Bicycling on sidewalks versus in the street

[professorscott]

The safest place for a bicyclist is on the street, toward the right of the rightmost travel lane. Sidewalks are absolutely deadly for bicyclists because motorists are not expecting to encounter a vehicle crossing in the sidewalk space at bicycle speeds.

This may not be intuitive, but it has been studied to death and the results of the studies are all in agreement. No place is more dangerous for a bicyclist than where he has to cross a street from one sidewalk to another.

[BrushStart]

The safest place for a bicyclist is on the street, toward the right of the rightmost travel lane. Sidewalks are absolutely deadly for bicyclists because motorists are not expecting to encounter a vehicle crossing in the sidewalk space at bicycle speeds.

This may not be intuitive, but it has been studied to death and the results of the studies are all in agreement. No place is more dangerous for a bicyclist than where he has to cross a street from one sidewalk to another.

I agree that is probably true on average, but roads like Woodward, especially in Midtown seem super dangerous because you are often wedged in this narrow crevasse between poorly parked cars on the right and/or a bus, and traffic that is moving at ridiculous speeds. On streets that are only 2 lanes in each direction and don't have cars parked in the right lane, I can manage just fine. Such is the case for most of downtown- I have no problem because drivers are moving slower and are seemingly aware of pedestrians, but this is a different environment. Jefferson is just as bad. Michigan seems somewhat better because for some reason less cars seem to drive in the far right lane.