I know that the law classifies bicycles as vehicles and that's why they have to ride on the road rather than the sidewalk. But to me, that's never made sense. Except in the busiest areas (downtown, Richmond Row, at the University), sidewalks tend to have a lot less people on them than the number of cars on the same stretch of road.
Bikes and walkers are roughly moving at the same speed and have roughly the same weight, at least when compared to bikes versus cars. If there is to be an accident, I'd rather be a walker hit by a bike rider than a bike rider hit by a car. I don't have a horse in this race either way – I don't have a bike here or a car. But this thought came into my head as a bus crawled behind a bike rider on Richmond today just past the University gates for nearly a block, unable to pass because the other lane had a constant stream of cars. The danger of the situation was obvious and I couldn't help but look at the block long stretch of sidewalk with a single person walking on it as an obvious solution to the problem.
Maybe if bikes were allowed to move freely between both options as needed/preferred, that would be a decent compromise? Requiring bicyclists to have horns on their bikes would be an improvement too, especially if the law was changed to allow them to ride on the sidewalk more frequently.
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