Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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To address your question pragmatically, because the next best option most of the time is to be on the sidewalk, and cyclists die more often per km cycled on the sidewalk than on the road.
Really? That surprises me. Do you have a source for that?
I found this source with some info. Quoting a relevant bit:
It can seem counter-intuitive that riding where the cars are is safer, but if you think about it, it makes sense. Cars don't expect fast-moving vehicles on the sidewalk (they often barely expect pedestrians...), the constant curbs impacts your flow while riding, people more often ride against traffic on the sidewalk than on the road, and honestly people riding on sidewalks probably tend towards more inexperienced than people who feel comfortable riding on the road.
Thank you for sharing; great points.
To me, this sounds a bit like crosswalks/intersections are the unsafe part rather than sidewalks.
It's a rule of thumb for cyclists to walk their bikes across intersections (even on bike paths/trails!), turning cyclists into pedestrians. Not that pedestrians are particularly safe where I live, but that would address part of the issue here.
Sidewalks where I live tend to have boulevards (grass off to either side for cyclists to pull onto), which may be different than the environments where these studies took place (I'm picturing buildings on one side and roads on the other).