Been seeing a lot about how the government passes shitty laws, lot of mass shootings and expensive asf health care. I come from a developing nation and we were always told how America is great and whatnot. Are all states is America bad ?
Not baseless, data-driven. This isn’t, like, my opinion, and this is the reason it’s illegal for adults to ride on sidewalks in many municipalities.
There are more obstacles on the sidewalk, and sidewalk is more prone to be uneven. Most bicycle accidents aren’t bike vs. car, but now vs. environment: unexpected bumps or drops, debris, obstacles like poles and tree branches.
But the real problem is visibility. People step out onto sidewalks not expecting a speeding cyclist, risking collisions. But more importantly for your safety, motorists aren’t expecting you there, either. So when you are going across intersections, they cannot see you –because you’re in the wrong place, and because as you point out, there are streetlights and sign poles and other objects between you– and may turn into you .
so the only case these apply are when the cyclist isn’t paying attention to their surroundings… which is the real reason it’s dangerous, and when you eliminate that, I would rather have bikes passing next to people than cars passing next to bikes, because the latter is actually deadly when someone does make a mistake
You can’t anticipate someone stopping out of a storefront or doorway, though, especially not at speed. This is not something you can eliminate.
Of course you can’t predict the future, and neither can motorists. What you can do is ride at a speed reasonably slow enough that you can react to people, and you can ride on the side of the pathway further from the doorways.
And like I said already, a bike on person accident at slow speed is favorable to risking my own life or life-changing injury by riding in the street.
If you’re trying to change my mind, stop trying. For anyone reading this, petition your local government to build safe bike lanes with solid barriers and we won’t have to have this argument.
