Cracking down on law-breaking cyclists in SF would "send the wrong message" though, and the local culture trends more towards self-regard than self-awareness.
I have been a cyclist for a decade.
Saying things like "blowing through a stop sign" is stupid in the vast majority of cases, as stopping can actually be more unsafe.
Also, its so freaking tiresome to assume that every single human being is a fucking moron.
Cyclists have all their faculties, they can see, hear, move, discern. Thus, they are making a judgement to "blow through" a stop-sign in the same way anyone else makes a decision.
I once was yelled at by a guy who was waiting for a crosswalk, but all lights were red and all traffic was stopped - there was literally no traffic, and I was on the side of the T in the street, on Embarcadero in SF, where the bike lane continued through the intersection. There was literally no reason for a bike to stop for the light, as there was no reason for any other vehicle to interfere with the bike lane.
So I continued on, and this guy got so angry and was yelling at me and flipping me off becuase I didnt obey the red light.
It didnt make sense to "obey" so I didnt.
This can happen a lot, where the rule is to stop, but all other inputs are contrary to the rule.
So, be smart, be aware, stop when it is necessary, but not necessarily when it is "required".
The laws like "just stop at red" don't care about your perceptive ability, they care about everyone's perceptive ability. It takes a HUGE amount of swarm intelligence and error-correcting to make traffic work, single bad actors are auto-corrected for usually, but get two in one instance, or have a faulty error-corrector present (a tired driver, a bicyclist failing to see a motorcyclist in dark gear, etc) and there's your accident.
So while I understand the argument that you, or jaywalkers, make, I don't agree. Partly because of tragedy of the commons, but also because I simply don't trust the perceptivity of you + all other cyclists. It's too prone to error. Just go with the safe option.
As an example of how hopeless California is, when I first got there, a policeman gave me a ticket for jaywalking. You have to understand the kind of people who live in California. They are willing to stand, passive and inert, on a curb, when absolutely no traffic is coming, or maybe just a little traffic that could easily be dodged. They simply stand there obediently and wait for an electric light to give them permisiion to proceed. I couldn't believe this cop. I laughed at him. The ticket cost me twenty dollars in 1966. Since that time, I figure I have jaywalked an additional thousand times or so without being caught. Fuck that lame-ass cop! I've managed to pro-rate that ticket down to about two cents a jaywalk.
That, and a lot of the more reckless cyclists ended up donating their organs...
Also: outgroup, confirmation bias.
