Accidents do happen — like the time I was having breakfast with a San Francisco police commander and forgot to turn my phone off of vibrate. When it went off, I jumped and we were both so startled I thought my nervous friend in blue might shoot me.

And accidents especially seem to happen to bicyclists in the Bay Area, because every time there is a collision, a story follows fanning the public outrage.

Oh, and did I mention that in almost every story, it was the car driver who is said to be at fault? In this part of the world, pedal power equates with political power.

So I have to admit, I was a bit taken aback to hear that bicycle advocates were actually the ones generating an idea that would allow them to legally blow past stop signs and perhaps use a little more caution at red lights, which were to be seen by them as stop signs.

Are bike riders getting bored and looking for a little more action on the streets of San Francisco and beyond? It sounded like a plotline for "The Happening," M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie about people spontaneously ending their lives for mysterious reasons.

This city compliments itself on grand social experiments, like the Darwinian idea to put skateboarders and bicyclists in lanes right next to cars some years back. My only objection to that grand plan is that I believe any interest in thinning our breed should occur naturally and not at the stubby hands of the members of our Board of Supervisors.

Yet it turns out that the idea to greatly up the danger quotient for bicyclists and drivers was not locally generated — it’s apparently based on a law that was passed in Idaho. And that’s when I realized why what happens in the Spud State should not be duplicated here, because if we did, there be a lot more than just potatoes with skinned faces.

You see, Idaho only has about 1.5 million people in the entire state, which spans close to 84,000 square miles. Between San Francisco and San Mateo counties we have just as many people, but crunched into less than 1,000 square miles. And that will go a long way toward explaining why bike commuting in big cities is well beyond a job — it’s a precarious adventure.

Certainly, it’s understandable why bike riders don’t like to stop at every stop or do anything that stops their momentum — which of course explains why they do zip through stop signs and lights with such regularity that San Francisco police say only a tiny percentage of them follow the traffic rules that we are all supposed to abide.

That sentiment was echoed by the spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area transit agency considering the so-called stop-and-roll proposal.

"Treating a bike as a car is simply wrong and right now traffic laws treat bikes like cars," said Randy Rentschler, the MTC spokesman. "We’re trying to look at things that would benefit bike riders, but that also make sense."

And that’s where this latest proposal runs into some logistical traffic, since it doesn’t make much sense to alter laws if the very community they’re designed to serve doesn’t pay attention to the ones already in existence. And promoting legislation for any special-interest group is always a bad idea, especially, in my humble opinion, if it has the added effect of increasing the chances of getting someone killed.

Rentschler told me that at a time when gas is hitting $4.50 per gallon, it makes sense to try to push alternatives to costly and environmentally unfriendly transit options such as driving. And I’m with him there — as apparently are millions of other Americans, since the number of people using public transportation has shot up along with the cost of oil.

But clearly one of the main impediments to commuting by bike, besides family and time constraints, is safety, which is why it’s curious that any advocacy groups promoting more bicycle ridership would conceivably come up with a proposal that would place more pedal pushers in harm’s way.

According to The Examiner, there were nearly 1,700 bicyclists injured in San Francisco and San Mateo counties between 2005 and 2007, and anyone who drives along Bay Area streets knows how many near misses there are that could quickly up that figure. Given that cities and counties have spent millions throughout the years to crack down on red-light runners, it doesn’t make sense to ignore the other part of the equation.

For now, it appears the rolling roulette plan has been put on hold. And for a lot of good reasons, let’s hope in this case that what happens in Idaho, stays in Idaho.