Ben's Blog

Winnipeg has lately been experiencing some ticketing of cyclists for performing rolling stops. As a cyclist (who luckily hasn’t experienced this ticket yet) I fully understand the reason why cyclists do their rolling stops: the preservation of momentum is key to efficiently riding a bike. Accelerating from a stop requires significantly more energy than speeding up from a rolling stop. (This is the case for motor vehicles too, and there are many other similarities that seem to be more pronounced when you have been cycling for a while, but I will save that rant for a later post)

Some have suggested that we introduce what is known as an Idaho Stop Law. The short version: cyclists treat stop signs as yields and do not have any right of way over other traffic.

The following video does a great example of explaining the Idaho Stop Law in more detail.

Bicycles, Rolling Stops, and the Idaho Stop from Spencer Boomhower on Vimeo.

For any cyclists out there, or even those who are not cyclists but are appreciative of the low emissions of cycling, I encourage you to keep this idea in mind and support it as much as possible. Perhaps contact your MLA to get them on the same page as yourself.