Demonstrators plan to muck up the flow of traffic on the Wiggle by daring to follow the letter of the stop sign law on bikes. Photo: Aaron BialickAt Steiner and Waller Streets, demonstrators plan to muck up the flow traffic by following the letter of the law. Photo: Aaron Bialick
What if everyone on a bike followed the letter of the law and made a complete stop at every stop sign, as if they were driving a car?
The group "want[s] to gather 50-100 cyclists to ride around the Wiggle/Lower Haight and stop at every stop sign in single file order," the Wigg Party wrote on its Facebook event page. "We want to make the point that, in fact, requiring cyclists to come to full stops at every stop sign is a really terrible idea for everyone on the road."
On the average day on the Wiggle, people walking, biking, and driving move mostly without incident. Reports of injuries involving bicycles are rare. The vast majority of bike commuters practice typical common-sense behavior at stop signs: slowing down, looking, and being prepared to yield to others with the right-of-way.
When bicycle riders who clearly have the right-of-way avoid unnecessary stops that kill their momentum, drivers and pedestrians can get moving faster, too.
But Captain John Sanford, fixated on compliance with unrealistic expectations, wants riders to follow the letter of the stop sign law even if they're clearly not violating anyone's right-of-way. Sanford has justified his decision by misconstruing the statistics behind the SFPD's "Focus on the Five" campaign to target the most dangerous driver violations, transposing it to people on bikes.
Sanford, who joined Park Station in April, is poised to repeat the mistakes of former Park Station Captain Greg Corrales, who attemped a Wiggle bike crackdown in 2013. Both captains have said their efforts are a response to complaints, not data.
The Wigg Party's Morgan Fitzgibbons told Streetsblog at the time:
Everybody wants to eliminate the about five percent of cyclists who violate other people’s right-of-way. Nobody wants to defend those people, but trying to put a constant police presence on the Wiggle to make people follow a law that really doesn’t make any sense is not the right way to go about it.
It will never solve the problem -- it’s patently absurd.
Aaron was the editor of Streetsblog San Francisco from January 2012 until October 2015. He joined Streetsblog in 2010 after studying rhetoric and political communication at SF State University and spending a semester in Denmark.
A little girl was run over and killed at a location where Caltrans and SFCTA now want to pump in more high-speed traffic through a freeway ramp widening. Then they wonder why Vision Zero is failing