cyclists—it can save lives. Intersections are particularly dangerous for bike riders, and, as a DePaul University study notes, “if cyclists are legally permitted to yield and proceed through an intersection when cross-traffic is not present, they can clear the intersection before more traffic becomes present.” In other words, it’s better to get out ahead of traffic than to wait for it to pile up at a busy intersection. States that have passed their own versions of the law have reported decreases in bike crashes at intersections: Delaware, for example, reported a 23 percent decrease in crashes at stop signs in the 30 months after the law was passed compared to the 30 months prior.

One particularly interesting study out of London suggests that women are more likely than men to be fatally struck by buses because they are more likely to obey red lights and get caught in buses’ blind spots. As anyone who has survived being doored will tell you, confidence on two wheels is paramount.

I’ve always intuitively practiced the Idaho stop—and was once pulled over by a Manhattan red light cop because of it. Now, I live in Denver, and I’m looking forward to rolling through the ubiquitous all-way stops, confident in my safety and free of paranoia about traffic cops.

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate