25Feb

I go down a long hill from my house to the main road, about half a mile. I travel more or less the speed limit - 30mph.

But the automobiles tend to speed, and today one sped past me less than 100 yards from the stop sign at the bottom of the hill. He stopped suddenly in front of me and simultaneously cut me off by swerving back right as quick as he could, which meant I needed to seek an outlet in the oncoming traffic lane. I could see this was clear, so instead of going in the dirt and brush, I biked into the oncoming lane and shunted myself onto the left sidewalk, biking slowly facing the afternoon rush hour traffic. It would take me 5 minutes to merge back into the right lane and be legal again.

Every day I am tempted to run the stop sign at the bottom of my hill. I have great visibility either direction, about a half mile both ways. Sometimes when there is no traffic near, I do actually run right through it. This is a bad habit, even though this is the only stop sign I do this at. I coast slowly through others, like most automobile drivers do.