Sidewalk or street

When I started riding a bike to work, I rode on the sidewalk, even though I knew it was against the law in Minnesota. I thought that the street I rode on, two standard lanes in each direction with no extra width for bicycles, was too dangerous, and that if I got a ticket I would contest it with that argument.

After some time passed, I got tired of riding on the sidewalk because of various obstructions (garbage carts) and the curb cuts, and started riding on the street. Now after some years of that I feel like the sidewalk is too dangerous and the street is safer.

So which is it? Either riding location must be as safe or as not safe now as it was then, but now I think one is safer when before I thought the other was safer.

I think that the generally accepted view is that riding on the sidewalk is more dangerous, and after trying both ways I think I understand why.

I realized it some years ago on vacation in a strange city, when I was making a left turn onto a busy street, started to go, and...boom...some guy on a bike rapped the side of the car as he blasted in from the right, on the sidewalk, and swerved around me to my rear.

The situation with bikes on the sidewalk is that at intersections, drivers are not expecting high-velocity traffic on the sidewalks. I think that in the back of the driver mind is the belief that what can be expected on a sidewalk is something moving at pedestrian speed. I think that unconsciously a person knows how far down a sidewalk he has to look to see something that could intersect his path if that something is moving at pedestrian speed. If something is moving faster, and is at a distance such that with its greater speed in could intersect the path of a car, that faster thing will be farther down the sidewalk and the driver of the car will not see it because he unconsciously will not look that far down the sidewalk.

So the danger of riding a bicycle on the sidewalk comes mainly at intersections. There are more variables for everyone to process at those points, and thus more possibilities for errors. A driver could make a right turn and not realize that a bicycle is coming up from the right-side blind spot. A person on a bike has to do extra checking to make sure that there is not a car in a position such that if the driver does not see him, the driver will do something that could hit the bicycle. Generally, drivers are looking out for other vehicles on the street, and a bicycle that is on the street behaving like a vehicle will be noticed more. Being noticed is being safe.

Are there exceptions? Probably not legally, but I do ride on the sidewalk at a particularly nasty intersection where, if I were behaving correctly, I would be in one of the middle lanes of six automobile lanes. I suspect that most drivers are happy to have me breaking the law at that particular spot.