To stop or not to stop: Bike safety act signed by governor

In the North Campus neighborhood, the streets were full of bicyclists commuting to and from the University of New Mexico Thursday afternoon. As they approached a four-way stop, some hesitated, some skidded to a halt, and others blew right through, making what’s called an Idaho Stop.

Intersections are where the majority of cyclist fatalities happen in New Mexico, according to New Mexico Department of Transportation data. New legislation signed into law last month by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham allows bicyclists to make Idaho Stops, which advocates say will improve safety in these dangerous intersections.

Starting July 1, bicyclists can treat stop signs as yield signs, and red lights as stop signs if the way is clear.

“I know it’s counterintuitive for non-bicyclists,” said the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, D-Albuquerque.

Being in an intersection, even for moments longer, adds risk, Sedillo Lopez said. Between 2019 and 2023, 39 cyclists were killed in New Mexico, according to NMDOT data, with approximately 60% of accidents happening at or near intersections.

“If I’m at the stoplight and I’m directly next to a vehicle and I have to start moving at the same time as them — I’m going to be immediately in their blind spot,” said education coordinator Eli Kosko from the Esperanza Bicycle Safety Education Center.

Once the law goes into effect, Kosko will recommend that their bike safety students make Idaho Stops when possible. However, Kosko said, many cyclists were already doing such maneuvers, even if it meant breaking the rules.

Sedillo Lopez, a self-described “casual” cyclist, said she’s often made an Idaho Stop herself while biking to the Bosque. Making the law reflect cyclists’ actual behaviors will help drivers better understand and predict their actions, according to the NMDOT impact report.

“One of the things we also talk about in bike safety is making ourselves as predictable and visible as possible,” Kosko said.

The maneuver is colloquially called the Idaho Stop because the northern state was the first to legalize it in 1982. In the year following the law’s passage, bicycle injuries declined by 14.5%, according to a University of California, Berkeley study.

The same study also found that intersections are the “most dangerous zone for cyclists, whose safety benefits from the freedom to choose the safest time to clear, and to do so more quickly.”

“The other states that adopted this bill found a decrease in bicycle accidents, and that was really encouraging to me, because it’s such a tragedy,” Sedillo Lopez said. “We just lost somebody in my district.”

Bicyclist safety has been top of mind, especially in Albuquerque, amid high profile deaths in recent years. On Tuesday, police released footage from May 2024 of three juveniles appearing to intentionally strike and kill Scott Habermehl, 63, with their vehicle as he rode to work on Moon NE. In January, longtime bike safety educator Chuck Malagodi, 64, was killed in a hit-and-run on Kathryn and Carlisle SE and police are still looking for his killer. Police have identified Jose Ivan Rio Sanchez as a suspect in his death, and issued a warrant for his arrest.

Meanwhile, cyclists like Kosko are relieved that their concerns are being taken seriously, they said, and hope that the Legislature will keep pursuing bike safety laws to make the streets safer for everyone.