Those who route their bicycle commutes for fewer stops commonly do so by riding on high-traffic streets that have fewer stop lights. Stromberg argues that if they were allowed to roll through stop signs at lower-volume intersections, more would avoid the high-traffic streets.

And who hasn't experienced that awkward scenario in which a bike and a car pull up to the same intersection, come to complete stops, then awkwardly wait for the other to go?

"An Idaho stop would put an end to this madness," Stromberg writes. "The first vehicle to come to the intersection always has the right of way, giving bikers a rule they'd actually follow, making them more predictable for drivers."

And then there are the laws of physics: Bicyclists who come to a complete stop lose all their momentum, so it takes more energy to get going again, about 25 percent more.

Like laws prohibiting marijuana, Stromberg writes, laws requiring bicyclists to come to a complete stop are widely flouted and hence, useless, even counter productive.

"If all this sounds far-fetched to you, look at the data. Public health researcher Jason Meggs found that after Idaho started allowing bikers to do this in 1982, injuries resulting from bicycle accidents dropped," Stromberg writes. "When he compared recent census data from Boise to Bakersfield and Sacramento, California — relatively similar-sized cities with comparable percentages of bikers, topographies, precipitation patterns and street layouts — he found that Boise had 30.5 percent fewer accidents per bike commuter than Sacramento and 150 percent fewer than Bakersfield."

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