»In which the two tons of metal win over the twenty pounds of aluminium*

The gentle folks of SF Party Party speak out on the smack-down that San Francisco's boys in blue have put on cyclists breezing through stop signs.

The video (not available directly, for permissions reasons I do not understand) shows the same intersection where I narrowly avoided becoming part of some jackass's spokes on two separate occasions Tuesday, once in the morning and once at night.
The man-on-the-street (bicycle, in this case) interviewed in the video notes that the neighbourhood suffered through two recent murders, and wonders why the police go after cyclists like him who "slow most of the way down". Don't they have anything better to do? he asks. Better than protecting your stop-sign-flouting ass? Probably. But it's not just about you: their job is to protect everyone, and to ensure order and respect amongst the community. That job is in addition to tracking down drug-dealers, murderers, sham artists (of w. we in the Lower Haight have plenty), and ignoring the dope-shops further down the block (lowest-priority).

Bringing awareness to the importance of road rules is a significant part of the "gold in peace" job: not only do cyclists die at this intersection after failing to stop, but pedestrians are jeopardized. I am all in favour of the police pulling over all vehicles -- private cars, taxis, delivery trucks, cycles, and skateboards -- that don't stop. In the spirit of American innovation, I propose another solution: instead of the motorcycle police stopping you, how about a Mini Cooper? Don't worry, folks: that cyclist was still breathing when he was pulled away from the wreck. I have seen others die at this intersection, and at others around San Francisco. Die, as in never again able to weave around pedestrians, never able again to flip off a car, never again able to pop a a wheelie.

Let us look to the law, the law, and plain ol' common sense. On the other hand, a picture is worth a thousand words -- and I have a half-dozen.

* and hundred-seventy-five pounds of hipster flesh

UPDATE: jimg (as in yojimg!) sez: Same roads, same rules.

UPDATE: I should also point out, in the case that it is not blindingly obvious, that I feel none of the camaraderie that one might expect of people who form cliques based on the "we're all in this together" groupthink. The "we" is every person on the streets: cars and peds and skaters and bikers and weirdos in wheelchairs. I do not have the knee-jerk reaction that cyclists are right, or in the right, because they are not in death monsters or in fossil-fuel-burning SUVs (or hybrids ...); cyclists are right only when they are right, each as an individual. And ditto motorists, to whom I also give a hearty raspberry for blowing through stop signs at the intersection near my house, for roaring down the short block at forty m.p.h., and for blocking the bicycle lane anywhere.