I agree, and judging from the many rolling stops they undertake, so do drivers. When any vehicle has to come to a complete stop for absolutely nothing, they're just putting wear on their brakes and wasting energy. I'm happy to see 4-way stops (which people are terrible at) being replaced by more roundabouts. A roundabout features the desired intersection rules without having to wait for the state to enact Idaho-style bike laws.

As a cyclist, I'm in a very good position to assess how empty an intersection is: no windows isolating me in a sound bubble; low speed, so not much wind noise in my ears or tire noise on the ground; no A pillars obscuring my vision ahead; and my eyes are usually about as high off the ground as those of an SUV driver.

Motorists will tend to be in a worse position for assessing the emptiness of an intersection, and their vehicle is much more dangerous, so the onus to slow down is greater, but coming to a complete stop is often unnecessary. Slowing down to make sure there really is nothing there is sensible.

If I were on a recumbent bicycle, or in a little sports car, I'd have to be more cautious when approaching an intersection because my eyes are lower, and farther back from the front of the vehicle. (I hate riding recumbents in the city, but they're pretty awesome on long distance rides).

> As a cyclist, I'm in a very good position to assess how empty an intersection is: no windows isolating me in a sound bubble; low speed

Also: your head is closer to the front of your vehicle and thus to the intersection.

You can assess the situation long before any part of you or your bicycle enters the intersection.

You can also hear.

If that were to apply to cars, drivers would interpret it as 25-35 mph being okay.

In many circumstances, drivers could easily defeat a failure to stop ticket in court based on lack of hard evidence that you were going over 15 mph.

It should, and in most places it essentially does... as they don't have the American obsession with stop signs, and will indeed mark the sort of low-traffic residential intersection with....nothing at all most of the time.

No, it shouldn't. If the junction is marked as a stop, all users should stop. If you have a low traffic junction like that, then the stop sign Shouldn't be there. But that's a different argument to allowing vehicles/bikes to blow a stop sign.

Unlike bicycles, cars have significant blind spots with the A-pillar and such. Also unlike bicycles, cars are significantly more able to seriously injure other road users.

Cars aren't reliant on the driver's own power to get going again after an intersection and don't tend to fall over sideways if stopped.

If you can't stop your bike without falling over, you have no business cycling on roads.