Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

Issue date: 4/15/09 Section: Opinion

Media Credit: Chris Curry

I stopped at the red light on Second Street.

I could hear him huffing, trying to catch up to me. His shaggy head jutted out from the rest of his body like a truck pulling a stumpy trailer. He didn't really have a neck, but if he did it would have strained and crooked as he pushed toward me.

"You need to get off the sidewalk!" he barked at me.

"Excuse me," I didn't say it then, but had said it a few moments prior when my bicycle and I slowly rolled by him. His flapping trench coat left little room to get around, but I was able to sneak between him and the sycamore trees on the sidewalk in front of McDonald's.

I didn't even touch him. Having to weave in and out of people and utility poles has given me a surgeon's precision with my handlebars.

Then he hit me with what was, no doubt in his mind, the cleverest thing he had ever said, "It's called a sidewalk, not a sidebike." He emphasized the "bike" and left his mouth open to feign shock and stupefaction.

"What are you, fuckin' crazy?" I smoothly replied. "I'm not going to ride in the street." My matter-of-fact reply stunned him. "You wouldn't walk in the street, why do you expect me to bike in the street?"

Got him. He couldn't even beat his dead horse.

I'll stretch reality and assume that he suddenly recalled his high school physics class and imagined the consequences of me hitting him versus those of me hitting a car.

Force is equal to mass times acceleration. The amount of force is relative to the amount of danger. The amount of danger should determine the route one chooses. I'm sticking to the sidewalk.

Consider these two possible scenarios.

One, the combined 230 pounds of me and my bicycle traveling at an average sidewalk speed of 10 miles per hour ran into an average American, who according to the Center for Disease Control, weighs 165.5 pounds. The likely result is two people on the ground with possible cuts and scrapes. Worse case would be a sprain or a fracture. I can't see anyone dying.

Two, an average car, which according to the Environmental Protection Agency weighs just over two tons, running at a moderate downtown speed of 25 miles per hour, hits the aforementioned 230 pounds, now traveling at a street speed of 15 miles per hour.

People die this way. In fact, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 698 cyclists were killed by automobiles in 2007. Windshield wipers were not intended to clear bicyclist blood.

Biking with the protection of a concrete curb between you and 4,000 pounds of steel and rubber is, no doubt, safer. I'm not advocating that any cyclist ride on the sidewalk in the same manner that they ride on the street.

Any sidewalk biker has to ride slower and be prepared to stop for driveways and doors. But pedestrians need to learn to share the path with courteous bikers.

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