Crazy urban cyclists sell soft drinks in Japan

Stunt cyclists in San Francisco in a Japanese soft drink commercial for Kirin Beverage's Millenium METs soda.



METs is a grapefruit flavored beverage. I'll need to run to my local Japanese supermarket and see if they carry it. Urban Velo.

Urban Velo and Streetsblog also mentioned this old news about the proposed "Idaho stop law" for the state of California. I seem to recall hearing that the MTA BPAC already gave up on looking at this after a flood of negative input from both cyclists and the general public.

I imagine the news that the MTA BPAC was taking a preliminary look at the Idaho stop law was probably released prematurely. For those who want to advocate for this law, I have a couple of ideas:

• Get motorcyclists on board. I frequently see motorcycles who are stuck *forever* at a red light. It's a fairly common problem for them. I believe the Idaho law came about from the efforts of groups like ABATE, and bicyclists in the state just happened to sign on and asked to have the law amended for their benefit as well. In California, the motorcycle lobby is fairly influential and well connected.
  
  
• As a result of a new law that passed last year, Caltrans is required to develop standards to ensure that all new and replaced traffic actuated signal lights are able to detect bicycles and motorcycles. (Though CABO was influential in getting this law passed, the motorcycle lobby was vital in getting this pushed through.) Caltrans is still working on developing these standards, but the fiscal impact of requiring signal actuators that can detect bikes will be extreme -- there's an order of magnitude difference, for example, in the cost of installing loop detectors versus video detectors. If the law was changed to allow cyclists to street red lights as stop signs, I imagine many municipalities would sign on to promote an Idaho stop law, especially if the Caltrans stop light requirement was written to take traffic volumes into account. Bike detecting actuators, for example, might only be required for certain traffic volumes (i.e. high volume throughways like ECR where it's impossible to cross without a light).

I pointed to it before, but this article about the scofflaw cyclist is an excellent discussion about the "taboo" of running a red light. It's good, thoughtful stuff.

Finally, here's yet some more discussion on can't we all just get along.

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