I confess, I do not stop at every single stop sign. I do slow, and now I will usually stop if I think there is a car who sees me. I have always felt bad about this, but now that I've read that Idaho is allowing this, I figure it is reasonable behavior, even if not legal, and I have justification for it.

There is one traffic signal that I do not stop for, since it is a T and I don't receive cross-traffic, and there is a bike lane there. I do slow and watch, because you never know if a driver going too fast for a turn will stay in their lane. I rationalize this by thinking, it's not an intersection for me, because I don't think a bike would ever make a left hand turn at that particular spot. It is from Columbia Road Westbound, onto Portland Road. I am also going uphill at that point.

Last week, BF gave me a ride downtown in his pickup. (Bike was in the back, on it's way to get fixed ). He yelled at a cyclist, I didn't see anything wrong with what the cyclist did. But then, the guy came up between two lanes of cars lined up at a stop light. Having a cyclist come up from behind on my left side would spook me out. Now that I think about it, it could be there was a right hand turn lane (That"s the only RATIONAL reason for wanting to do that. )

Also, I have seen an increase in all kinds of people riding bikes. At first, I was glad to see them, but now many of them ride on the wrong side of the street, in a dedicated bike lane. There was one place that I USED to do this, for about 1/4 of a block. It just didn't make sense to me to cross the street twice in that distance to be on the right side. I no longer do this, because I don't want to be a model of bad cycling behavior for those "lowest common denominator'" newbies.

Mary