Daily Commute

You may feel safer, but even a tiny bit of research will show that you are objectively less safe. If you want to use the sidewalk, walk, and only use your bike on a trainer in the basement.

Phiber

Beautiful. hahaha

EnigManiac

There are many good suggestions here. Personally, as it relates to the pizza-delivery guy, ignoring it or 'letting it go' is not what I would recommend. That merely gives the ignorant jerk license to harass (or worse) other cyclists. Depending on whether you feel you could get through to the guy a hard or soft approach has to be decided: I love the idea of presenting him with the traffic rules and regulations as a tip, but if the guy is reasonable, include an actual cash tip (especially if you want to order from them again). I also encourage the call to the manager and a follow-up. Dismissing it only makes it seem unimportant to you in the eyes of the manager. I would have written to the manager, corporate head-office, consumer and advocacy groups as well as the local media (whom they likely advertise with) and suggest that should similar instances occur, boycotts of not only the pizza-chain, but the media they advertise in might be an option. Education may be accomplished one person at a time, but awareness can be blanketed amongst all.

As it relates to the Fire Department episode, I wouldn't have flipped the bird: it merely gave the firemen a negative image of another 'jerk' cyclist. A smile and 'have a nice day' followed by a letter to the city, fire department officials, etc. reminding their staff that cyclists may use the entire legal lane is what I would have done.

Happy new year everyone.

qmsdc15

What percentage of bike fatalities occur on the street vs. the sidewalk? Of course when the sidewalk crosses the street, cyclist must wait until it is safe to cross. I'm a messenger and I don't drive. I can't make deliveries or get groceries riding on a trainer in the basement. I do not ride on the sidewalk. I enjoy riding in traffic.

I once saw a car careen off the street after a collision and knocked a pedestrian twenty feet up in the air. Another time a berzerk trucker drove down the sidewalk on K street. These are rare occurances. Traffic fatalities in the street are more common.
Traffic fatalities happen all the time in the streets. Cyclist is extremely vunerable in the street. I think 4 died this year in DC.

I'm not telling you to ride on the sidewalk. It is against the law in downtown DC for example. Also it's dangerous for the pedestrians.

I tried to do a tiny research as you suggested but couldn't find figures on cyclist fatalities on sidewalk vs. street. One site google led me to was Ken Kifer's. He was a great advocate of safe riding in the street. I agree with everything he says but he did get killed by a drunk driver while riding in the street. The street is dangerous. Cars crash into other cars, bikes, pedestrians. I'm sorry to tell you these sad facts.

qmsdc15

If I'm on the sidewalk, I don't need to be visible to cars. When I cross the street I need to look both ways and/or cross with the light.

I ride in the street annd encourage others to do so. The more bicycles are seen on the street makes it safer for all of us as drivers become more accustomed to seeing/looking for bikers. Also drivers will become more aware of cyclists' right to the road if they see us operating bikes as regular vehicles.

Cars crash into other cars, bikes and pedestrians. People are killed in car crashes every day. I'm not aware of many people dying everyday from riding on sidewalks. Just because it is safer doesn't mean you should have to ride on the sidewalk. But it is not as dangerous as the street. Traffic accident is one of the common causes of death in our modern society. Sidewalk fatalities are not common cause of death.

Trekke

I love this approach. I always think of cyclist as being intellegent and a cut above the norm. We want respect. We need to earn it. Great thread.

Daily Commute

Ken Kifer's page says that sidewalk ridingis 2x more dangerous than street riding. Also see this study. I'm not saying that street riding is perfectly safe. But your intuition that sidewalk riding is safer is just plain wrong.

qmsdc15

Ken Kifer was killed by a car riding on the street.

The other link is about accidents in the intersection which is the street not the sidewalk. It is not my intuition but it is a fact that fewer cyclist die on the sidewalk. The dead cyclists got run over by cars which usually stay in the street.

You need to be safe when crossing the street. Are cyclist who ride in the street more likely to cross the street safely? Yes, probably. I am a vehicular cyclist, I ride in the street, I cross intersections safely. The child was in the road. The entrance to a fast food resturant is a road. He should have looked both ways before crossing and cross when no cars are coming. My mommy taught me this early on, it's common knowledge. I didn't want to bring up this tragic story and what the kid did wrong but the officer said no one is to blame. In other words the truck was not at fault, the biker ran into the truck. It had nothing to do with the sidewalk. Operate as a pedestrian on the sidewalk. When the sidewalk ends at a crossing you cross safely. Stop, look both ways, etc. It's not hard and it's not dangerous. Show me bicycle fatalies on the sidewalk, not intersection. You can get off and walk across the intersection. I'm not talking about people who can't cross the street. Thats not dangerous if you know how. I've been riding in traffic for a living for 18 years. I've only gotten hurt a few times because I'm very good at what I do. Many others got permanent injuries and some are dead. These are my brothers and sisters dead or damaged. We all have scars.

