Bikes Don’t Belong on the Sidewalk
Over on London Topic, Dan O’Neil has written an article in which he describes his wife’s collision with a vehicle while riding her bicycle on the sidewalk, and he tries to make a case for why such behaviour should be allowed.
Sorry Dan, but that’s completely wrong.
I agree that riding bicycles on this city’s roads is hazardous, and that something ought to be done about that. But putting pedestrians at risk by allowing bicycles to share sidewalks with us is unfair to pedestrians, and completely contrary to the widely accepted concept of a transportation hierarchy that places pedestrians at the top.
We are all pedestrians, to some degree or other. We were all born pedestrians, and walking is a ‘natural right.’ As opposed to other forms of transportation, which are simply artificial constructs.
Dan writes that he has “never been able to find a case of a fatality resulting from a bike striking a pedestrian.” It took me about 5 seconds to find THIS ARTICLE. And I have no doubt that I could find more.
I’m sorry that Mr. O’Neils wife was hurt, and I hope that she recovers quickly. And London needs people who are willing to advocate for bicycling. For that, I commend Mr. O’Neil.
But we also need strong advocates for pedestrians and public transit.
And we need a police force that does a better job of enforcing the rules of the road than what I see day in and day out.
We need to elect people who can recognize the imbalance between automobile transportation and other forms, and the terrible price that our society and the environment are paying beause of our reliance on cars. People who are prepared to say so, and mean it.
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On a daily basis I come across people biking on the sidewalks while Im walking. On many occasions I have been struck by these people riding their bikes because I refused to jump onto the grass from the sidewalk and at the extreme I have exchanged words with more than one person riding a bike.
As someone who chooses to walk everywhere he goes (or take public transport) and as someone who at one point biked everywhere (a habit I hope to get back into) I have been on both sides of the coin.
Bikers are becoming more and more ignorant with each passing day as they cannot seem to make up their mind whether they want to be considered a vehicle or a pedestrian, moving from the road to the sidewalk when it is convenient for them.
As bikers can be charged with driving while impaired while on their bike that makes them a vehicle and we all know where vehicles belong.
The politicians and the police have to get serious about protecting bicyclists on the road who ride lawfully, and come down with a heavy hand with careless and reckless drivers who behave unlawfully. I simply don’t believe that they’re making enough of an effort. Driving is not a right, and if drivers have to suffer inconvenience from making pedestrians and bicyclists safe, then so be it.
I was a passenger in a vehicle-cyclist collision identical to the one described ny O’Neill about two years ago in southe London. But my fiance (the driver) and the cyclist were ticketed. Something I never hear about is the trauma that the driver and passengers suffer in this situation!
Another time I had a driver yell at me because he didn’t see me as I was walking my bike across the road (not jaywalking – I was at the light). I couldn’t believe it!
As someone who bikes to work daily, I’m astonished by the number of sidewalk bikers, and by the number of cyclists who don’t wear helmets. I really wish London would improvce the bike lanes.
Thanks for the comment Erica. I understand what you mean about trauma. I once had a pedestrian jump out in front of my car from between parked vehicles once, and my foot hit the brake instinctively. I swear it happened so fast it was all over before I even realized what was happening. How I didn’t hit him, I don’t know. I had to pull over to the curb for about 15 min’s before I was calmed down enough to proceed. There’s lots of behaviour to crack down on, and we’d all be a whole lot better for it. Since you’re a regular bicyclist, you should keep tabs on the group of local cyclists who are trying to organize. They held their first meeting on May 9 and had about 18 people turn out. I hope to post more about it soon. In the meantime, you can contact the group by emailing london.on.cyclingATgmail.com
Thank you for the group contact.
Have you had luck submitting video to the London Police Department?
Josh, I’ve been so frustrated by Sgt. Tom O’Brien’s reluctance to press charges against motorists when I’ve provided him with vehicle descriptions and lisc. numbers, I’m going to take my time until I’ve got a quality video. Then if he refuses to act, I’ll go before a Justice and swear out a complaint. I suspect that it’ll be a test case, so I want to make sure that it’s as strong as possible.
If driving is not a right, then how is biking?
John, I’m referring to ‘natural’ rights. Like breathing, sleeping, seeing, etc. Walking is a natural right. Bicycling, driving, etc. are not. They are only legislated rights, and only so long as our government chooses to allow them to be. Having said that, it’s important to note that bicycling is considered to be #2 on the transportation hierarchy, next in importance to walking.
In a perfect city, there would be enough bike lanes, lots of sidewalk and decent roads. However, I think that given what London is, there’s a case to be made for riding a bike on a sidewalk (not really a ‘right,’ but just ‘reasonable’ considering the dangers of biking on certain stretches of road). I think that if a bike is on a sidewalk it is up to the biker to give way to any pedestrians.
