It’s a lot less mass and speed (and thus momentum) and it also isn’t a room-sized suit-of-armor that can allow accidentally plowing through the brick wall of a store (unscathed) because they dropped their cellphone between the couch cushions.
Aside from lower lethality for pedestrians than vs cars (especially 30mph+, high hood height trucks, blind spots or malfunctions), a bike rider is at risk to injure themselves in any sort of adverse event (be it flipping over the handlebars, falls/skids, or something like a faulty bicycle frame/fork).
I mean… they sometimes are (if the sidewalk is designed for it), look at multi-use trails. A city near me allows bikes (coming from the trail) on wide sidewalks to the main street.
It depends on the flow of pedestrians (too many people would be difficult to navigate with a bicycle anyway) and it can be a visibility issue with doors of storefronts (especially as people leaving likely aren’t expecting/looking-for someone passing on a bike).
Yea I guess it comes to the infrastructure, I’m in Chicago and we seriously need more REAL bike lanes, not something just painted on the road. I see drivers doing crazy shit all the time swerving into bike lanes almost hitting cyclists. I’m just really still confused about the logic of forcing cyclists to ride on the road where there are no bike lanes while the side walks are wide enough for them.
They should not be allowed in the sidewalk because they’re a hazard to pedestrians.
Bicycles are to pedestrians like cars are to bicycles. Every argument you can make about cars endangering cyclists also applies to cyclists endangering pedestrians.
Bicycles belong in the road because their speed is more similar to cars than pedestrians, their (lack of) maneuverability is more similar to cars than pedestrians.
Clearly three separate protected rights of way would be better than the current two
A lot of issues like this are how things are designed. Taking a page from NotJustBikes (look them up if you haven’t heard of them), lots of things are car-centric (cities, housing, zoning, parking-lots, lack of public transportation) even when it comes as a detriment to everyone not in a car (and sometimes even those in large vehicles, because congestion).
It’s also another culture-war thing and not even just in the US, look how in Canada Doug Ford wants to remove even the painted bike lane.
It’s a lot less mass and speed (and thus momentum) and it also isn’t a room-sized suit-of-armor that can allow accidentally plowing through the brick wall of a store (unscathed) because they dropped their cellphone between the couch cushions.
Aside from lower lethality for pedestrians than vs cars (especially 30mph+, high hood height trucks, blind spots or malfunctions), a bike rider is at risk to injure themselves in any sort of adverse event (be it flipping over the handlebars, falls/skids, or something like a faulty bicycle frame/fork).
That makes sense, so why aren’t bikes allowed on the side walk? Based on your argument.
I mean… they sometimes are (if the sidewalk is designed for it), look at multi-use trails. A city near me allows bikes (coming from the trail) on wide sidewalks to the main street.
It depends on the flow of pedestrians (too many people would be difficult to navigate with a bicycle anyway) and it can be a visibility issue with doors of storefronts (especially as people leaving likely aren’t expecting/looking-for someone passing on a bike).
Yea I guess it comes to the infrastructure, I’m in Chicago and we seriously need more REAL bike lanes, not something just painted on the road. I see drivers doing crazy shit all the time swerving into bike lanes almost hitting cyclists. I’m just really still confused about the logic of forcing cyclists to ride on the road where there are no bike lanes while the side walks are wide enough for them.
They should not be allowed in the sidewalk because they’re a hazard to pedestrians.
Bicycles are to pedestrians like cars are to bicycles. Every argument you can make about cars endangering cyclists also applies to cyclists endangering pedestrians.
Bicycles belong in the road because their speed is more similar to cars than pedestrians, their (lack of) maneuverability is more similar to cars than pedestrians.
Clearly three separate protected rights of way would be better than the current two
A lot of issues like this are how things are designed. Taking a page from NotJustBikes (look them up if you haven’t heard of them), lots of things are car-centric (cities, housing, zoning, parking-lots, lack of public transportation) even when it comes as a detriment to everyone not in a car (and sometimes even those in large vehicles, because congestion).
It’s also another culture-war thing and not even just in the US, look how in Canada Doug Ford wants to remove even the painted bike lane.
They’re allowed in some places.
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In japan they don’t but they all do anyways. Imo they should just be allowed on sidewalks