THE WAY TO DEMONSTRATE THE FOLLY OF A RULE IS TO COMPLY WITH IT.

Bicycle riders and motorists are perpetually at loggerheads about rolling stops, the latter slagging on the former for blithely assuming they have the right of way even when it's not their turn; the former noting the way "right on red" is inevitably a roll-through, never mind the risk to bicyclists along the curb or pedestrians in the crosswalk, and the same sort of rolling through being common at crossings with stop signs.

That brings us to "San Francisco cyclists protest ... by obeying traffic rules."  Hilarity ensues at Cold Spring Shops.

Hundreds of cyclists rode across the Wiggle - a zigzag on-road bike route which avoids the city's hills - in single file during evening rush hour in response to a police directive to punish cyclists for riding through stop signs.

Riders approached every stop line as cars must do, coming to a complete halt and only moving forward when they have the right of way, rather than making a 'rolling stop' as many cyclists currently do. Their point was bikes shouldn't be treated the same as cars as they don't present the same dangers.

"The thing you say you want — every cyclist to stop at every stop sign — you really don't want that," Morgan Fitzgibbons, one of the protest's organisers, told SF Weekly. "You're going to destroy traffic in every neighborhood that has a heavy dose of cyclists."

Campaigners say police should be focusing on law-breaking drivers, who present far greater risk to safety than cyclists. During the protests drivers were reported honking their horns in frustration and confusion about the delays and over why cyclists weren't riding through the junctions as normal.

The city has resources for traffic enforcement, apparently.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC), criticised [police captain John] Sanford's focus on bikes given the SFPD signed up to Vision Zero, supposedly targeting the five most common causes of traffic injuries, all of which are violations by motor vehicle drivers.

In a recent blog the SFBC said: "The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is shocked to see SFPD shifting resources away from enforcing against the deadliest traffic behaviors. SFPD has a long way to go towards fulfilling their own promises to make our roads safer for everyone who bikes, walks and drives."

Protesters are calling for the city and California to adopt the Idaho Stop law, introduced in Idaho in 1982, which allows cyclists to treat stop signs as give way signs, and red lights as stop signs, allowing them to proceed if the junction is clear. This allows them to clear the junction faster, increasing rider safety and clearing the way for motor traffic.

Let's leave aside the Obamavilles and aggressive panhandlers messing up the streets of San Francisco, and consider whether the real problem might be, as comments to the article suggest, a surfeit of stop signs.  That provides a different tradeoff, though: there are many crossings where a rotary might do a better job of keeping traffic moving, although between the propensity of highway engineers to overdesign the things and the way the rules keep motorists looking left until they're into the circle, they bring their own hazards to bicycle riders and pedestrians.