A couple of Sundays ago, my 9-year-old daughter caught me bicycling in my own private Idaho.

"Daddy!" she yelped as we pedaled through a quiet neighborhood on our bikes, "You didn't stop!"

The kid knows what a stop sign looks like. So do I. But the uncomfortable truth, as a parent and someone who dishes out weekly commuting advice, is that I tend to treat those red octagons as yield signs when on my bike.

5 things to know about your commute

Bicyclists who think they're pedaling against "The Man"

The Bicycle Transportation Alliance puts the chances of the Idaho Stop becoming law in Oregon this year at 50-50. Over at BikePortland.org, they're blaming slanted coverage in the mainstream media for putting the effort in jeopardy. But Karl Rohde, the alliance's former chief lobbyist, says a bigger problem is the cyclists who left nasty messages for lawmakers during a recent debate over registering bikes. "Some of them were appalling," he says. One lawmaker told Rohde that a bike advocate called to tell him "you've probably never been on a bike, you fat (bleep)." Yeah, that doesn't help.

10 p.m. to 5 a.m. in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Those are the hours during which drivers may legally run red lights in order to avoid being carjacked. A little extra brain food for those motorists who oppose tinkering with stop-sign laws so that they better reflect the realities of the road.

Tim

Is it GPS envy? After I bought my wife a TomTom navigator for the Volvo last week, we found ourselves disagreeing over which electronic voice should tell us when and where to turn. There's a full menu of voices. She likes the sound of "Tim," a bloke with a British accent who sounds like Colin Firth. Me? I'm partial to "Kathy" and her sweet Irish accent. I'm learning to live with Tim.

Speed demons on Oregon 217

Beaverton police wrote 145 speeding tickets and issued 116 warnings in a 1.5-mile construction zone along 217. Crews will be working on the $35.6 million highway-widening project for the next 18 months. Let's slow down, folks.

Mill Plain exit on Interstate 205 northbound

The project to build a connector to Northeast 112th Avenue from the I-205 off-ramp to westbound Mill Plain is coming along nicely. One thing to watch for this week: Daytime flagging, as crews try to get big trucks in and out of the construction zone.

On busy roads and at red lights, I come to complete stops. But on side streets dotted with stop signs, I slow, look and roll.

Write me a ticket. Send hate mail. Call me a bad example.

But if I lived in the Great Potato state, I could tell my little girl that I was simply following the law. And after taking a hard look at the history of the so-called Idaho Stop, I'd tell her it's a darn good law.

Of course, we live in Oregon, where the Legislature is once again caught in a debate over the merits of adopting the Idaho Stop here. Under the proposal, bicyclists wouldn't have to fully stop at a sign or blinking red light, provided they slow to a safe speed and yield to traffic or pedestrians.

Supporters say it legalizes what is already safe and rational behavior. Opponents counter that bikes should follow the same laws as cars and that it sends a dangerous message to kids.

"Listening to some people," said Karl Rohde, who was the Bicycle Transportation Alliance's government relations director before leaving the organization Friday, "you'd almost think there are no living children left in Idaho -- that kids are being run down left and right."

Actually, the children of Idaho are riding happily and unscathed.

In fact, according to new research from the University of California's School of Public Health in Berkeley, the law has made roadways safer, while getting more people to commute by bike.

Carl Bianchi, a retired administrative director of Idaho's state courts who is widely considered the father of the Idaho Stop, said it was traffic judges -- not cyclists -- who pushed for the idea in 1982.

Police were ticketing bike riders for failing to come to a complete, foot-down stop. Judges, however, saw "technical violations" clogging up their courts.

"We recognized that the realities of bicycling were a lot different than driving a car," Bianchi said.

Sure, Idahoans had many of the same concerns that are now popping up in Salem. But the year after the Idaho Stop became law, bicycle injuries in the state actually declined by 14.5 percent.

Meanwhile, in the past 27 years, Idaho motorists and police have grown to accept the legislation as sensible public policy, said Jason Meggs, a UC-Berkeley researcher who spent last summer crunching years of traffic data, conducting interviews and observing cyclist behavior in the state.

Boise, home to Idaho's biggest bike population, "has actually become safer for bicyclists than other cities which don't have the law," Meggs said.

And what about the children?

Mark McNeese, the Idaho Transportation Department's bicycle and pedestrian coordinator, said legislators removed an education requirement in the original law in 1988 because special training quickly became unnecessary. "The kids were quick to adapt," he said. "The bottom line is that when this thing passed, there wasn't one doggone thing that changed."

Beyond the politics, getting around effectively on a human-powered vehicle demands defensive maneuvering and momentum.

Still, I wasn't about to dump a physics lesson about energy, body mass and distance on my daughter. Instead, I promised her that I would stop at every stop sign with her.

Kim Whitney, youth programs coordinator for Portland Community Cycling Center, said that was probably the best approach. Most adult cyclists, she said, tend to slow and roll through stop signs.

"But we really try to teach children to stop, to put a foot down and to look around them," Whitney said. "We want them to learn to use the different senses they have to know if it's safe to go or not."

And that won't change if Idaho Stop comes to Oregon. "It's something," she said, "they can adapt to later."

Joseph Rose: 503-221-8029; josephrose@news.oregonian.com