On bicycles, cars and four-way stops: an polemic

When is it OK to run a stop sign? Well, if you drive one of the hundreds of millions of automobiles that clog America’s roadways, the correct answer is: never. What about if, instead of one of those noisy, air-befouling sheet metal monstrosities, you travel via the sophisticated and urbane power of your own two well-toned gams – then is it acceptable to ignore those white edged, one-and-a-halfish syllabled, reflective red octagons? Yes, yes it is.

Naturally, along with pointing out my incorrect use of the word “an” in the title of this piece, you’re next going to enquire why cyclists get to do something that is usually reserved as the prerogative of lazy cops and the soon to be DUI’d. ‘Tis a fair question, and, as the previous sentence evinced, one that I anticipated.

The cyclists inborn, inherent, innate and imminently justifiable right to run stop signs begins with the preservation of inertia, but is also much more than that. For the motorist - smugly cutoff from nature behind an airtight windshield, an insulating stereo and the insufferable purr or strident roar of an engine - inertia comes from combusted fossil fuels animating cylinders which themselves turn a driveshaft, that in turn provides motive power of those ever-spinning wheels (and here, even my ignorance of the specifics of this process is, in its own way, proof of a greater, metaphysical intelligence).

The cyclist seeks not to perform such arcane alchemy as turning the fern forests of aeons past into their cheap and tawdry convenience. Instead, the source of the cyclists’ mobility is little more than the meal they ate before the sallied forth into world that doesn’t wish to understand them; that meal probably handpicked from a CSA, or barring that, something organic; or barring that, something classy; or barring that, at least the newest culinary innovation that Taco Bell has produced from their sundry labs. The point is, the forward motion of the cyclist is self-evidently more honest than that of the motorist, and, as the cyclist is not cut off from their environs by the above listed automobile impedimenta (viz. windshield, stereo, engine noise), they are more safely and better equipped to cruise through stop signs in the absence of traffic.

That last sentence is key. Go ahead, read it again. Note that I only find it justifiable for cyclists to run a stop sign when there isn’t any other traffic around, or at least none close by (and this goes for stop lights on two-lane roads, too. And, also those roads with a single lane of traffic going in each direction that incorporate a left turn lane [three laners?], but not four lane roads – that’s anarchy).

I don’t, “do not” as it were, think that it’s ok for a cyclist to cruise through a stop sign when other traffic is present. Should another rider of bikes, or perhaps a beastly driver of cars, be near or already stopped at an intersection, that then it is incumbent upon any cyclist, no matter the nobility of the foodstuffs in their belly, to observe the stop sign’s terse command and arrest all forward progress.

But, as I said, our right – and I do say “our,” for despite my attempts to remain impartial in this piece, I must admit that I, too, am a cyclist – to run stop signs with impunity is more than mere inertial persistence, or even the obvious nobility of our primum mobile – classy, or at least innovative, victuals. Something else is there.

Cyclists are ennobled by a certain je ne sais quois, but what is it? Of course other cyclists who are reading this understand it. As for the motorists, who sadly outnumber we cyclists at least one-million-to-one, I must tell you that ultimately you’ll find no satisfaction in this screed because the thing which I wish to explain simply cannot be put into words; even by a man of stately erudition and expansive vocabulary, such as, for instance, me.

Thus, the only thing that I might recommend to you harnessers of oil, you petrol junkies, you gas fiends who do to truly want to understand why it is cyclists have the imprimatur of the Almighty to act as though stop signs are little more than abstract, intersectional decoration erected by some prolific pop-art jester, is to eschew your own gas-guzzler for a few months and experience the majesty of moving under you own power for yourself.

Just like the diehard NASCAR fan (is there any other kind?) who rightfully scorns the masses who haven’t watched an entire race from the green flag to the checkered, but still see fit to hurl imprecation at their chosen pastime, I, too, will issue a similar challenge. Unless you have personally experienced life as cyclist you will forever live in ignorance of our divine rights of stop sign ignoring. And, instead of the portal to sustained inner peace that our sublime visages reflects as we heed not the stop sign, you’ll instead only see the smug smile of the entitled elitist, and nothing could be further from the truth.