Red Light as a Stop Sign?

Idaho law has a provision to allow cyclists to treat a red light as a stop sign.¹ . A few other states have followed suit with similar laws.²

Why would a cyclist want to go on a red light? The temptation can be strong.

• There might be no cross traffic, and clear sight lines.
• The cyclist might have had to wait for a long time.
• The light might just not change at all.

A previous post on this blog addressed a related provision, stop sign as yield sign. We cautiously approved of that in some circumstances (for adult bicyclists). But traffic signals are installed where a stop sign would not work well. For the USA, the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices³ describes the reasoning:

• The volume, speed and number of lanes of traffic in the cross street are so high that it is hard to find a gap to get across.
• Sight lines into the cross street are poor (curves, hillcrests, other sight obstructions).
• Signal coordination is managing traffic flow and travel speeds.

If traffic lights are warranted for motorists, they certainly are warranted for bicyclists, who generally take longer to cross an intersection.

Avoiding behavioral trapdoors

So, what are the problems?

First and foremost, children should never be encouraged to treat red lights as stop signs. They do not have the judgment or spatial/speed acuity. Some adults don’t, either.

Crossing intersections on a red light leads cyclists to rely on a “sixth sense” and to rationalize illegal behavior. You know the drill: “the laws were made for cars.” And resentment among non-cyclists leads to comments like “they all do that” — othering. It advances the trend to reduce us to pedestrian status.

I prefer to avoid these behavioral trapdoors, and I have previously avoided offering any advice on how to cross an intersection against a red light. It isn’t because I am a good Boy Scout (I was a mediocre one!), it just feels better to avoid animosity, besides being safer.

CyclingSavvy even recommends waiting to turn right on a green light, though turning right on red is legal in most of the USA. Waiting for the green actually helps cyclists get ahead, aside from reducing risk. We have an article about this!

But what can I say, times change even if my opinions don’t. So, here we go.

A bit of history

Traffic signals used to be switched by timers, or (rarely) by treadles embedded in the road surface, which could sense bicycles.

Beginning around 1960 with the advent of transistorized electronics and microcomputers, metal detectors buried under the road surface became practical to switch signals.⁴

Vehicle detectors reduce waiting time. So, it is not surprising that more and more intersections have them. But, though simple, low-cost solutions have existed for decades, many electronic vehicle detectors don’t respond reliably to bicycles. More background information.

So, a red light as stop sign law goes from being only a convenience to a weak substitute for making the signals work the way they should.

This isn’t really what you might have wanted under the Christmas tree, but it is what you’ve got if you are riding in Idaho — or as of this writing, Arkansas, Oklahoma or Utah.

There are workarounds, and they work elsewhere too.

• You could make a legal right turn on red followed by a U turn.
• You might press a pedestrian pushbutton, if there is one and it is convenient. It may be the only reliable and safe option at a busy cross street. Gain some ironic satisfaction in that it makes motorists in the cross street wait longer.
• You might ride your regular route early in the morning to figure out what you need to do at other times.
• Another article [update: now published] will follow up with strategies to make actuators trigger, the better option if you can make it work.

Not really the same as a stop sign!

OK, pass a law, and then a red light is just like a stop sign, right? Not!

First of all, even where legal, you can much more easily be held at fault and unable to get compensation in the event of a crash if you enter on the red.

Where it is legal, the rules are unlike those for stop signs, and there’s more to be concerned about. Idaho cyclist Clint Sandusky demonstrates.

Clint has the following observations:

• Motorists and a bicyclist he encountered did not seem to object to his legal, safe, and cooperative behavior. This is essential.
• Although he practiced this behavior in a legal, safe, and cooperative manner, it just seemed not right and somewhat uncomfortable.
• Unless he had super sightlines, he doesn’t think he would practice this behavior at anything other than a two-way, single lane cross street.

And again, traffic engineers install signals where stop signs don’t fill the bill, so…

Red light as a stop sign? Caution!

Ride to see and to be seen. This is even more critical when drivers aren’t expecting traffic coming from your direction.

Be extra cautious. You have to yield to any conflicting traffic—on wheels or on foot—because other road users are not expecting you.

Appropriate hand signals can include pointing straight ahead to indicate your unexpected direction of travel.

Taking a red light as stop sign is safest, most advantageous and least disruptive when no other traffic is nearby. Don’t use it to jump the queue. A pedestrian could be walking across in front of a motor vehicle waiting ahead of you, or the vehicle could right hook you. The vehicle will trip the actuator anyway. A vehicle in the intersection might be hiding another which is on a collision course with you. And so on.

There might be more than one of these hazards at the same time. I hope that these examples clarify how complicated it may be to anticipate potential hazards when you don’t have the traffic light to keep them at bay.

Important rule: you may have seen every part of the street which you are about to cross, but if you have not seen it all at the same time, don’t expect to be safe. What you don’t see can hurt you.

Your bike-handling skills matter. Braking, to be sure, but also acceleration, to get across before conditions change.

And again, it’s best if you can make the vehicle detector work. Stay tuned for an article which covers that [update: now published].

Footnotes

1. See Idaho statutes, section 49-720. ↩︎
2. A document from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (USA) lists these laws as of 2023. Documentation from 2021 on the League of American Bicyclists Web site also lists “dead red” laws, which have a somewhat similar effect.. ↩︎
3. Part 4 of the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices describes warrants for traffic lights. ↩︎
4. This article from 1993, updated 2017, includes links to other references. ↩︎