As a general rule, I think a bike on a sidewalk should go the speed of a walker or jogger.
If bicycles are registered and fitted with license plates, and cyclers require a “biking license” and must pass a “biking test”, then they are considered as vehicles and should be on the roads and not on sidewalks.
Otherwise, they should be allowed on the sidewalks, just as skateboards and rollerblades are allowed to do so.
Anna, I don’t know where you live, but in Canada’s province of Ontario bicycles are legally considered to be vehicles and are expected to be used on the roads.
This is a great point. All vehicles on the road should be licensed and drivers required to take a test.
I would support that. That way, any cyclists on the sidewalk would have no excuse for not knowing the rules of the road and can be ticketed accordingly.
In many parts of London, I can ride for 2 or 3 kilometres without seeing a single pedestrian. This is a car town. And unfortunately, the people who drive here don’t have any idea how to drive alongside bikes on the roads. They get all nervous and swervy around cyclists. I honestly feel safer on a busy street in Toronto than I do here in London! While I do drive on the road, I think its funny that people here are complaining about people riding their bikes on their long empty sidewalks. Illegal or otherwise, I think common sense shoud always dictate what to do. It’s safer on the whole for everybody for cyclists to ride on sidewalks in areas without much pedestrian traffic.
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If the operator of a motor vehicle happens to see an off-road bicycle pathway through a park which appears to have no cyclists using it and which promises to shave a few seconds off of their commute, ought they be allowed to use it as a shortcut?
Some of our sidewalks may be long and empty, but I don’t think we need to allow bicycles and cars on them to justify the expenditure of buiding/maintaining them. The answer is for the City to do much more than it currently is to promote walking, which could reasonably be expected to increase the pedestrian volume.
I’ve biked for years before in London, and then for the three recent years in University I’ve mostly walked to places and took public transit, and just recently I started driving at least two hours to and from work every day. I have seen the perspective from pedestrians, bicycles, and cars, and I disagree that bicycles don’t belong on sidewalks.
Let’s face it, when there’s a bicycle lane, then there’s no excuses to not ride on it as not only is it usually free of cars or pedestrians, it’s also much better in terms of road quality since bike lanes are smooth as opposed to sidewalks that are divided into squares. Given bicycle lanes, there’s no argument.
But without bicycle lanes, then there is an obvious difference between a large road (e.g. Fanshawe Park Road in London) and suburban neighborhood drives. In the latter, the road is usually free of car traffic, and even if there are car traffic, they’re usually going at a slow speed. In such cases, riding on the road is easy and relatively safe, whereas the sidewalks are constricted and likely to have pedestrians, so therefore the road is a better choice. Personally, I’d advise riding on the left side of the road so you can see any incoming cars and avoid them.
For large roads like Fanshawe Park Road (let’s imagine for a second that it doesn’t have a bicycle lane, when in reality it does), it is insane to expect bicycles to ride on the road, because we’re talking about large metal cars squeezing in their lanes going at least 60 kilometers an hour versus tiny, flimsy little flesh and bone cyclists going at maximum 20~30 kilometers an hour (and that’s avid cyclists with road bikes). A lane is not meant to be shared by a car and a bicycle. If you force it, then there is no safe space cushion between the car and the bicycle (and between the car and any other car on the left lane) at the moment of passing. Here in Toronto, cars haphazardly force lane changes to left whenever they see a cyclist in front of them, and oftentimes it can be the cause of quite a bit of street chaos.
Meanwhile, any cyclist who crash into pedestrians is an idiot. I admit that I’ve been an idiot once (hit somebody because I was distracted by something), but never again. Note that: Cyclists don’t have to go at high speeds. If I’m on my bicycle, I can easily ride through the Eaton center area at peak hours without hitting anyone. How do I do it? Simple, I go at pedestrian speeds. I don’t get off my bike. Instead, I just slowly stroll forward with my two feet pushing against the ground. Obviously if there are pedestrians directly in front of you, it’s their road so you shouldn’t expect them to get out of the way for you. You’re supposed to either slow down and slowly pass them at a safe speed, or go around them given a large radius. A bicycle is extremely agile with a high degree of maneuverability. They can swirve onto the grass or swirve onto the road and then come back into the sidewalk at the next entrance if necessary to avoid pedestrians. (Heck, with a mountain bike you can even jump the curb) There are a million ways to avoid pedestrians, you just gotta be creative and break convention if it means safety.
