Those stop signs were installed around 1986 in a direct reaction to a six year old kid on a bicycle being killed by an inattentive or speeding driver. The city was responding to outraged residents. My problem with the signs is that from a biking perspective is that they aren't needed. Bicycling didn't cause the problem of speeding is this area and yet the signs are used to harass and ticket bikers. It gets back to the whole problem of stop signs being used for speed control--they aren't supposed to be used for this but they definitely are in the bay area.
Here in Puget Sound, WA has just instituted the "Idaho Stop" law. I can't say it's really affected the way I ride (we do have a lot of roundabouts here) but it seems to be a whole lot more commonsense that handing someone a $500 ticket for rolling the Canada road stop sign in the northbound direction.