Bicyclist stops at stop sign in Golden Gate Park

I saw the weirdest thing in the park yesterday. I stepped out in front of a stop sign, not realizing that a bicyclist was barreling straight towards me. And then, to my astonishment, the bicyclist actually stopped at the stop sign -- in San Francisco, no less! Not only that, but she said, "Please go ahead of me. I'll keep riding after you cross the street.''

For a moment, I was speechless. I have only seen this happen once before; see below for details. For the uninitiated, out in San Francisco, if you are a bicyclist and you see a stop sign, you are supposed to barrel straight through it, as if the stop sign did not exist. In fact, most folks actually accelerate when they see one of these signs. Even police officers on bikes will do this, too. In fact, the cops --- from my personal experience -- seem to ignore more stop signs than anybody else.

In her defense, the bicyclist was only six years old. She'll learn. For the record, this has only happened to me once before, out on Waller, when another bicyclist stopped at a stop sign and let me pass. She turned out to be a foreign exchange student.