This morning I posted a story stating that Senator Ginny Burdick was introducing a bill (SB 604) that would allow bicycle operators to roll through stop signs and flashing red lights – a.k.a. the Idaho stop law.
Now I have confirmed that Burdick never intended to push for the bill as it was introduced yesterday. It turns out that SB 604 in its current form is just a placeholder for another idea that Burdick’s office is working on. It’s not that uncommon for a legislator to copy/paste old bill language into a bill like this and then “gut and stuff” it later with different language through the amendment process.
Below is a statement I received a few minutes ago from Burdick’s office:
We are in the preliminary stages of creating a bill that would allow cyclists to move through sensor triggered red lights that are incapable of detecting bicycles. Cyclists would be able to move through the red lights after waiting for a designated time period (one example would be 120 seconds).
This issue was brought to our attention by a constituent that has come across this problem repeatedly. The senator thought that the constituent brought up some legitimate concerns, and wanted to explore this issue in more detail.
Our office was hoping to do some more exploration and ground work on this issue before creating any publicity. As of right now, the details and specifics of our concept are pretty undefined.
So, it seems like Burdick has something vaguely resembling the Idaho stop law in mind, but it’s far from what’s in the current text of SB 604. We’ll keep you posted if anything else develops with this bill and I regret the confusion our initial story may have caused.