Drivers still liable even if they hit sidewalk cyclists

As someone who advises cyclists not to ride on sidewalks, I would point out that liability considerations only come into play for cyclists actually hit and injured by a motorist, and accident statistics strongly suggest you run a greater risk by riding on the sidewalk than you do in traffic.

I know people who think of my decision to ride Finch and Bayview as a sign of insanity. I know how intimidating those streets feel. I know what it takes to ride them. But I still urge cyclists to make their (our) best efforts to avoid riding on sidewalks, because, aside from the risk to the individual cyclist, sidewalk cyclists have a non-zero risk of a fatal collision with a pedestrian. If I truly consider a street too dangerous or frightening, I take the ravines, I take the side street, I take the bus if I have to. I don't say now that I will never under any circumstance ride a sidewalk, but I make sidewalk cycling my very last resort.

I dislike, intensely dislike, the complaints directed at cyclists as a community based on a few of our number. I don't hold it against Rosie Dimanno when pedestrians wander into the streets expecting traffic to part like the Red Sea, or go wandering obliviously down the bike lanes; I resent her attempt to lump me with those in the cycling community who misbehave. I get stuck on the word community, because as a cyclist I belong to a community. I go on memorial rides because I believe none of us rides alone. Because I belong to a community, what I do, good or bad, affects others in the community. I can't mourn with cyclists as a community one day and claim no responsibility for a drunk wobbling down the sidewalk who shouts "who cares" when confronted about his behaviour.

I also advise cyclists not to ride on sidewalks, and would also do it only in case of emergency (hasn't happened). Because it's the law. But people bring in the safety argument, and I'd like to believe the law is well-founded, so please, please, where are these accident statistics you speak of?

I've seen statistics of the sort that x% of injuries include sidewalk cycling as a cause. But I haven't seen, and I want to see, something that includes the context for that number--specifically, how much cycling takes place on sidewalks versus streets? For the sake of argument, say 50% of cyclist injuries involve a cyclist on the sidewalk and the other 50% don't. And say 90% of cycling takes place on the sidewalk. In that case it would seem clear to me that sidewalk cycling would actually be safer, with the other 10% of cyclists responsible for fully 50% of the injuries. And if the numbers were reversed one would make the opposite inference.

Where can I find the numbers?

People ride on the sidewalk because, to them, riding on the street is dangerous. We need to make the streets less dangerous for bicycles, bike lanes is one step, slower speed limits is another.

I have very little sympathy for cyclists on the sidewalk who are worried about cars at intersections. Lets look at it from the view point of the car driver (could be me, some of the time) who is pulling out from a side-street onto a busy road at rush-hour (which in T.O is any time of the day). The typical driver does check the sidewalk, both ways, before moving into traffic. Afterwards, he knows he has a certain amount of time available to divert his attention to the matter of merging into busy traffic. The problem is that a quick check of the sidewalk is ok only if you are expecting pedestrians to come at pedestrian speeds. A cyclist going at only a moderate pace will inevitably surprise most drivers, even though they have checked the sidewalk. An alert driver at an intersection already has so many demands on his/her attention that it is inherently risky to create more.

Cyclists on the sidewalk should get off and walk across intersections, and accept the same risks as pedestrians. They should not expect the legal system to give them a shield against their own risky behaviour.

I usually refer to Aultmann-Hall, L. & Adams, M.F. (1998). See also here and here.

Thanks, folks, very much appreciate the pointers. Looks like this is the money quote, from John's second link:

I searched for studies that compared accident rates on the road versus accident rates on sidewalks, and did not find any that found a higher accident rate for road cyclists.

Yes, I did see that intriguing suggestion in Wachtel and Lewiston. But there's no statistical significance--with only 48 accidents reported, the results, suggestive as they are, are indistinguishable from random noise.

I don't have access to Tinsworth to check for significance, but in their discussion of the paper, Reynolds et al. do note five other studies that had the opposite finding.

I agree, we do need to be careful.

Why do we teach children to ride on sidewalks? I think for lots of reasons that don't hold true for adults. Kids are small, and slow, and unpredictable, and don't necessarily know traffic laws so well. It's also because parents perceive the sidewalks as safer, which brings us full circle. But people's perception of risk is actually really bad.

I have no difficulty believing the sidewalks of the street where I live, which ends at a park over the Humber valley, offer greater safety than the traffic lanes of Bloor. I believe the exception for children in the cycling bylaw envisioned parents teaching young kids to ride on the sidewalks of quite and exclusively residential streets. I see a real difference, both in terms of safety and in terms of effect on pedestrians, between teaching a child to ride on a residential street and using a sidewalk as a refuge from a major arterial street.

For that matter, I see a big ethical difference between riding the sidewalks out of fear, however misplaced, and a drink or drug-fueled careless run along a downtown sidewalk. I respect and sympathize with cyclists who use the sidewalk because traffic frightens them, even as I disagree with them. Indeed, I have said before that persuading cyclists not to ride in sidewalks will ultimately require building infrastructure and effectively deterring the ignorant bullying of cyclists by motorists. But in the end, I have to say that because of the dangers sidewalk cycling poses to us as pedestrians, and because of the dangers sidewalk cycling poses to us as cyclists, I still advise cyclists to avoid it.