Quote Originally Posted by OakLeaf View Post
And maybe it's the lower potential for injury that ultimately makes people take bikes less seriously. If it was a car driving on the sidewalk, you'd both have called 911 as soon as you were safe, and the cops would've been there with lights and sirens. As it was, it didn't even occur to you, right? - and if you had called about a bicycle on the sidewalk before a collision happened, the dispatcher would've laughed you off the phone.
You really think so huh...... a few years ago someone drove their car right down the sidewalk - for about 1/2 a block - in front of my house because there was traffic and they didn't want to wait....

There were no lights, no sirens, no cops..... no one got in trouble....

I think the big difference is that even if people do stereotype some drivers, no one takes a look at a bad driver in an SUV and then turns around and says, SUV's shouldn't be allowed on the road and means it seriously - in fact unless the behavior is *seriously* egregious it is completely ignored, but if a cyclist slides through a stop sign people get all up in arms about how all cyclists are law breakers and how we shouldn't even be allowed to use the roads and they mean it... (the same people who will scream about cyclists sliding through stops probably don't even realize they do it in their cars *all of the time* 99% of people I see around here never fully stop or stop in the crosswalk...)