It’s crazy to group bicycles and cars together. Sure there are a million technicalities you can look at to support grouping them together, but none of them are practical in any way. Vulnerability wise, a bicycle and a pedestrian are no different from a car’s viewpoint, the driver is protected by the car’s shell, bikes and pedestrians are both flesh and bone exposed to the elements. Speed wise, a bicycle can become a pedestrian within a second by braking and strolling along slowly, whereas no matter how hard it tries, it’ll never become an automobile power zooming forward at 80 kilometers an hour. Versatility wise, cars are very restricted as they must drive on the road in lanes, whereas bicycles are the same as pedestrians, they can go anywhere – sidewalk, lawn, grass, through sand pits (e.g. playground), into rough terrain like soft construction soil, etc… Size-wise, cars are huge, you can fit a double futon mattress in a little Toyota Corolla (just tried yesterday) yet you can’t fit the Corolla into a pedestrian walkway and a bicycle lane COMBINED, whereas bicycles are pretty much the same size as a human being and fits comfortably in sidewalks (heck, I’ve often seen sidewalks much wider than bicycle lanes). Back in high school when my friends and I went to parks for outings, plenty of us would be riding bicycles, while other people would rollerblade. The rollerbladers never had a problem keeping up with us cyclists. So does that mean rollerbladers belong on the road as well? What about skateboarders? Scooters?
And let’s not forget that not everyone can ride a bicycle as well as the people I see in full bicycle sporting gear with road bikes going at 30 kilometers an hour. We’re moving into off campus housing this year and one of my friends is considering taking up cycling as a way to get to school. She has only learned how to ride as a child, with not much more experience than that. No doubt when she gets on the bicycle she’d be a bit shaky at first. If she decides to ride to school, do I trust letting her ride on the road with crazy Bloor street traffic (with cars cutting in front of other cars and forcing u-turns every minute)? Of course not. I’d tell her to go slowly and not be afraid to stroll along the sidewalks at first. I fail to believe that bicycle-pedestrian collisions are just as deadly as automobile-bicycle collisions. The physics of that claim just doesn’t work out. I also fail to believe that bicycle-pedestrian collisions are more likely as automobile-bicycle collisions. With bicycles, you can see every inch of your body/bike, and you have a million ways to avoid pedestrians. Meanwhile, anyone who drives will know that you cannot see most of the outside of your car, and in terms of spacing you’ll just have to make mental judgments based on your experience and spatial awareness. If the bike in front of you is being a bit shaky, and the traffic is full on the lane to the left of you, you really don’t have many options without risking a collision except for maybe stay back and follow the bike at its own speed, consequently blocking all traffic behind you – totally unacceptable.
There will always be jerks who ring their bells at 20 kilometers an hour screaming the pedestrians to get out of the way as they zoom through a sidewalk, just like there will always be cars who swirve in and out of traffic with crazy stunts without ever using turning lights. These people should be punished, but it doesn’t mean the entire transportation method must be restricted. A bicycle is nothing more than just a little upgrade for pedestrians to get a little faster, exactly the same as rollerblades, skateboards, scooters, etc… It’s not something meant for long-distance, high speed travel, like a car is. Barring bicycles from sidewalks and forcing them onto streets where they must share a close distance of within a meter with any passing car is just preposterous. Of course, the best solution is to install bike lanes on every road, but that’s highly impractical given the rarity of cyclists on most roads. Meanwhile, allowing cyclists on sidewalks is quite practical, especially in a city like London where most of the time the sidewalks are totally empty (I frequently ride from Sunningdale and South Wenige Drive to Masonville mall only encountering about 3 to 4 pedestrians along the trip). Lastly, if you can find one bicycle-pedestrian death, I bet I can find at least three automobile-bicycle deaths.
London is a paradise for cyclists, thanks to paths that allow you to traverse the city from Byron to Hamilton and Dundas crossing, what? three streets? When I moved to Waterloo in 1990 I found riding here to be suicidal: no bike lanes, no bike paths, and drivers completely ignorant of the Highway Traffic Act. Since riding on the sidewalk is of course illegal (that’s why it’s called a sideWALK), I swore off bikes for nearly twenty years. In the interim, they’ve put some bike lanes in, but more importantly there has been a paradigm shift in the way (most) drivers behave towards cyclists. Don’t get me wrong, cycling is still dangerous, given that half the drivers are intexticated. But it’s loads safer than it once was.
Nearly every cyclist I see is breaking at least one law, usually more. How many bikes have sounding devices? Lights? How many cyclists come to a full and complete stop at signs and traffic lights? How many know what hand signals mean, let alone use them?
In North America, bicycles are largely considered to be toys. In Europe, they’re a legitimate form of transport. Until we come closer to the European attitude, the majority of cyclists will be scofflaws and the majority of police officers won’t notice.