Don't talk to me about intuition or how safe it is to ride on the streets. I know something about it. Show me a statistic of people getting killing on sidewalk or driveway of private home. Crossing street or entrance to business is not a part of the sidewalk.

I never meant to advocate riding on sidewalk, I like vehicular cycling. I just meant to say you aren't going to die riding on the sidewalk, it just hardly ever happens. My niece is far safer in her neighborhood on the sidewalk. Throw your 7yr old child in the street if you like, believe what you want. Show me a news article about anyone getting killed on the sidewalk or driveway, not intersection. I know it happens, but not common like traffic fatalities.

EnigManiac

Two years ago, while my (then) nine year-old son was riding on the sidewalk, an idiot in an SUV barreled out of a blind alley and hit him knocking him and his bike onto the road. Fortunately, he was not seriously injured. The point is sidewalks belong, by law, to pedestrians and children on bikes, not adults on bikes. As a pedestrian AND a cyclist, it irritates me to no end when I see teenaged and adult cyclists on the sidewalk where I have seen countless instances of pedestrians stepping out of office-buildings and stores and either hitting or being hit by a cyclist (and lately those damn scooters that the diabled boot around on). The sideWALK is NO place for a cyclist. Period. And the law says so too. It takes experienced cyclists to continue to educate motorists that the roads are not theirs alone.

junioroverlord

Find him and smash his windshield in with your U-Lock. That's what I always do.

junioroverlord

Oh and as to riding on the sidewalks its not a good idea considering your actions are very unpredictable for cars. If you ride your bike in the street like a sane person, and use the proper amount of discretion and agressiveness you'll be much better off than cruising on a walkway created for pedestrians. Believe what you want but don't cry to me when you get that ticket from that disgruntled police officer with the beer belley thats mad because he just found out his wife has been cheating on him with the pool boy.

Trekke

You don't have a clue. You need to deliver pizza.

Kristofferson

If the guy in the pizza car was smaller than me I'd 1) swear at him 2) beat the crap out of him if possible

iceratt

I can't believe the maturity level of my fellow bicyclists. How can I feel superior to the car driving majority, when so many of my bretheren are troglodites?

Raiyn

My hero
"if the guy was smaller"
What in the ************************?

Daily Commute

If your niece confines herself to the sidewalk between driveways, then you are right, she's safer. But if she starts crossing driveways, that's where the risk begins. Sidewalk riding requires at least the same skill as riding on the streets. The child still has to watch carefully at all interections, and, on the sidewalk, each driveway is an interserction. Since intersections are the most dangerous place for cyclists, sidewalk riding has a lot more danger spots.

Your Ken Kifer argument is as macabre as it is wrong. Kifer never argued cyclists were immune from danger on the roads. He just said that's where we were safest. It is safer to drive 65 on the freeway than to drive 90 mph, but some 65 mph drivers still get killed. Should the lesson from their deaths be "Drive 90, because 65 isn't safe?.

Trekke

iceratt, Well Said..

junioroverlord

Yo mama!

operator

This view is common in people who are newbs. Look up any bike/traffic accident statistic and you willf ind that statistically you have an enormously greater chance of having a collision on the sidewalk than on the road. All you are going on here is what you think supported by zero evidence, and you happily quote the anecdotal evidence you do know as substantial enough.

Oh wait why do I care if you ride on the sidewalk.

Daily Commute

Now it's your turn. Do you have anything other than your intuition to back up what you say?

One of the most annoying argument techniques people use in this forum is to make an unsupported assertion and then to demand that opponents provide proof of the contrary. Toolbox63 abused this technique. When pushed for support, he flat out lied. He's now in self-imposed exile (unless he's posting under a different name).

bhchdh 

https://www.danenet.wicip.org/bcp/dilemma.html

A good article on the delemma of properly designing bike facilities. The author sites a recent study the says sidewalk riding increases accident risk by 180%, and wrong way sidewalk riding icreases risk by over 400%.

emilymildew

Sidewalks are for walking. If you don't think that riding in the street is safe, then you should get off of your bike and walk it. Period. That's why they're called sideWALKS, not side-go-three-times-the-speed-of-everything-else-on-thems.

Forget yourself for one second, whether or not you believe that riding on the sidewalk is safer. Think about everyone else who walks at 3mph. Is that how slowly you ride?

Sidewalks are for WALKING.

Raiyn

Hence the term sidewalk