Originally Posted by
mcours2006
Yeah, waiting to cross a main road in the 6 am darkness with no traffic, and no prospect of the light turning green for me unless I dismount and activate the pedestrian crossing button, is just dumb. So yeah, I'll treat that red light like a stop sign. Same goes for stop signs when there's no traffic--Idaho stop.
On the PM ride home don't do it.
An Idaho Stop is a legal thing in some places. Pulling it may not make you a scofflaw at all, depends on the jurisdiction.
Different perspective, same ideas in play:
In my business we have 18-wheel tractor/trailers come by all the time with equipment. Those drivers get annoyed, like us, about always being "treated like criminals" and scofflaws....but then you start hearing and seeing stories of rampant wrongdoing and law-breaking....being loaded down way over weight, and taking back-country-roads to dodge weigh stations...tag theft....doctoring hours....never mind speeding in caravans (haha they can't ticket ALL of us!!!)...and so on....
And it gets really hard to be sympathetic to people complaining about being treated like law-breakers...when you see them doing exactly that.